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Vonage Tries To Take High Ground |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Friday, 27 April 2007 |
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Page 1 of 2
Vonage, which th US Courts found guilty of inadvertently infringing on a number
of Internet telephony patents owned by Verizon Communications, has now
turned up the spin-o-meter in an effort to use public relations to
achieve what it failed to do in the courts.
Faced with the prospect of being denied the right to sign up new
subscribers until an appeal into its conviction could be heard, the
company got a temporaryreprieve earlier this week when the appeals court issued a permanent extension to the temporary stay issued by the lower court earlier this month.
So apart from the departure of its CEO in the midst of all this,
it's business as usual for Vonage until the appeal can be heard in a
couple of months. However, despite its legal team claiming to be
confident about a win in the appeals court, the copmany has launched a
PR campaign design to rally consumer sentiment presumably in an effort
to influence the appeals court handling of the case - an interesting
tactic at this late stage in the game.
"We believe the original verdict
was based on an erroneous claim construction -- meaning the patents in
this case were defined in an overly broad and legally unprecedented
way," said Sharon O'Leary, Vonage's executive vice president, chief legal officer and secretary.
"We
believe the district court's decisions repeatedly neglected
well-established law on claim construction and, as a result,
artificially expanded the coverage of Verizon's patents well beyond
what was intended by the patent trademark process," she said in an
official statement.
"We are confident this error will be rectified by the
appeals court, which hears intellectual property cases exclusively. As
a result, we remain highly confident Vonage will prevail on appeal," continuedO'Leary.
Not confident enough to stick to its knitting though. "It's
business as usual for us," said Vonage chairman and acting CEO, Jeffrey
Citron. "We remain focused on growing and strengthening our business
and driving toward profitability."
Business as usual if you
count mounting legal costs, a US$58 million fine hanging over your head
and an internal restructure designed to save US$140 million from the
company budget by slashing marketing costs and staff. That's the
company's reality, since the totally unexpected and instant departure of Vonage CEO, Michael Snyder a week after the temporary stay was issued.
In
fact that's the upside, if the company can win on appeal. Vonage has
been deliberately hazy on whether it is going to be possible to come up
with a work around to avoid the extremely broad-based Verizon patent.
Depending on whether it is talking to the stock market or the courts it says it will or won't be able to continue business if it is barred from using the Verizon patented technology.
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