drachenfyre writes "It looks like Vonage has no workaround for their recent patent infringements. This means if a permanent stay isn't granted it is likely that it will be the end of the line for Vonage. What will happen if millions of phone customers suddenly lose their service? Their own filing to the court stated 'While Vonage has studied methods for designing around the patents, removal of the allegedly infringing technology, if even feasible, could take many months to fully study and implement.'"
There really needs to be a distinction made in this discussion between frivolous patents, patent trolls and legitimate patents.
I don't think Verizon is a patent troll, although their patent could still be frivolous and honestly, I don't know whether this is.
But the whole point of patents is to encourage innovation, by providing protection for unique ideas. Why would anybody bother coming up with new ideas if anybody else could just copy them the next day? (That's especially true for startups, which don't have the money to compete head to head with larger, more established companies.)
If this is a legitimate patent, then Verizon was right to enforce it, and it will only help innovation in the long run, by continuing the legal tradition of protecting new ideas. And the court decisions suggest that it was a legitimate patent.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday April 17 2007, @11:24AM (#18768511)
Verizon is a patent troll, at least in this case. They waited far too long, in my opinion, to file suit against Vonage. You should not be able to selectively enforce your patent and only target those you feel confident or have financial motivation to target. The patents are very broad, Vonage is certainly not the only infringer. Why hasn't Verizon filed suit against others?
Congress needs to address the problem with broad software patents once and for all.
Most of these software patents the clueless patent examiner lawyers at USPTO are granting are obvious and stupid.
Things that have *always* been done that way by *lots* of people are now patented property, since the patent examiners hardly have the experience and knowledge to tell the difference between the obvious and something actually unique.
Software patents should be either eliminated completely, or should be strictly limited, like a 1 year term and very easy to bring forward information (prior art) to cancel them.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Verizon basically patented an extension of DNS. Mapping addresses to phone numbers? Puleeze. We did that in a database in 1977.
A qualified examiner with the USPTO is a United States citizen and holds at a minimum a Bachelor degree in one of the physical sciences, life sciences, engineering disciplines, or in computer science. Advanced academic degrees and relevant work experience in the technical area are not uncommon either. Specific fields [6] include c
There needs to be counterbalance (esp. for the little guys who are sued for infringement by the big guys - which probably isn't quite the case here).
If AllegedOwner sues InnocentCompany for infringement of a patent on LameIdea and the patent is declared invalid in the process, there should be some cost the AllegedOwner should pay. Perhaps in such a case, AllegedOwner (and all entities with a common parent and any subsequent spinoffs, etc) must pay InnocentUser all profits (perhaps revenue even) ever gained from LameIdea and lose the right to ever use LameIdea without buying a license from InnocentCompany (on terms suitable to InnocentCompany or assignee). Note that this pretty much just makes AllegedOwner subject to just what InnocentCompany would have been subject to if the patent were ruled valid. All other players of course would get to use the LameIdea w/o charge (as there's no patent on it anymore).
After all, AllegedOwner was very sure it was a valid, good patent (and, with this provision, might actually *believe* this before suing). This would also be a great way for the little guy to be able to find competent legal representation when sued for patent infringement (after all, the alleged infringer really wasn't expecting a patent license fee so would probably be willing to assign all such rights to a group of lawyers).
Of COURSE they are a patent troll - the patents are obvious to anyone in the field. The patent office is granting anything that is an old idea applied to the internet and calling it new. Until they stop this, the madness will continue.
Verizon is simply using this technology to maintain their defacto monopoly. This is not about innovation - it's about crushing a competitor or competing technology.
Vonage is not alone. If this case holds, it will effectively destroy VoIP.
Maybe Verizon's patent is a good one, but it's still pretty sleazy the way they did this. They basically let Vonage exist for years, let Vonage spend all the money marketing the VoIP concept to the masses, let Vonage spend all the time and money proving the concept that VoIP could make money and could move beyond the geek space. Vonage did all of that, and now that Joe Blow is comfortable with the concept, and now that Vonage has millions of established customers, Verizon can swoop in, kill Vonage, and get all of those customers without having to spend all the time and money building all of that up themselves.
So, in this case, even if Verizon's patent is valid, they behaved like a patent troll would: Let someone else do all the hard work building up customers and developing your patent into a marketable product, wait until they have lots of customers and are making lots of money, THEN go in and nail them.
If Verizon was only interested in protecting their IP, they would have gone after Vonage a whole lot sooner.
