Nortel and Vonage Settle Patent Lawsuit
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The companies say the settlement involves a âlimited cross licenseâ to three Nortel and three Vonage patents, and will not call for any monetary payments by either company.
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Battered and bruised from its patent fights with Sprint and Verizon over technologies used in its VoIP service, Vonage disclosed Friday that it has also been sued by AT&T.
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ALEXANDRIA, Virginia  - A federal jury on Thursday found that Vonage Holdings Corp. , an Internet phone service, infringed on three key patents owned by Verizon Communications Inc.
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Troubled VoIP service provider Vonage is rolling out new products and services at the Consumer Electronics Show in a bid to reverse its downward spiral.Intellectual property lawsuits brought by Nortel, Verizon, Sprint, and AT&amp;T have distracted Vonage for the past year. During that time, customer acquisition slowed, and defections grew to 3 percent in the third quarter last year.But Vonage says it is ready to turn a corner. The suits were a weapon that the phone companies used to defend their businesses in the face of competition from Vonage, said Jeffrey Citron, chairman, chief strategist and interim CEO at Vonage. &quot;It was a successful strategy. It distracted us and slowed us down,&quot; he said. &quot;Instead of rolling out MyVonage six months ago, we were dealing with workarounds.&quot; MyVonage is the name of a new campaign at the company to introduce a host of services geared toward customer lifestyles.While the lawsuits were ongoing, the company was developing workaround technology that would allow its business to move forward without infringing on the relevant patents. Vonage has now settled all four major lawsuits against it.That has left Vonage free to spend more time focusing on its business, said Citron. It hired new engineers who designed a router, the first time Vonage will sell its own router rather than one from Cisco or Motorola.The router has an unusual feature: a screen. It displays information about problems that the modem might have in plain language. For instance, rather than showing a flashing light like most routers, this one displays words telling users that the Ethernet cable is unplugged.New customers will be able to buy the V-Portal router online starting Wednesday for $9.99 after rebates.In addition to the new router, Vonage is beginning to roll out many new features that it is showcasing at alpha.vonage.com. For instance, customers can now use voice-activated dialing, simply speaking a name to place a call. Customers can also send a voice message to anyone via e-mail. The message arrives as an attached audio file.Call blast is a new feature that lets customers send out a voice mail simultaneously to a group of people. Citron anticipates that will be useful when he&#39;s in charge of calling 15 kids who go to school with his kids to tell them there is a snow day.&quot;We expect to roll out a new capability every month or two,&quot; Citron said.Vonage also plans to offer another service that lets users access the voice recognition system from any phone to make a call through Vonage. The company is also testing software that would let customers make Vonage calls via software on their laptops.Many of these services are free to Vonage customers.Citron said that the future for Vonage will be brighter. Despite continued high churn, last quarter it had a gain of 77,000 customers, which he says isn&#39;t as good as it should be. The company has worked to cut costs, and improvements in customer service should help decrease customer losses, he said.In the meantime, speculation continues to circle that the payouts Vonage made to settle the lawsuits will cripple it. But Citron was confident that the company&#39;s troubles are behind it.
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Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple Inc. said yesterday they have settled the trademark-infringement lawsuit that threatened to derail Apple's use of the "iPhone" name for its new iPod-cellular phone gadget.
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A federal court ruled that VoIP provider Vonage Holdings Corp. infringed on patents owned by Sprint Nextel Corp.
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An appeals court agreed that Vonage infringed on two Verizon patents but sent the case for retrial regarding a third patent.
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'You might get $120m. You might get less' Vonage has settled its legal tete-a-tete with Verizon, agreeing to pay the telcom giant somewhere between $80m and $120m. Final terms of the deal depend on one last ruling from the US Court of Appeals.â¦
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A jury ordered Internet phone provider Vonage Holdings Corp. to pay $58 million for infringing on three patents owned by Verizon Communications Inc.
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A U.S. jury found that Vonage Holdings  Corp  had infringed patents owned by Sprint Nextel Corp   and ordered the Internet phone company to pay $69.5  million in damages, triggering a 34 percent fall in its shares.
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Annus horribilis ends with Nortel agreement Vonage and Nortel have agreed to settle their patent differences with an exchange of licenses, and no money changing hands, ending a year of litigation for Vonage and clearing the decks before 2008.â¦
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Shortly after being ordered to pay $58 million to Verizon in a patent suit, voice-over-the-internet phone service Vonage has now been ordered to pay $69.5 million to Sprint Nextel.
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Shares of Vonage, the Internet telephone provider, rose sharply after it announced it had settled a patent dispute with Verizon and would have to pay a maximum of $120 million.
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(InfoWorld) - Vonage is downplaying an appeals court decision affirming an earlier verdict of patent infringement on two patents owned by Verizon Communications. The decision, made Wednesday, calls for the U.S. District Court in Virginia to retry the infringement judgment on a third patent. It also vacated the original $58 million in damages and 5.5 percent royalty imposed in the original judgment. The lower court will reconsider the size of the damage award and Vonage expects it to be reduced, said Charlie Sahner, a Vonage spokesman. In addition, Vonage expects a return soon of part of the cash it put up as bond after the ruling was made, he said. The decision comes a day after Vonage lost anotherÂ high-profile patent infringement case brought by Sprint-Nextel. The jury in that case awarded Sprint $69.5 million in damages. Vonage vowed to appeal that decision too. Vonage has already deployed technology so that it doesn't require the two patents upheld in theÂ Verizon case, it said. That means that if the lower court upholds the decision to require Vonage to pay royalties for using the patents, the company will only have to do so related to the period of time before the workaround was implemented, Sahner said. The company maintains that it did not infringe on the remaining Verizon patent in question and plans to defend itself against any new damages judgments. That technology applies to less than 10 percent of Vonage's network, and the company has already completed development of a workaround should the court decide that Vonage infringes on the patent, Sahner said. Vonage is the largest independent VoIP provider in the United States. While it continues to assure customers that the service remains reliable throughout the legal wranglings, the company has seen a decline in new customers. In its second quarter this year, Vonage added 57,000 customer lines, compared with 256,000 in the same quarter in the previous year. Still, Sahner emphasized that the future is bright for Vonage. The company has the cash to pay for the Sprint case, if it fails in appeal, Sahner said. "Vonage is here to stay," he said. "We want to be an alternative to the entrenched phone company and think it's important to have an alternative." This story was updated on September 26, 2007
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Digital phone service Vonage   said on Friday it has settled a patent dispute with AT&T .
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Companies say they have "resolved" dispute over three voice over Internet protocol patents. Precise amount of settlement depends on whether appeals court agrees to review case.
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Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple Inc. said Wednesday they have settled the trademark-infringement lawsuit that threatened to derail Apple's use of the "iPhone" name for its much-hyped new iPod-cellular phone gadget.