Vonage Loses Court Challenge Over Payments to a Federal Fund
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An appeals court denied Vonageâs challenge of an F.C.C. rule requiring providers to pay into the Universal Service Fund.
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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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Gold Fields lost its fourth legal challenge to Harmony&#39;s hostile offer yesterday when the US district court for southern New York found no fault with Harmony&#39;s gold reserve reporting and ruled that its offer was not coercive.
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update A federal appeals court has upheld a controversial court decision that said file-sharing software programs such as Grokster or Morpheus are legal.
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SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sept. 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A California Court of Appeal yesterday overruled a lower court decision that had blocked a consumer rights organization from proceeding with a lawsuit against cell phone giant Nextel for unfair billing practices.
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(InfoWorld) - Washington State's highest court on Thursday let a class-action lawsuit alleging overcharging by Cingular Wireless go forward. The state Supreme Court said a clause in Cingular's contract that prevented subscribers from starting class-action suits was unfair and sent the case back to the trial court in King County where it began. The suit was filed in 2004 on behalf of a small number of Washington customers of Cingular Wireless, now part of AT&T Inc. It said the carrier advertised free roaming in areas covered by AT&T Wireless, which was then a separate company, but hit the customers with roaming charges anyway. It also said customers were improperly charged for long distance on some calls, said Douglas Dunham, an attorney representing the plaintiffs. They alleged Cingular had overcharged customers between $1 and $40 per month. The plaintiffs' attempt to start a class-action suit was blocked by a clause in the Cingular customer contract, which said disgruntled subscribers couldn't form or join classes to sue the carrier. As a result, they didn't even get to the stage of finding out how many customers in Washington or nationally may have been affected, Dunham said. Now that they have won on appeal, the plaintiffs will pursue a class action, he said. AT&T is studying the ruling, spokesman Walt Sharp said. The carrier could appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to F. Paul Bland, staff attorney at Public Justice, a public-interest law firm in Washington, D.C., that helped argue the plaintiffs' case. In cases involving small amounts of money, consumers need to be able to pursue class actions, Bland said. "Cingular was trying to write a contract term that would make it impossible for their customers to vindicate their legal rights ... if Cingular cheated them out of small sums of money," Bland said. "Even though Cingular broke its contract and engaged in a bait-and-switch that netted it millions of dollars, almost no individuals would ever be able to take their claims forward and get justice." The decision will make it harder for other companies, such as credit card issuers, to introduce similar bans on class-action suits in Washington, Dunham predicted. In the Cingular case, it will probably take several months to get the class of plaintiffs certified and to gauge damages, he said. The case might not go to trial for two years, he added.
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On 9 November 2004, the FCC declared that VoIP services such as Vonage Holdings&#39; DigitalVoice are not subject to traditional state public utility regulation, and that the FCC alone has jurisdiction here.
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Vonage Holdings Corp  said on  Tuesday that it will appeal a U.S. jury verdict that it  willfully infringed patents belonging to Sprint Nextel Corp   and that it pay $69.5 million in damages.
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Verizon Communications won an appeals court ruling yesterday upholding most of a patent verdict over smaller rival Vonage Holdings, the second legal setback for the Internet phone company in as many days.
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A federal jury yesterday ordered Vonage Holdings to pay Sprint Nextel $69.5 million in damages for violating six of its patents, prompting analysts to question whether the troubled Internet phone company could survive.
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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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Legal fees loom as ImClone loses a patent dispute.
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The state of California is mounting a legal challenge to a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that VOIP phone services sold by Vonage Holdings Corp.
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A federal jury on Thursday found that Internet phone carrier Vonage Holdings Corp. had infringed on Verizon Communications Inc.'s patents and ordered Vonage to pay $58 million.
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Company "delighted" it wasn't more A US District Court jury said Vonage Holdings violated three patents held by Verizon Communications and ordered the VoIP telephony company to pay $58m in damages and annual royalties.â¦
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ALEXANDRIA, Virginia  - A jury dealt a blow to loss-making Internet phone provider Vonage Holdings Corp. on Thursday, ordering the company to pay $58 million plus royalties on future sales for infringing three patents owned by Verizon Communications Inc..
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AT&T claims that Vonage, the internet telephone company, violated a 1996 patent that broadly describe the idea of routing telephone calls over data networks.