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Vonage Guilty Of Patent Infringement |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 13 March 2007 |
High profile Voice over IP provider Vonage has been successfully sued for patent infringment by Verizon Communications, being ordered to pay US$58 million in damages.
The case, which pertained to five core patents Vonage used to
build its VOIP services networks in the United States and although the
trial Jury found the copmany guilty of abusing three of the five
patenets, Vonage has vowed to appeal the judgement.
Finding that
the infringement was not
willful cut the payout from the US$197 million that Verizon had hoped
for and it is unclear whether it will also be able to stop Vonage from
using the technology by getting the court to issue an injunction
banning Vonage from using technologies covered by the patents. That
request willbe dealt with before the end of the month.
Verizon was none-the-less pleased with the outcome.
"A jury today found that Vonage Holdings Corp. has infringed three
United States patents awarded to Verizon covering methods of offering
commercial-quality VoIP services, including wireless access to VoIP,"
said John Thorne, Verizon senior vice president and deputy general
counsel.
"Patents encourage and protect innovations that benefit consumers,
create jobs and keep the economy growing. Verizon's innovations are
central to its strategy of building the best communications networks in
the world," he said.
For its part Vonage said it beleived the guilty verdicts for the thrre
patents would be reversed on appeal. It also vowed to fight any attempt
to gain an injunction banning them from using the technology. "If the
trial court does impose an injunction, we will seek an immediate stay
from the Federal Court of Appeals,'' it said.
Vonage last year
had a disastrous public float, made a loss of US$286 million and slowed
its customer acquisition growth, yet the pain is not over for
shareholders. The stock fell more than 4 percent on announcement of the
trail outcome.
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