While Vonage was doing all that work, they should have performed one more task. They should have had someone do a patent check.
Its not totally Verizon's fault.
Hahahahaha. Have you actually ever done a patent search? Go ahead, list for us the patents that might affect a voice over IP business. That's why the system is stupid--there are so many patents that are so broadly written that it is easier to reinvent the wheel than to find it in the patent system. It is absolutely certain that any non-trivial product has implemented some patented ideas, but it would cost more than the product is worth to find them all.
Have you ever tried to do one? It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent. I've been doing a bit of coding today for an embedded system I'm designing, and although all of the code is run of the mill trivial stuff, I'd not be surprised if I've probably infringed at least four or five patents in the process. Fortunately, I don't live in the US so I don't care.
Part of patent reform should include that if someone can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they independently came up with the idea that they are now being sued over, this should be evidence that the patent was not non-obvious in the first place (or else someone wouldn't have independently thought it up) - and this should automatically invalidate the patent.
The USPTO themselves admit that only 5% of patents are worthy, they even have a term for these 5% - "pioneer patents" - i.e. patents that are truly novel and non-obvious. The other part of patent reform should be that only these "pioneer patents" should be accepted.
Have you ever tried to do one? It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent.
(One of) The tragedy here is that the patent system is supposed to reward innovators in exchange for the recording and propagation of their idea. Pre-patent times, inventors (allegedly, I don't know the actual history) would secret away their creations, afraid that it'd be copied. Theoretically, many inventions were lost wit the death of their creator, only to be reinvented by someone else. Publication and recording is part of getting a patent, with one of the goals being that we don't spend ingenuity reinventing the wheel.
If no one is consulting these patent records for how to solve a problem, we're not achieving a lot of the intended goal.
It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent
In theory, yes, maybe.
In practical, no. There are core areas to everyone's technology and those are what you need to focus on. In Vonage's case - their VoIP to POTS switching would at least have deserved a quick patent check. Its painful, but a few days work at most by a senior architect who understands their system.
Maybe Verizon's patent is a good one, but it's still pretty sleazy the way they did this. They basically let Vonage exist for years, let Vonage spend all the money marketing the VoIP concept to the masses, let Vonage spend all the time and money proving the concept that VoIP could make money and could move beyond the geek space. Vonage did all of that, and now that Joe Blow is comfortable with the concept, and now that Vonage has millions of established customers, Verizon can swoop in, kill Vonage, and get all of those customers without having to spend all the time and money building all of that up themselves.
Yeah, you don't actually know that.
I worked for a company I'll decline to identify when something vaguely parallel like this went on several years back; the companies were smaller, but still large companies. I worked for the Verizon analogue, which I'm going to start calling Bizarro-Verizon, because it's less awful than "the company I worked for" over and over, and because I've been watching SeaLab 2021.
Bizarro-Verizon spent six months notifying Bizarro-Vonage that they needed to open up a licensing agreement; Bizarro-Vonage never seemed to bother. So, Bizarro-Verizon set up an account as if they were a customer at the publically published rates, and just started invoicing Bizarro-Vonage. Some manager inside Bizarro-Vonage spent a month getting the account coordinated and set up, then several months trying to haggle the price down, all the while letting this enormous debt grow and grow, only to announce one day that he couldn't actually find any point at which his company had agreed to pay at all, and since it had been a year, he felt it was pretty obvious they weren't infringing, that negotiations were over, and that we might consider using the invoices as kindling.
So, Bizarro-Verizon spent a new six months indicating first that the account needed to be set up so that the standing debt for the use of their technology could be paid, and as that got ignored, progressively got angrier, until at the end they were threatening to sue. Bizarro-Vonage took the same gamble Real-Vonage took, and lost.
Did we submarine them for a year and a half? No: it's just at medium-sized companies, it takes time for stuff to percolate from one end to the other, and more time to be convinced they're not doing what they're supposed to. At companies the size of AT&T and Vonage, I'm surprised they got here this quickly, to be frank.
Nope. This whole mess was caused by government intervention. In a capitalist free market system, there would be no artificial monopolies such as are granted by patents. This is Verizon killing off Vonage by decidedly non-capitalistic means.
I'm not entirely into the details, but according to this [ipurbia.com] article the patents include the briliant idea to connect a voip network with the pots network. Anyone trying to patent something that obvious is a patent troll to me.
