Vonage and Verizon — Prepare for Round 2 49
According to the New York Times, Vonage is preparing to take it's case back down to the lower courts for a retrial of the lawsuit against them from Verizon. Their hope is that with newer approaches set forth by the supreme court that the lower courts will be able to decide whether Verizon's patent(s) are ordinary/obvious or deserve patent protection. I wonder if this time it will be more obvious to the courts that Verizon's patents aren't so original?
Ordinary and obvious? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ordinary and obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
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- Eddie
Obvious does NOT mean there's prior art. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're not.
"Prior art" means it's already been done that way, or exactly that way of doing it has been described publicly.
"Obvious" means that if a person "skilled in the art" sets out to actually do it, he's likely to come up with that way of doing it as one of his design options. It does NOT mean:
- It's already been done that way.
- That way of doing it has already been described.
There are a number of reasons an "obvious" invention would not be prior art. One of the biggest is that the technology might not have gotten to the point were it's practical to practice such an invention. Another is that the business environment may not yet make use of the invention a good business plan. Once these externalities are resolved and people are set to do the task, the "obvious" inventions are then detail-designed and implemented. Sometimes, once it becomes clear that they WILL be resolved, people begin planning and publishing.
Both of these apply here.
Once these externalities are resolved and people are set to do the task, the "obvious" inventions are then detail-designed and implemented. Sometimes, once it becomes clear that they WILL be resolved, people begin planning and publishing - for instance: in academia, or in standards organizations.
Both of these have happened here.
But if "obvious" is abandoned and "prior art" required, it becomes possible for an alert businessman to lock up the obvious ways of doing things by rushing to the patent office with a flurry of applications for every obvious solution that nobody has happened to have published on or done - often because it's so obvious they thought there was no point in mentioning it.
Think about it: What's "the internet way to build a phone company"?
- Use a stock streaming VoIP protocol to carry calls on the internet.
- Use VOIP/POTS bridge servers at price-convenient locations when you need to contact to a POTS phone (or connect two POTS phones to each other over your IP service).
- Use a database (such as DNS) to translate user identification information to routing information - which includes:
a) Phone number and preferred VoIP/POTS bridge address(es) when the called phone is on the POTS side.
b) Multiple possible sites and the preferred order for trying them (call forwarding)
c) A registration entry made by a portable wireless phone when it associated access point as it moved into range.
- Also use databases to authorize calls and record billing information when calls are made.
Obvious, right? If somebody set you to do this that's what YOU'D do, right?
Well a), b), and c) are what Verizon claimed are their non-obvious inventions - and got the patent office and a lower court to agree and almost KILL Vonage by blocking them from doing anything like it.
(I think they also claimed tying authorization and billing for VoIP or VoIP/POTS bridged calls into database authorization/billing systems, too.)
Obvious DOES mean prior art (Score:1)
The biggest problem with prior art on sla
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Obligatory: (Score:5, Funny)
Vonage addressing the courts about the obviousness of the patents:
Verizon: We object!
Re:Obligatory: (Score:4, Funny)
Vonage: Woo hoo, Woo hoo hoo...
Specifics (Score:1)
Does anyone know enough about the patent who can comment on what specifics Verizon claims is original. As I recall, the idea of "voice over IP" has been around for quite some time, so I wonder what part of this technology Verizon claims is theirs and truly original and protected.
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My understanding: (Score:2)
Based on another article on the topic that I read earlier today, Verizon's patents don't cover VoIP entirely, but they do cover some general schemes for translating IP addresses into phone numbers and vice versa. E.g., a Skype-like
This is great news (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only do I think Vonage will prevail in this case, I also think they should pursue a case against Verizon for anti-trust.
And in other news, Verizon RI lost $9.7 million last year. I had long thought they'd lost at a maximum a third their business but it gets better, 43% of land lines in RI aren't Verizon land lines any longer. So what does Verizon do to counter the loss? They hike rates.
A good anti-trust action would be the kick needed to fracture Verizon into a million little pieces. Then the new at&t had better watch out.
Lets face it, VoIP was and is known as a disruptive technology. Brilliant little idea, use the IP capability built into most telephone switches to take advantage of excess switching capacity. And in the end, disruptive technologies almost ALWAYS win.
