Vonage Wins Verizon Patent Lawsuit Round 2
Author: Greg Anliker:
Vonage announced that they have won, at least temporarily, their patent suite with Verizon. Verizon sued Vonage earlier this year and won 58 million dollars, plus interest, and an injunction against Vonage signing up any new customers using any of the three stolen patents that they got caught using. The injunction was dropped for existing customers using the stolen technology, as long as Vonage made quarterly payment of 5.5% of their bill to Verizon for any existing customers who were still using the technology stolen from Verizon. (I love saying “Stolen Technology”, it sounds so “Cold War-ish”. LOL)
Here’s some of what the Vonage press release had to say:
On September 26, 2007, the CAFC (United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) partially remanded the jury verdict that the Company infringed three Verizon patents. The CAFC remanded the infringement verdict on the 880 patent and affirmed the verdict on the 574 and 711 patents. Further, the CAFC vacated the entire award of $58 million in damages and the 5.5% royalty. The CAFC remanded the case to the U.S. District Court and directed that the court retry those aspects of the original case.
The press release also said that they were going to see if they could win the Sprint lawsuit that they lost a couple of days ago. If they can, then they won’t have to pay out any more money and may still be able to survive as the biggest stand alone VoIP company around.
To those of you who think I’m being unfair to Vonage when I keep saying “Stolen Technology”, you need to remember that they stole patented technology from Sprint and Verizon, and then also used a stolen customer list from Sunrocket to try to move customers after the “Death of Sunrocket” in July. As far as I’m concerned, since two juries of my peers have said that they were thieves, then they are thieves, even if bought and paid for judges throw out those verdicts.