And to be honest, the rest of these patents really look like solutions anyone could come up with given the same problem. And perhaps that is the biggest problem with patents these days, most of them are just describing logical obvious solutions. Generally it's just an old solution appl
If this is a legitimate patent, then Verizon was right to enforce it, and it will only help innovation in the long run, by continuing the legal tradition of protecting new ideas. And the court decisions suggest that it was a legitimate patent.
Wrong. Even assuming Verizon has patented a novel idea (which is highly in question), they DID NOTHING with that patent except sit on it, thus transforming it into a submarine patent, which is only used to extract peanalties from ANOTHER COMPANY that ACTUALLY HAD THE BALLS to pursue the idea.
This is the whole problem with the patent situation. While patents are a good idea on paper, they are not in practice. This is because, basically, if you are granted a patent your best busines case IS TO NOT DEVELOP IT. It is far less risky and more cost-effeftive, to just sit on it for a few years until some unlocky company unknowingly creates a successful business around it - then sue the pants off them.
Patents do not encourage innovation at all - all they do is stifle it. Patent reform is desperatly needed. Companies should not be allowed to sit on a patent. The way things SHOULD procced is this:
Company / person has idea. File patent application.
Patent is reviewed and approved. Patent enters implementation phase, which is some fixed period of time during which the idea is allowed to be brought to market by the company / person. Maybe 1 year?
Implementation phase complete. Patent office then reviews patent AND evidence of implementation. If the company / person HAS NOT brought patent to market, then the patent is REJECTED and any and all ideas are now public domain. If they HAVE, then the patent is granted as par. current patent term length, whatever that is (I think it's 10 years?).
Great idea, but sometimes it takes more than a year to take a product to market. Sure it shouldn't take more than a year for a one click patent to come into use, but if you discover cold fusion, well it might take some time to get the funding and actually build a state of the art first ever cold fusion power plant.
Should they really lose their patent after spending billions of dollars?
It's pretty simple to solve this. The implementation phase can last up to ten years, but each year, you must show that you have made reasonable progress from the prior year (as evaluated by experts in the field). A third party developing the concept independently from the ground up in a year would immediately invalidate the patent (brand new patents notwithstanding), as it would indicate that the company was not making a good faith effort to actually develop the technology into a product.
Way to simplify the patent system. You've also created a situation where not only the invention covered by the patent, but every step in the process of bringing the invention to market would have to be disclosed -- process of refining the invention, incorporating it into a larger product, product strategy (maybe the market is not ready to use or pay for the product), marketing decisions, and the list goes on.
What if a company was to invent a great invention but it took eleven years before the production tech
Great idea, but sometimes it takes more than a year to take a product to market. Sure it shouldn't take more than a year for a one click patent to come into use, but if you discover cold fusion, well it might take some time to get the funding and actually build a state of the art first ever cold fusion power plant.
Should they really lose their patent after spending billions of dollars?
What kind of research will this encourage?
Oh come on, I know you were desperate to point out flaws in the parent's argu
Implementation phase complete. Patent office then reviews patent AND evidence of implementation. If the company / person HAS NOT brought patent to market, then the patent is REJECTED and any and all ideas are now public domain.
So verizon brings a VOIP service to market that costs $100 per hour, local calls only. No customers, no advertising, almost no expense.
I agree with you though, this kind of thing really needs to be done. Just need to find a way to close the loopholes without being overcomplicate
"But the whole point of patents is to encourage innovation"
Actually, the whole point of patents was to indirectly tax the population by handing out monopolies to friends of the crown. The later rationalizations have proven of dubious veracity and value.
"Why would anybody bother coming up with new ideas if anybody else could just copy them the next day?"
Why would anyone make a hammer if anybody else could just copy it the next day? Why would anyone invent a whe
While I think the patent system needs reform, your stance is a bit extreme and completely naive. It often costs a LOT of money to develop and idea into a product. Why should one company spend invest a ton of money into bringing a new idea into the marketplace only to have another company swipe their idea when they are done? The second company didn't spend a dime on the research. The first company should most definitely have the right to bring their idea into the market without a bunch of copycats sudden
cheaper than vonage and more coverage (not that i ever have the desire to call europe, canada and mexico often or even the west coast come to think of it...) though i wonder now that vonage is under the gun, if lingo will be next, i haven't found any info yet on what the patent covers
I like Vitelity.net. Depending on the Vonage adapter you currently have, you may be able to unlock it so you can use it with another provider. If you search the bargainshare.com forums, you can find instructions for most, if not all of them.
