It’s very interesting when industries get hot how quickly lawsuits come out of the woodwork. It’s almost a good sign these days If someone is in this industry and under some sort of legal pressure, as it means you are doing the right thing and someone is challenging you for going into their backyard. I found some of these law suits interesting:
Corner stone lawsuit for 911 services and VoIP When Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott slapped Vonage with a lawsuit for not adequately informing users, he irresponsibly dropped a Texan – no, Alaskan-sized cowpie on the VoIP industry, especially since his own, autographed article on the Texas Attorney General’s Web page stresses that customers themselves need to take the responsibility for finding out about and signing up for 911 from VoIP providers.
Nuvio Files Lawsuit Against FCC Emergency Services Requirement VoIP provides great convenience to people on the move. However, the same mobile aspect of the technology makes it very difficult for the service providers to provide an emergency calling service to their users. In contrast to traditional wired phones, where the fixed status of the instrument helps in tracing the caller of the emergency number, net telephony users could be located anywhere at the time of their calling 911 from their VoIP phones. The Federal Communications Commission ( FCC) has directed Internet phone service providers to provide emergency call facility to its users by 28th November, 2005. In view of this technology-based limitation, Nuvio, a company that provides Internet phone services for businesses, has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, challenging the FCC directive. Cellular companies providing wireless services also face the same problem and FCC has given them a waiver till the time they find a solution to their problem. FCC has not shown any opposition to Nuvio's request for a review of the situation. Nuvio, is hoping for an expeditious settlement of its case by the judiciary so that it can decide on how it can fulfill FCC's directive.
Google Patent Infringement, not the only victim of Patent Squatting… The suit includes two causes of action for patent infringement against Google. Rates Technology says that two patents they hold (awarded in 1995, 2001) for minimizing the cost of long distance calls using the Internet are being infringed upon by Google Talk. Copies of these two patents along with one more mentioned in the filing are included in the complaint. Rates Technology is asking for a jury trial along with: + Enforcement of the patents + Damages including the loss of profits so provide a royalty + A preliminary injuction against Google + Attorney's fees So who is Rates Technology? That's a good question. Finding substanative material on the open web is a challenge. However, a web search did turn up this excellent this blog post from TMCnet publisher Rich Tehrani, that Rates Technology, a company Tehrani says, exists, "to collect revenue from other companies" has also sued Nortel, Sharp Electronics and others over patents it holds. The post also includes has a blurb from a December 7, 1998 WSJ story about the company and recent comments (April 2005) from Rates Technology CEO, Jerry Weinberger. The blog post also mentions that Weinberger and Rates Technology have patent agreements in place with 700-800 companies and have litigated 25 times in 15 years. According to the court docket both parties will meet with Judge E. Thomas Boyle in early February.
AOL Tangled in VoIP Lawsuit America Online Inc. (AOL) is facing a patent infringement lawsuit estimated at $200 million filed by Klausner Technologies, Inc. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Virginia, claims Klausner's intellectual property rights are being violated by AOL's voice services platform. It specifically alleges that services which allow AOL subscribers to receive visual notification of new voice messages and selectively retrieve them via their displays infringe U.S. Patent. 5,572,576. AOL Voicemail, AOL Call Alert, AOL by Phone and AOL VoIP Internet Phone Service are all included in AOL's voice services platform. All so interesting…I think I should really do a blog on VoIP patents since I used to be a patent research assistant in University.
