Peter wrote:
>> A federal judge dealt a blow to Vonage Holdings Corp. that sent its
>> stock reeling on Friday, when he agreed to bar the company from
>> using Internet phone call technology patented by Verizon
>> Communications Inc. ... A jury on March 8 found Vonage had
>> infringed three patents owned by Verizon. ...
> When Vonage hit the scene, a number of participants here were quite
> enthused about it. I am curious as to what they think of the current > situation.
> Also, could anyone explain -- in layman's terms -- what the three > patents covered?
> At the risk of offending some people, I am not sympathetic to Vonage.
> I felt they entered the market by low-balling the pricing and failing
> to provide 911 support. They had to make that up after the fact.
> Cutting corners is an easy way to break in to a market, but not
> necessarily a good one. Now they've been found guilty of stealing
> inventions. Well, gee, you steal someone else's R&D, it's easy to
> underprice them. They do all the work, you get all the benefits.
Here are my thoughts on this. I know that Verizon approached Vonage about this before they filed the case. And knowing how VZ operated I know that the intent was to drive the nail into the coffin of VoIP.
They're not stealing someone elses R&D. That part is absolutely false - all Vonage is doing is replacing the last mile of cable to the person. Otherwise all call handling is done via PaeTec or Focal switches and they're CLEC's who've bought the licenses for all the services offered by Vonage. Not only that, I doubt VZ has the patent for SIP, which Vonage uses.
Verizon is losing a lot of business to VoIP. This case shows that they're desparate.