In what could be viewed as the big KO-punch, a federal judge has told Vonage to stop using Verizon patents, and has two weeks to comply with the order. For Vonage, this clearly is bad news, and you can tell, VZ and incumbents want to shut down the pesky upstart.
“They could not have been commercially successful if they had not taken these patents we have and put them into their technologies,” Dan Webb, an attorney for Verizon, said at Friday’s hearing on the injunction request.
For now Vonage customers are not impacted, but future is clearly uncertain for the New Jersey-based company. More updates to follow…
9 comments so far
12:39 PM PT
“They could not have been commercially successful if they had not taken these patents we have and put them into their technologies” — WOW! there’s a keeper!
What an utter load of crap, everything wrong with the world of intellectual property tactics all wrapped-up into tidy package. Shameful if they get away with permanently damaging VG.
2:14 PM PT
Vonage was a hurting duck before this lawsuit, now? Lets see, Vonage is going up against huge companies with huge bank accounts, they offer 1 product against their competitors 4 (voice, video, internet, wireless), their entire network is controlled by their competitors, their primary product is trending to zero, they face regulatory issues, legal issues and have never shown a profit.
They did have some kind of funny commercials though.
Did anyone thing Vonage ever had a chance? Really?
3:17 PM PT
…with the grim reaper hovering above…and the graveyard now in sight…
5:54 PM PT
If upheld, this ruling not only spells doom for Vonage, but also means trouble for Packet8, Earthlink VoIP, Sunrocket and all the Cablecos. That’s where all the subscribers will go if Vonage shuts down, not back to Verizon! Let’s see if Verizon goes after anyone else(the patents claims are so broad they apply to just about anyone doing VoIP).
I personally think the whole thing will be overturned on appeal because of how broad and vague the patent claims are (at least I fervently hope so for the sake of the IP communications industry).
3:16 AM PT
LOL, lets wait for the appeal and that two weeks will be postponed.
10:07 AM PT
Hope that judge can sleep at night when he cuts off 911 service to Vonage’s customers in two weeks. Deaths related to that would sure be front page news.
7:19 AM PT
[...] we start having sympathetic thoughts for Vonage, the residential VoIP service provider that got KO-ed by Judge Hilton who gave the company two weeks to stop infringing on Verizon’s [...]
8:23 AM PT
[...] [via GigaOM] [...]
10:41 AM PT
[...] subscribers. Will they license from Verizon? Will they patch their code? Is this death for Vonage? http://gigaom.com/2007/03/23/vonage-has-to-stop-using-verizon-patents/ [...]
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