A US District Court judge in Virginia has stunned the VOIP market by issuing a permanent injunction against Vonage barring it from basing its service on three of five patents owned by Verizon. The permanent injunction was issued on Vonage using the technology to connect users to landline phones. However, the judge agreed to put off the effective date of the injunction for two weeks while considering a request by Vonage for a stay pending what could be a lengthy appeal. Vonage was also ordered to pay $58m ($30m) to Verizon for infringing three patents, as well as royalties on future sales.
The decision would naturally compel Vonage to close or to install new systems. Nevertheless, in an official communique issued after the ruling, Vonage reassured its customers that service would continue, uninterrupted, while the company worked its way through the appeals process. The firm has further said that in case if it loses that round, it vows to go to the Federal Court of Appeals.
In the mean time, speculations have started taking rounds that Vonage simply vanished from the scene in no time, which seems to be a bit overstated. But following the belief that the firm’s days are numbered seems to a little appropriate.
Vonage in its defense has maintained that even though it owns no patents of its own, it did not violate any intellectual property in building its business. In its place, the company says it banked on open industry standards available for free to anyone out there who wants to innovate with them.
In Verizon’s original complaint, the company has asserted that Vonage had signed up 1.1 million new subscribers in the 15 months leading up to the patent infringement filing. The firm further claimed that many of them are Verizon’s former customers. Verizon also emphasized that Vonage had signed up around 350,000 new customers in the first quarter of last financial year, and had spent $400 million on advertising and marketing so far.
