Vonage Admits They Have No Workaround 345
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.'"
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.
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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).
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.
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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.
Re:stalemate (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not totally Verizon's fault.
Re:stalemate (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not totally Verizon's fault.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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Without regulation we wouldn't have had the railroad monopoly era. (Or did you forget that the railroad monopolies were the result of tax-funded public-works projects?)
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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
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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.
It's not just obvious, but not even novel. First off, VOIP is not by any means a new technology. The way it is currently being marketed is somewhat new, but before the big phone companies started doing this there were a lot of little companies that were trying to innovate
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?).
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?
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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.
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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
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Oh come on, I know you were desperate to point out flaws in the parent's argu
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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
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Money isn't everything. There's also fame, a sense of moral duty, getting a desirable mate, just for fun, to be able to brag, and many other motivations. I am sick and tired of the idea that profit is the only thing that motivates human beings. Open source would not work if that were the case.
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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
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The point of patents is to provide protection for unique ideas - but the intent was to provide that protection to the innovators who were trying to build a business around that u
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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.)
This is what I hate about the entire argument.
Without patents, people would come up with new ideas to "One up" the guys that copied them.
Would this help the original person? Depen
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One thing I didn't add is that, in addition to the copy-cats, you'll also have those who will see an invention, use it as a base, improve it in some way(s), then release a new product.
I could be wrong, but as I understand things as they currently stand, this is not possible (see Vonage, who took (knowingly or not) a method of connecting internet originated calls to the POTS network, adding in the ability to take the phone with you wherever you go, just
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Sigh. That's what copyright is for. Copyright stands for 'copying rights'. There's an entire legal infrastructure for this already in place.
Software patents are a monopoly over an idea, not an 'invention'. Copyright protects an author's real work, the actual legal article, an actual implementation. If we accept patenting software and business methods why then shouldn't we allow for the patenting of music
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Patents, copyrights, and trademarks do not overlap at all, although they may each apply to a different aspect of a single product.
A patent protects an invention generally. In order to be patentable, the invention must be useful, novel, and nonobvious. That is, it must actually work, it must never have been invented before, and it cannot be a minor variation on what is already known to people having an ordinary skill in the field the invention i
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I think Vonage is simply tossing out a smokescreen here to try and get a ruling that forces a license fee they can live with.
Only one appropriate response... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Only one appropriate response... (Score:5, Funny)
"BooHoo Boo Hoo Hoo"
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Vonage Fraught With Troubles Amid Patent Case Loss [newtelephony.com]
Re:Only one appropriate response... (Score:4, Funny)
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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.
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or go here [amazon.com] and listen to track 11.
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.
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Yeah, I'd say they're comparable.... VM is a fine cellphone, but it is no replacement for Vonage.
This is excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you kidding? Look at how greatly the arts and sciences are being promoted by this!
Seriously, though, this might just be the wakeup call that's needed.
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]
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IIRC from a previous story on this, the patent covers an IP-to-PSTN (normal phone service) bridge, which is a vital part of any VOIP service that allows you to place calls to normal telephones and not just VOIP phones in the same network.
there is simply no way around this, as that single item is the thing that allows VOIP to work in the intended manner.
this applies to ALL VOIP providers, not just vonage, that allow you to call outside of their
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Thing is, Vonage probably knows that they could win the suit with prior art, which makes a settlement a nasty pill to swallow.
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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I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt it. First, consider other cases of Vonage bad behaviour: they have a long history of not telling customers the truth. They gave me false information about number mobility, and then tried to charge me a cancellation fee when it turned out I couldn't keep my old number. Based on the number of Vonage customer "service" horror stories circulating on the 'Net this kind of
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Actually, I could foresee military action in Iran in the next year resulting us being involved in a war versus Russia and China resulting in a scenario similar to "Red Dawn" which does not result in your phone bill going up.
Of course seeing that their will be no more phone companies or basic utilities due to the nightly bombing raids makes it a moot point in my scenario.
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Dear Sir,
Stop. Looking. For. A. Payout. You. Asshole.
The world isn't fair. Sometimes things suck. Deal with it and quit looking for someone to owe you every time something changes.
