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Incumbent Badgers Vonage With Patent Allegation |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 20 June 2006 |
Verizon Communications is delivering recently listed VoIP service
provider Vonage a whole mess of trouble with an Intellectual Property suit that
alleges Vonage pinched a bunch of Verizon technology to launch its service.
Vonage, a pioneering broadband telephony service provider
which was recently punished by Wall Street losing some 50 per cent of its stock
price since floating a few weeks ago, stands accused of using Verizon
technology to deliver its low-cost calling services.
It's not the first time the company has had to face such
allegations. Last year Sprint is also pursuing a claim it made last year
alleging that Vonage breaches seven patents it owns.
Vonage is also facing intellectual property suits from a
company called Rates Technology which claims Vonage is infringing its
lowest-cost call routing technology.
But these latest allegations comes as something of a surprise
for Vonage, which says Verizon has never approached it about the alleged infringements
and has elected to take the matter straight to court rather than attempt to
negotiate a settlement.
Vonage says it intends to vigorously defend the lawsuit saying
its services have been developed with its own proprietary technology augmented
with technology licensed from third parties.
The range of patent infringement alleged is impressive
With patents for billing, fraud detection, call services
including the ability to connect to PSTN phones, call forwarding, voicemail even
the use of Wi-Fi handsets among the list of seven under dispute.
The legal challenge comes after Vonage has been seen to aggressively
pursue Verizon customers. Verizon is the second largest telecommunications
provider in the US
and has reportedly lost some 1.1 million customers to Vonage in the past 15
months.
While Vonage is likely seen as a threat by legacy telco's it
has amassed huge loses as it attempts to buy market share from the entrenched
providers. Running about US$120 million a year in the red, the company's US$530
million Initial Public Offering was meant to provide a marketing war chest to
take further customers from the likes of Verizon.
Vonage also faces several Class Action lawsuits concerning
its disastrous IPO which say investors shareholdings plummet in value from the first
day on the NASDAQ.
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