By Sharla Sikes
Vonage has certainly made a splash with its advertising, and also with its headlines. The former No. 1 independent provider of VoIP services has been named in several patent infringement suits over the year, leading one to wonder: Did it really copy so many patents, or did it merely threaten the big boys more than anyone else? It’s hard to say.
This time, it’s Nortel Networks bringing suit—and turning the tables from earlier this year, when Vonage sued Nortel, alleging that Nortel infringed on three of its patents.
Are you still with me on all this?
That case hasn’t been settled yet. The patents were actually originally acquired by Digital Packet Licensing, which Vonage purchased last year.
Nortel filed last week in U.S. District Court in Delaware, claiming that Vonage infringed upon 12 patents involving click-to-call systems, management and architecture of VoIP systems and call-tracing methods in packet-switched networks.
“Defending our intellectual property rights is a top priority for Nortel,” says Nortel spokesman Sami Asiri. “That is why we are seeking damages and a permanent injunction against Vonage around the use of our technology.”
Earlier this year, Nortel was named by Rates Technology, Inc. in a patent infringement suit.
It’s been a tough year for Vonage too, with lawsuits, financial losses, cutting jobs, outages and the resignation of its CEO Michael Snyder.
Vonage has been sued by AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon over the past year in various patent infringement suits. The company reported a loss in the third quarter of 2007 of more than twice its losses from third quarter 2006–$160.5 million, with a running total for the last three years of more than $500 million.
“We always prefer to settle disputes amicably whenever possible,” Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner told the Associated Press.
The multi-day outage Vonage suffered in December hasn’t helped the company’s failing image.
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