Sprint Nextel sues Vonage over VOIP patents

Posts: 114 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Aug 05, 2005 Posts: 114

Found a place that has the court filing document. Is there a way I could upload the file here? http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2005/oct/1189831.htm is where I found the document.

It looks like the patents are....

“Method, System and Apparatus for Telecommunications Control” (U.S. Patent No. 6,304,572, U.S. Patent No. 6,633,561, U.S. Patent No. 6,463,052 and U.S. Patent No. 6,452,932) as well as “Broadband Telecommunications Systems” (U.S. Patent No. 6,473,429, U.S. Patent No. 6,298,064, U.S. Patent No. 6,665,294).

Posts: 233 · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 2:27 pm Post subject:

Quote:

The moral of the story is to patent your junk.
Vonage didn't patent their technology before they tried to sell it to almost every cable and phone company back in 2000/2001. They just didn't think of it, they were a bunch of kids straight out of DeVry and wherever.

Actually I think for technology Vonage is using a lot of off-the-shelf solutions, at least at this point in time. Most of the in-home equipment came from Sipura, now owned by Cisco who also owns Linksys. Thus most of Vonage's adapters are Linksys adapters. I have not seen any "Vonage" labeled hardware that didn't share the Linksys or Uniden name. So I am not sure what they could have patented. If they were just "a bunch of kids straight out of DeVry and wherever" (your label, not mine) then so be it. But that is not what made Vonage. Vonage became the golden child by recognizing the technology and using creative marketing. Thus my statement that it looks more like the early days of oil than the dot com boom because I don't think it will end here. In my opinion this "bunch of kids straight out of DeVry and wherever" (your label, not mine) are about to become richer.

As for their centralized equipment, servers, and software I still see it very difficult to prove they infringed on a patent. I would bet any equipment is purchased. Some software is coded or configured in-house. Vonage does claim to have

Quote:

SIP-thru-NAT, Vonage's proprietary communications technology

I took that quote from:

SIP Center

And my belief is if Vonage is subject to a patent infringement then Sprint will go down in tax history with the Boston Tea Party. But I am not a software expert and could miss the point here. It just doesn't read that way. They are using a form of the SIP protocol and if it was not somewhat standard then why is everyone trying to hack the PAP2 for use on another service?

Vonage will be recognized as a leader in the companies that brought VoIP to the non-technocrat using off-the-shelf equipment. They may not be alone, but face it, they are currently leading the race. Oh, and don't forget. Cisco will win no matter how this turns out since they are making a lot of the equipment.