But who's to know if Vitelity isn't also infringing. Does anyone know what the patents actually are? As I understand it, they were related to call termination--ie connecting a VoIP call to a POTS user. That could be a problem.
Better yet, why don't they just work out a deal to use the patents? Isn't that the idea of patents, to allow the patent holder to profit from the patent? I know making a deal with Verizon is like selling your soul to the Devil's unsavory second cousin, but if it's the difference between the end of your business and staying afloat...
Because Verizon has no interest in licensing the patent to Vonage - they're seeking an injunction preventing Vonage from using the technology, which mean no competing VoIP. The monetary damages they're seeking are for past infringement, not licensing fees for future use. One thing to remember is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. really don't see much of a profit from regulated phone service, or even LD service - it's the add-on services (Caller ID, VM, three-way calling, etc.) that they make a mint on. With compa
This is the best quote I could find. No mention anywhere of the actual patent numbers involved.
The infringed patents cover technology that translates calls between an Internet network and the standard telephone network, call-waiting features and wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, handsets. Vonage was cleared of infringing two patents related to billing systems designed to prevent fraud.
1) Vonage up the service cost to a level that Verizon can compete at and pay a licensing fee. Problem Verizon have them over a barrel and could pretty much demand what they want, forcing the operation costs too high - putting them out of business.
2) Verizon buy out Vonage at a reduced cost. There's a bunch of people subscribed to Vonage. Even if the fees go up and a chunk stay, that's an easy market capture strategy. Infrastructure is in place etc. Verizon would then jack up the service cost.
3) A third party buy out Vonage. Same problem, but now 1) and 2) are combined.
4) Vonage get their stay. The court case goes on for a few years. Vonage's only argument is that 'it will put us out of business'. They go out of business anyway due to legal fees.
There's plenty of more senarios, but in all cases the service bill will go up. So I need to read my subscription agreement and get ready to ditch the service when the bills start to go up. I wonder if there's a class action lawsuit here for deceiving the customer about ownership of the technology. I'm thinking along the lines of something like - you sub-lease office space, but then get kicked out as the primary leaseholders were not paying their rent to the landlord, also they did not have permission to sub-lease to you. So now you have no office and have lost other cash etc. Any lawyers care to comment?
the service is not as good - voice quality is ok, but faxes fail
Without knowing if VoiceWing advertises that it supports fax service I can tell you that the compression algorithms used to send VOIP voice data are lossy in a way that breaks fax data. So unless they explicitly provide support for fax data you shouldn't expect it to work, just a result of the data compression formats that most VOIP uses.
. . . but the game will stay the same. That big ole user base is worth too much money to too many people to have it dissolved. I suspect that Verizon will try to forge a settlement which involves some large part of said users.
They sent me an email this morning saying I can save by paying a year in advance. Not a good idea now...
If Vonage can show that the Verizon patents are frivolous, customer sentiment like that will be evidence that Vonage can use in their countersuit for tortious interference...
I haven't heard anything about a patent re-examination.
Has Vonage requested that? Has the patent office really re-affirmed the validity of these apparently overbroad patents? If not, why didn't Vonage ask for a stay (preferably before the verdict) so the patent office could re-examine the patents? Didn't they learn anything from the Blackberry case?
(Notice they change their name every couple years despite being a monopoly.)
Moving into my new house, I try to get DSL service (which I already had at my old house). I call a full 6 weeks ahead to make sure. Cable modem was not released in our area yet, so there was only one option. The install date is 7 1/2 weeks later. I decide we can live without internet for a week and a half.
They show up and say it's impossible. I'm too far from the CO. Now, mind you, my next door neighbor has DSL and he is
I was not aware that Verizon could tell me which sort of packets I could send and what destinations I could send them to. If I chose Verizon's DSL, which I don't, I'm buying the ability to send and receive packets on their network from destinations of my choice. If I want to use VoIP, there is no legitimate way they can prevent me.
And it's not like Vonage is stealing from Verizon. People need to buy the DSL service from Verizon at full price, which includes a basic hookup for a POTS phone. And people don't
stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
End the patent nonesense now!
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
There really needs to be a distinction made in this discussion between frivolous patents, patent trolls and legitimate patents.
I don't think Verizon is a patent troll, although their patent could still be frivolous and honestly, I don't know whether this is.
