Vonage Wins In Appeals Court On Most Charges
Vonage won a reprieve from one court yesterday after losing in a jury trail the day before. On Tuesday, the Holmdel, N.J. VoIP provider was ordered by a jury to pay Sprint Nextel $69.5 million in damages for patent infringement. On Wednesday, federal judges in Washington, D.C., vacated a decision ordering Vonage to pay $58 million in damages to Verizon for similar violations.
Three separate patents were disputed in the Verizon case. A U.S. District Court in Virginia ruled against Vonage and award Verizon $58 million. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined the Virginia court was right to find infringement on two patents, but it said the third had been improperly explained to the jury. The court thus vacated the damage award and the ruling on the third patent, and instructed the lower court to revisit the first two.
“We vacate in its entirety the award of $58,000,000 in damages and the 5.5 percent royalty and remand to the district court for further proceedings. We affirm the injunction as to the ‘574 and ‘711 patents. We vacate the injunction insofar as it pertains to the ‘880 patent,” the appeals court ruled.
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[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptVonage won a reprieve from one court yesterday after losing in a jury trail the day before. On Tuesday, the Holmdel, NJ VoIP provider was ordered by a jury to pay Sprint Nextel $69.5 million in damages for patent infringement. … […]
Pity that this debacle is giving the entire VoIP segment a black eye because there are great companies out there that focused on the technology and not the “sizzle”. Hey, I liked the Vonage commercials as much as the next guy, I only wish they had spent more time and money making sure they had the rights to use the technology they did. I still like the idea of VoIP and finding alternatives is hard because I don’t want to be stranded like many Sunrocket customers were recently. It seems there are good alternatives like Net2Phone and Lingo, but it is really too bad that such a high profile provider will probably set this whole category back in people’s minds.