Sincerely,
Tom Caudron, Esquire[1]
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
[1]The undersigned is not an attorney, but would like to play one on reality TV.
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Shareholders should sue. How did this company IPO before anyone noticed or said anything about the patents? Vonage had to know about this stuff and chose to ignore it.
The patent system is a total mess. It's near impossible to do anything without infringing on patents, and it's very difficult to even find out which patents you're infringing on.
Watch this speech by Richard Stallman: The Dangers of Software Patents [google.com]
All anger must be directed towards the patent office and the patent trolls/abusers (Verizon in this case).
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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)
Verizon (Score:2, Funny)
Regardless, farewell Vonage. It was nice knowing thee.
Use bleeding edge - get cut (Score:2)
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Telcos aren't alone in this, though... It's pretty much any utility.
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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
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.
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As a Vonage customer, I have to say... (Score:2)
And now it's all going away.
That sucks.
This "workaround" was vaporware..... (Score:2)
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.)
where do they go? other providers, DUH (Score:2)
it's not like Vonage customers will never be able to use a phone again in their lives....
Vonage customers will be singing.... (Score:2, Funny)
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo-hoo!
Antitrust? (Score:2)
Move (Score:2)
Vonage may have an exit strategy (Score:2)
salvage the hardware? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've got the Linksys RTP300 box. If i understand correctly, the firmware has been 'updated' by Vonage to work only with Vonage service
It would be really cool if Vonage could, as a last act, stuff it with a linux kernel and Asterix.
Since I don't expect that to happen, is it possible to do that myself?
patent re-examination? (Score:3, Insightful)
have Verizon failed to offer a license deal? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, if Verizon were to sit on the tech and not exploit it (a defensive patent) then Vonage could force them to accede to a reasonable license term.
If Vonage simply didn't know about the patent and Verizon are using it themselves (which it seems they are), all Vonage can hope is that they'll get a license. It's tough but that's what "granting a monopoly on exploitation of a novel technology" means - only one company / person goes home with the money.
Of course it's probably better for Verizon to offer a license unless they can take over Vonage's customers for themselves.
It does seem hard on Vonage, but they should have done their research. If they too have made some novel advances in this field then things usually get resolved in some cross-licenseing agreement (involving cloaks and daggers!). So this is the patent system working properly - the innovators win
I've not looked in detail but the patent in question may be one of the so-called submarine patents that used to be a feature of the US system but which now (see eg http://www.meti.go.jp/english/report/data/g400112
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#1 - thus now ungranted patents are published in the US which has led the uninitiated to believe that the USPTO grants everything, commonly the initial filing is published then only the amended claims (which define the monopoly) are re-published.
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Oh, heavens no. What you're talking about sounds like a sensible sort of patent system. What we have here is a ridiculous system where anyone can patent anything and sue anyone. And in case you're wondering how these lawsuits proceed, our legal system is relatively simple: whoever has more money to bankroll a legal team wins.
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Ok so let's say you patent the wheel and I can't sell wheels, and lets even say I can't give people rides on buses that have wheels. What about building a cart to move things around in my own factory? Does that then entitle you a share of all my profits?
Really, limiting patents to products makes sense to me. I don't see what's wrong with it. Like, let's say I want to build a bus and give people rides. Those buses are going to need wheels. Suddenly there's a market for bus wheels, and someone is going
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I think the logic goes that they're not selling the hardware, but they are selling USE of the hardware, i.e. leasing/renting it to the customers on a per-minute basis. I think I've read elsewhere that you basically can't manufacture, distribute, etc. something that is patented, even for your own private use.
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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
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Vonage wasnt using Verizon DSL. The Verizon CUSTOMER was using their Verizon DSL, to access various parts of the Internet, which included Vonage VOIP servers. Also, I doubt that that many of Vonage's customers have Verizon DSL. Most VoIP customers go with cable broadband, to avoid being forced to pay for a phone line from the ILEC that they dont need in order to get DSL.
If you have a Verizon DSL line, and you access www.ibm.com, should IBM have to pay Verizon for 'using' thei