But the whole point of patents is to encourage innovation, by providing protection for unique ideas. Why would anybody bother coming up with new ideas if anybody else could just copy them the next day? (That's especially true for startups, which don't have the money to compete head to head with larger, more established companies.)
If this is a legitimate patent, then Verizon was right to enforce it, and it will only help innovation in the long run, by continuing the legal tradition of protecting new ideas. And the court decisions suggest that it was a legitimate patent.
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of these software patents the clueless patent examiner lawyers at USPTO are granting are obvious and stupid.
Things that have *always* been done that way by *lots* of people are now patented property, since the patent examiners hardly have the experience and knowledge to tell the difference between the obvious and something actually unique.
Software patents should be either eliminated completely, or should be strictly limited, like a 1 year term and very easy to bring forward information (prior art) to cancel them.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Verizon basically patented an extension of DNS. Mapping addresses to phone numbers? Puleeze. We did that in a database in 1977.
I should have patented it then. Heh.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_examiners#Uni t ed_States [wikipedia.org]
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Interesting)
If AllegedOwner sues InnocentCompany for infringement of a patent on LameIdea and the patent is declared invalid in the process, there should be some cost the AllegedOwner should pay. Perhaps in such a case, AllegedOwner (and all entities with a common parent and any subsequent spinoffs, etc) must pay InnocentUser all profits (perhaps revenue even) ever gained from LameIdea and lose the right to ever use LameIdea without buying a license from InnocentCompany (on terms suitable to InnocentCompany or assignee). Note that this pretty much just makes AllegedOwner subject to just what InnocentCompany would have been subject to if the patent were ruled valid. All other players of course would get to use the LameIdea w/o charge (as there's no patent on it anymore).
After all, AllegedOwner was very sure it was a valid, good patent (and, with this provision, might actually *believe* this before suing). This would also be a great way for the little guy to be able to find competent legal representation when sued for patent infringement (after all, the alleged infringer really wasn't expecting a patent license fee so would probably be willing to assign all such rights to a group of lawyers).
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:4, Insightful)
Verizon is simply using this technology to maintain their defacto monopoly. This is not about innovation - it's about crushing a competitor or competing technology.
Vonage is not alone. If this case holds, it will effectively destroy VoIP.
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in this case, even if Verizon's patent is valid, they behaved like a patent troll would: Let someone else do all the hard work building up customers and developing your patent into a marketable product, wait until they have lots of customers and are making lots of money, THEN go in and nail them.
If Verizon was only interested in protecting their IP, they would have gone after Vonage a whole lot sooner.
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not totally Verizon's fault.
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not totally Verizon's fault.
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of patent reform should include that if someone can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they independently came up with the idea that they are now being sued over, this should be evidence that the patent was not non-obvious in the first place (or else someone wouldn't have independently thought it up) - and this should automatically invalidate the patent.
The USPTO themselves admit that only 5% of patents are worthy, they even have a term for these 5% - "pioneer patents" - i.e. patents that are truly novel and non-obvious. The other part of patent reform should be that only these "pioneer patents" should be accepted.
Parent
Why Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
(One of) The tragedy here is that the patent system is supposed to reward innovators in exchange for the recording and propagation of their idea. Pre-patent times, inventors (allegedly, I don't know the actual history) would secret away their creations, afraid that it'd be copied. Theoretically, many inventions were lost wit the death of their creator, only to be reinvented by someone else. Publication and recording is part of getting a patent, with one of the goals being that we don't spend ingenuity reinventing the wheel.
If no one is consulting these patent records for how to solve a problem, we're not achieving a lot of the intended goal.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
yes
In theory, yes, maybe.
In practical, no. There are core areas to everyone's technology and those
are what you need to focus on. In Vonage's case - their VoIP to POTS switching
would at least have deserved a quick patent check. Its painful, but a few days
work at most by a senior architect who understands their system.
I'm not defending the pat
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, you don't actually know that.
I worked for a company I'll decline to identify when something vaguely parallel like this went on several years back; the companies were smaller, but still large companies. I worked for the Verizon analogue, which I'm going to start calling Bizarro-Verizon, because it's less awful than "the company I worked for" over and over, and because I've been watching SeaLab 2021.