Vonage Hit By VoIP Patent Infringement Sprint Nextel said on Tuesday that a subsidiary had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Vonage Holdings and another internet-based calling service. Sprint Nextel, the third-largest US wireless company, claimed Vonage and Voiceglo Holdings, a unit of Theglobe.com, had infringed seven patents relating to voice over data packet technology developed by Sprint. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Kansas City, seeks injunctions against Vonage and Voiceglo as well as unspecified damages. Vonage, the largest US independent internet-based telephone service, passed one million subscriptions last month and is reportedly preparing for an IPO. Voiceglo offers a software-based system that allows voice calls between computers and to regular telephones, similar to Skype. Voiceglo, Vonage and many other companies offer services using voice over IP, or VoIP, technology, which transmits phone calls in the same way web pages and email are sent over the internet. The lawsuit does not specify how Sprint Nextel believes its patents are being infringed. The company said: "While Sprint prefers to resolves disputes amicably, Sprint will take all necessary steps to protect the creativity and innovation of its employees." A Vonage spokeswoman said the company had not seen the lawsuit and could not immediately comment. Voiceglo president Ed Cespedes said he had not seen the lawsuit, and he didn't know why his company or Vonage would be singled out by Sprint Nextel. He said: "I suppose Sprint's position is they must own VoIP and therefore anyone providing it must be violating their patent." A Sprint spokeswoman said the company had tried to reach an agreement for more than a year with both companies over the patents. She declined to say whether Sprint had reached agreements or received royalties for the patents with any other VoIP providers. She said: "We are not claiming to have invented voice over packet technology but we do have patents that have facilitated the use of this technology, and we will take appropriate action to protect the use of these patents."
One of my favorite lawsuits of 2002, the one which likely had a lot of Cisco staff asking, "who approved that strategic alliance with Net2Phone again???" You always have to be careful signing anything thats says exclusive...it ends with an "e" and begins with an "e" and means expensive, it was for Cisco: Net2Phone, ADIR Settle Cisco Lawsuit By Erin Joyce Voice-over-IP provider Net2Phone (Quote, Chart) and its software subsidiary ADIR Technologies have settled an unfair trade lawsuit against networking giant Cisco Systems (Quote, Chart). The New Jersey-based Net2Phone and ADIR had filed a joint complaint against Cisco in March, charging it with stealing trade secrets, fraud, unfair competition, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duties. The lawsuit sought punitive and compensatory damages but the terms of the settlement, which the companies said would resolve all pending litigation, were subject to a confidentiality agreement. The complaint against the San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco grew out of a strategic alliance that Net2Phone and Cisco struck up in 2000 in order to develop products that would make Net2Phone's telephony software compatible with Cisco's hardware products. The goal was to produce a highly marketable system for voice-over Internet protocol communication products. According to the lawsuit, "Cisco would rely solely on Net2Phone to provide VoIP software to Cisco. In turn, Cisco, would contribute significant technical resources, financial support and marketing skills to assist in the development of a jointly marketable VoIP software product." In return for Cisco's financial support, Net2Phone created the ADIR subsidiary, "into which it transferred a suite of valuable VoIP network management software, much of which was to become known as 'Voxis.'" Cisco also took part in the $25 million investment in the ADIR subsidiary. However, Net2Phone would claim in its lawsuit that contrary to Cisco's earlier representations to Net2Phone in mid-2000, "Cisco was not looking to Net2Phone/ADIR as its sole developer of VoIP technology and was secretly developing its own technology. Unbeknownst to Net2Phone and ADIR, and deliberately concealed by Cisco, Cisco had at least one other competing software product in development." By "holding ADIR at bay" while it allegedly worked on the side with other, competing VoIP software makers, "Cisco gave itself the power to slow down one project and accelerate the other, reducing competition for the final product by tying up a potential competitor, as well as cross-fertilizing ideas between projects in the process," according to the original complaint. As a result of its alliance with Cisco, Net2Phone and ADIR claim that ADIR missed getting its products to market more quickly. Net2Phone also claimed that it was induced to spend $48 million in stock to acquire competitor NetSpeak Corp. (Quote, Chart) as part of its alliance to develop VoIP products for Cisco. The lawsuit had charged that Cisco "seriously misrepresented the basis on which the entire Net2Phone-ADIR-Cisco relationship was founded." Stephen Greenberg, CEO of Net2Phone, said "both Net2Phone and ADIR are very pleased that we achieved a satisfactory resolution of this dispute so expeditiously."
Hmmm. Might make for some interesting…REALLY, that’s a patent? Anyway for now, I wish you all a happy New Year, and if your getting sued for your technology, it’s probably because you are doing something right.
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