Verizon Claims Vonage Owes It $197 Million For Patent Infringement from the nice-work-if-you-can-get-it dept

If you want a good example of the backwardness of the patent system these days, just check out the lawsuit where Verizon claims Vonage infringed on its patents. It’s pretty well accepted that Vonage really was very innovative in bringing VoIP to market. It was one of the first “telephone replacement” VoIP offerings out there, and did a great job creating that marketplace with a huge marketing effort. However, after it was successful in finding a market (and competing against traditional telecom players like Verizon), Verizon suddenly decided that it held a patent on VoIP offerings and sued Vonage. Remember, that Verizon has done pretty much everything possible to keep people from getting services like Vonage. It had its own offering in the market, but was much later to market than Vonage and noticeably more expensive. It should come as no surprise that the offering didn’t get much attention. So, what do you do when you fail in the market? You sue for patent infringement. Not only that, but you then claim that Vonage owes you $4.93 per customer per month — which seems just a bit excessive.

To read the entire article, click here.

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