Bizarro-Verizon spent six months notifying Bizarro-Vonage that they needed to open up a licensing agreement; Bizarro-Vonage never seemed to bother. So, Bizarro-Verizon set up an account as if they were a customer at the publically published rates, and just started invoicing Bizarro-Vonage. Some manager inside Bizarro-Vonage spent a month getting the account coordinated and set up, then several months trying to haggle the price down, all the while letting this enormous debt grow and grow, only to announce one day that he couldn't actually find any point at which his company had agreed to pay at all, and since it had been a year, he felt it was pretty obvious they weren't infringing, that negotiations were over, and that we might consider using the invoices as kindling.
So, Bizarro-Verizon spent a new six months indicating first that the account needed to be set up so that the standing debt for the use of their technology could be paid, and as that got ignored, progressively got angrier, until at the end they were threatening to sue. Bizarro-Vonage took the same gamble Real-Vonage took, and lost.
Did we submarine them for a year and a half? No: it's just at medium-sized companies, it takes time for stuff to percolate from one end to the other, and more time to be convinced they're not doing what they're supposed to. At companies the size of AT&T and Vonage, I'm surprised they got here this quickly, to be frank.
Parent
Re:stalemate (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. This whole mess was caused by government intervention. In a capitalist free market system, there would be no artificial monopolies such as are granted by patents. This is Verizon killing off Vonage by decidedly non-capitalistic means.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And to be honest, the rest of these patents really look like solutions anyone could come up with given the same problem. And perhaps that is the biggest problem with patents these days, most of them are just describing logical obvious solutions. Generally it's just an old solution appl
Yellow Submarine (Score:5, Interesting)
If this is a legitimate patent, then Verizon was right to enforce it, and it will only help innovation in the long run, by continuing the legal tradition of protecting new ideas. And the court decisions suggest that it was a legitimate patent.
Wrong. Even assuming Verizon has patented a novel idea (which is highly in question), they DID NOTHING with that patent except sit on it, thus transforming it into a submarine patent, which is only used to extract peanalties from ANOTHER COMPANY that ACTUALLY HAD THE BALLS to pursue the idea.
This is the whole problem with the patent situation. While patents are a good idea on paper, they are not in practice. This is because, basically, if you are granted a patent your best busines case IS TO NOT DEVELOP IT. It is far less risky and more cost-effeftive, to just sit on it for a few years until some unlocky company unknowingly creates a successful business around it - then sue the pants off them.
Patents do not encourage innovation at all - all they do is stifle it. Patent reform is desperatly needed. Companies should not be allowed to sit on a patent. The way things SHOULD procced is this:
Company / person has idea. File patent application.
Patent is reviewed and approved. Patent enters implementation phase, which is some fixed period of time during which the idea is allowed to be brought to market by the company / person. Maybe 1 year?
Implementation phase complete. Patent office then reviews patent AND evidence of implementation. If the company / person HAS NOT brought patent to market, then the patent is REJECTED and any and all ideas are now public domain. If they HAVE, then the patent is granted as par. current patent term length, whatever that is (I think it's 10 years?).
Parent
Devil lives in the details (Score:4, Interesting)
Should they really lose their patent after spending billions of dollars?
What kind of research will this encourage?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's pretty simple to solve this. The implementation phase can last up to ten years, but each year, you must show that you have made reasonable progress from the prior year (as evaluated by experts in the field). A third party developing the concept independently from the ground up in a year would immediately invalidate the patent (brand new patents notwithstanding), as it would indicate that the company was not making a good faith effort to actually develop the technology into a product.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You've also created a situation where not only the invention covered by the patent, but every step in the process of bringing the invention to market would have to be disclosed -- process of refining the invention, incorporating it into a larger product, product strategy (maybe the market is not ready to use or pay for the product), marketing decisions, and the list goes on.
What if a company was to invent a great invention but it took eleven years before the production tech
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh come on, I know you were desperate to point out flaws in the parent's argu
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So verizon brings a VOIP service to market that costs $100 per hour, local calls only. No customers, no advertising, almost no expense.
I agree with you though, this kind of thing really needs to be done. Just need to find a way to close the loopholes without being overcomplicate
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
"But the whole point of patents is to encourage innovation"
Actually, the whole point of patents was to indirectly tax the population by handing out monopolies to friends of the crown. The later rationalizations have proven of dubious veracity and value.
"Why would anybody bother coming up with new ideas if anybody else could just copy them the next day?"
Why would anyone make a hammer if anybody else could just copy it the next day? Why would anyone invent a whe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only one appropriate response... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Only one appropriate response... (Score:5, Funny)
"BooHoo Boo Hoo Hoo"
Parent
Re:Only one appropriate response... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's a quote from their own commercials. It's sung in the background to a silly tune while people do amaaaazingly stupid things.
