Vonage Loses Patent Fight

Internetnews.com reports that: "A Virginia federal jury ruled today that Internet phone service Vonage must pay $58 million plus monthly royalties for infringing three patents owned by Verizon Communications. The decision from the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia could permit Verizon to ask that Vonage stop using the disputed technology."

Verizon cited several instances of infringement, including inventions relating to, "gateway interfaces between packet-switched and circuit-switched network, which is critical to implementing commercially-viable VoIP telephony." Other patents named in the suit include solutions for fraud detection, services such as call forwarding and voicemail, and methods relating to the use of wireless handsets over a VoIP network. Piling insult to injury, the complaint....uses information contained in Vonage's own IPO filing to muster many of its arguments. [Internetnews.com]