At least, not yet. The U.S. Court of Appeals says the U.S. District Court has to take another look at one of the three Verizon patents Vonage is said to have violated, though it upheld two of the three decisions as originally made.
Further, the Court of Appeals vacated the entire award of $58 million in damages and the 5.5 percent royalty. The Court of Appeals sent the case to the U.S. District Court and directed that the court retry those aspects of the original case.
Vonage has work-arounds in place, and argues none of the patents should have been granted in the first place, though it seems unlikely to an untrained observer that Vonage can get the courts to agree.
Still, it is a partial victory. Perhaps the damage award and royalty payments will be lowered, ultimately. And, at this point, a partial victory is about the best news Vonage has had on the patent front this year.
1 comment:
Pity that this debacle is giving the entire VoIP segment a black eye because there are great companies out there that focused on the technology and not the “sizzle”. Hey, I liked the Vonage commercials as much as the next guy, I only wish they had spent more time and money making sure they had the rights to use the technology they did. I still like the idea of VoIP and finding alternatives is hard because I don’t want to be stranded like many Sunrocket customers were recently. It seems there are good alternatives like Net2Phone and Lingo, but it is really too bad that such a high profile provider will probably set this whole category back in people’s minds.
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