It's more than appropriate, it might even be prophetic.
It's worse than that (Score:5, Interesting)
Now millions of people will have to turn to the existing vampiric phone services
I've been very happy with Vonage, does anyone know a good alternative?
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www.lingo.com
cheaper than vonage and more coverage (not that i ever have the desire to call europe, canada and mexico often or even the west coast come to think of it
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Though depending on how Vonage's saga plays out, their futures may be uncertain as well.
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But who's to know if Vitelity isn't also infringing. Does anyone know what the patents actually are? As I understand it, they were related to call termination--ie connecting a VoIP call to a POTS user. That could be a problem.
This is excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
More Info? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Better yet, why don't they just work out a deal to use the patents? Isn't that the idea of patents, to allow the patent holder to profit from the patent? I know making a deal with Verizon is like selling your soul to the Devil's unsavory second cousin, but if it's the difference between the end of your business and staying afloat...
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One thing to remember is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. really don't see much of a profit from regulated phone service, or even LD service - it's the add-on services (Caller ID, VM, three-way calling, etc.) that they make a mint on. With compa
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Re:More Info? (Score:4, Informative)
Verizon-Vonage patent analysis Part One: 6,282,574 [zdnet.com]
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Two: 6,104,711 [zdnet.com]
Verizon-Vonage Patent analysis Part Three: 6,359,880 [zdnet.com]
Parent
So what will happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
My best guess:
1) Vonage up the service cost to a level that Verizon can compete at and pay a licensing fee. Problem Verizon have them over a barrel and could pretty much demand what they want, forcing the operation costs too high - putting them out of business.
2) Verizon buy out Vonage at a reduced cost. There's a bunch of people subscribed to Vonage. Even if the fees go up and a chunk stay, that's an easy market capture strategy. Infrastructure is in place etc. Verizon would then jack up the service cost.
3) A third party buy out Vonage. Same problem, but now 1) and 2) are combined.
4) Vonage get their stay. The court case goes on for a few years. Vonage's only argument is that 'it will put us out of business'. They go out of business anyway due to legal fees.
There's plenty of more senarios, but in all cases the service bill will go up. So I need to read my subscription agreement and get ready to ditch the service when the bills start to go up. I wonder if there's a class action lawsuit here for deceiving the customer about ownership of the technology. I'm thinking along the lines of something like - you sub-lease office space, but then get kicked out as the primary leaseholders were not paying their rent to the landlord, also they did not have permission to sub-lease to you. So now you have no office and have lost other cash etc. Any lawyers care to comment?
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Without knowing if VoiceWing advertises that it supports fax service I can tell you that the compression algorithms used to send VOIP voice data are lossy in a way that breaks fax data. So unless they explicitly provide support for fax data you shouldn't expect it to work, just a result of the data compression formats that most VOIP uses.
Patents, prior art, court? (Score:4, Interesting)
The name "Vonage" may eventually go away . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
. . . but the game will stay the same. That big ole user base is worth too much money to too many people to have it dissolved. I suspect that Verizon will try to forge a settlement which involves some large part of said users.
Huzzah for competition.
Good Thing (Score:5, Funny)
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If Vonage can show that the Verizon patents are frivolous, customer sentiment like that will be evidence that Vonage can use in their countersuit for tortious interference...
(not a lawyer. yet.)
patent re-examination? (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, here's my experience with PacBell/SBC/AT&T (Score:3, Interesting)
(Notice they change their name every couple years despite being a monopoly.)
Moving into my new house, I try to get DSL service (which I already had at my old house). I call a full 6 weeks ahead to make sure. Cable modem was not released in our area yet, so there was only one option. The install date is 7 1/2 weeks later. I decide we can live without internet for a week and a half.
They show up and say it's impossible. I'm too far from the CO. Now, mind you, my next door neighbor has DSL and he is
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I was not aware that Verizon could tell me which sort of packets I could send and what destinations I could send them to. If I chose Verizon's DSL, which I don't, I'm buying the ability to send and receive packets on their network from destinations of my choice. If I want to use VoIP, there is no legitimate way they can prevent me.
And it's not like Vonage is stealing from Verizon. People need to buy the DSL service from Verizon at full price, which includes a basic hookup for a POTS phone. And people don't