There is some good news for beleaguered Vonage. The U.S. Court of Appeals has vacated the $58 million judgment against the residential VoIP player under the ground that the lower court had wrongly interpreted one of the three patents. The appeals court has directed the lower court to revert the first two patents.
The appeals court pronounced,
We vacate in its entirety the award of $58,000,000 in damages and the 5.5 percent royalty and remand to the district court for further proceedings. We affirm the injunction as to the ‘574 and ‘711 patents. We vacate the injunction insofar as it pertains to the ‘880 patent.
Way back March this year, the Virginia Court had ordered Vonage to pay Verizon Communications $58 million for violating three VoIP patents and 5.5 percent royalties that the company acquired by using Verizon’s patents. The patent 880 is a reference to Vonage’s wireless access to provide VoIP service.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Federal court has ordered Vonage to pay $69.5 million fine for infringing patents of Sprint Nextel.
Comments
The only winners here are the lawyers because VoIP is a great offer that delivers real value. Pity since it is likely that Vonage will hemorrhage due to the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt). And worse, it will give a black eye to all of the other good providers like Net2Phone and Lingo.
I have Net2Phone and I like them because they seem to have focused primarily on developing technology with a great set of features - rather than throw money at campaigns. After more than 10 years, they are not the Johnny come lately so at least I feel safe with them.