An appeals court has decided that Vonage can ideed add customers while they appeal the ridiculous $58 million fleecing they got at the hands of Verizon.
The case is due to be heard on June 25th, where we’ll see lots of interesting arguments come out, most notably that the patents Verizon was awarded were discussed in public by other companies before they were granted their patents.
in a note published to his clients, Tier 1 Research analyst Daniel Berninger (also a guest columnist for GigaOM) argues that the legitimacy of Verizon’s two key ‘name translation’ patents (6,104,711 filed on March 6, 1997; 6,282,574-filed February 24, 2000) are themselves subject to scrutiny.
In his note, Berninger writes that the Verizon patent applications authored by Eric Voit reflect contributions made by VocalTec Communications and were discussed at the VoIP Forum in 1996. Some of VocalTec’s technical claims were also formally published in an independent document in January 1997.
Moreover, the published document included contributions from Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel, Intel and several other prominent technology companies. (See documents at the end of this report.) Records indicate that Verizon filed for its own patents in March 1997 and February 2000.
One thing is for sure. Verizon intended to use the patents they obtained as a business model, and only started pursuing patent cases when VOIP became a real threat. They never intended to produce a product (although they have within the last year), instead planning on suing the competition out of business.
That’s how Verizon deals with innovation.
If this is the way they’re going to handle their protected monopoly, it’s time we take it away from them. It’s that simple.
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