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I'm not sure I agree. It depends on what you think Vonage would use as the grounds for an anti-trust suit. If you propose that they claim Verizon is using their position to punish through patent lawsuits, that probably wouldn't work. Vonage depends on the recent Supreme Court ruling to vacate and re-try the case, which means that prior to this ruling, Verizon had a "legitimate" case
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What's your point? Lawyers can't even write intelligible English,
so why should I care that they can't be bothered to keep uo with
conventions that actually happen to be relevant?
USSC could expand to any number of things, and only through context is
it "apparent" what the author meant. USSC also looks a lot like USMC.
(VERA does not have SCOTUS but if you give it USSC it gives you USMC
USSR and USSS)
Q: What do you call a thousand lawye
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A Shame.
What do you call the same bus with two seat empty?
A Crying Shame.
Another lawyer joke. That's orgininal. (Score:2)
Lawyers are just terrible leeches, drains on society - except when you've been accused of something you didn't do, and Big Corp, or the government, or someone with a grudge wants to work you over. Then suddenly a lawyer is your best friend. Ask anyone who has ever been sued or iniated a torts action, or been brought to court on criminal charges.
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Even if they crash at the end of the summer, I'll have only paid $30/mo for a good phone system. I call that a good deal.
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Ok, but what does this mean? (Score:1)
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Seems to me they hit the nail squarely on the head.
so it would be interesting to hear from the legal experts as to what broader ramifications we could expect to see from a Vonage win in a re-trial...
IANAL but it seems to me that SCOTUS just pulled the rug out from under all the bogus "do this well-understood thing but ON THE INTERNET" patents.
Verizon vs. Vonage might be the snowball that starts t
Of course Verizon's patent is original! (Score:2)
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ENUM (Score:2, Informative)
There is a public standard called ENUM that is defined by an IETF RFC and that basically involves the mapping of a Telephone Number (TN) to IP address, which is at the core of the Verizon patent.
ENUM in its public and carrier implementations is basically DNS for VoIP. It resolves TN to IP address, email, IM ID, or other strings that can be used to reach the user. Most if not all ENUM Addressing Servers are built on top of DNS server capabilities.
It's an obvious use of an existing technology. By the sa
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Except in a court of law.
Error! "it's" in the summary (Score:1)
ROUND 2! (Score:2, Funny)
(cue Mortal Kombat theme)
Forget Original! Use "software is not a component" (Score:2)
MICROSOFT CORP. v. AT&T CORP. was. Check this out:
(a) A copy of Windows, not Windows in the abstract, qualifies as a"component" under 271(f). Section 271(f) attaches liability to the supply abroad of the "components of a patented invention, where such components are uncombined in whole or in part, in such manner as to actively induce the combination of su
At the end of the day (Score:2)
1) Any ordinarily skilled person in that area of expertise would, if they set about building a device to do what the patented device does, come up with nearly the same solution you did. In other words, you can't patent sending email over a cellular network, because anyone with email/cellular networking experience would come up with the same system you did (or one substantially similar).
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JPEG, WMV, and most other codecs mostly do minor adaptations to compression techniques that have been around since the 1960s, and as such, should have very few valid patents (despite the huge number of patents that have been granted in these areas).
Codecs are also a good example of when interoperability should trump patentability. IMHO, data formats and the means needed to convert data formats to a standard format should not be protected under any body of intellectual property law (including patents), as
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1) Any ordinarily skilled person in that area of expertise would, if they set about building a device to do what the patented device does, come up with nearly the same solution you did. In other words, you can't patent sending email over a cellular network, because anyone with email/cellular networking experience would come up with the same system you did (or one substantially similar).
I guess my problem with this is: Who makes this decision? This sounds like another boondoggle of "Expert Witnesses." Basically, whoever can come up with the most people that say it either is or is not obvious is the winner. Always remembering of course that EVERYTHING is obvious in hindsight. That objection BTW does not necessary have anything to do with this particular case, but is IMHO a definite potential problem to the "obvious" rule in possible future cases.
Would for example the simple claw hammer c
fuck vonage (Score:1)