Vonage Violated Sprint Patents, Jury decides
Vonage Holdings Corp., an Internet phone-service provider, infringed six patents owned by competitor Sprint Nextel Corp. and should pay $69.5 million in damages, a jury decided.
Vonage shares fell 66 cents, or 34 percent, to $1.30 at 4:32 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Trading was halted for almost two hours immediately after the verdict.
``Poor Vonage, they can't get a break,'' TeleGeography Inc. analyst Stephan Beckert said. ``I don't think it's any secret that they're not a well company.''
The jury finding today in Kansas City, Kansas, is the second such loss for Vonage this year. After the Holmdel, New Jersey- based company lost a $66 million patent case to Verizon Communications Inc., it said it might be forced into bankruptcy if it lost the use of the technology disputed in that suit.
Besides the damages, Vonage must pay Sprint a 5 percent royalty on future revenue, the jury said today. Vonage will ask the court to throw out the patent-infringement verdict and, if unsuccessful, will appeal the ruling, the company said.
Vonage said it is developing technological workarounds to the disputed patents. The company has also been working on alternatives to New York-based Verizon's patents to avoid paying royalty fees while that ruling is being appealed.
Read more at Bloomberg
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1 comments:
The only winners here are the lawyers because VoIP is a great offer that delivers real value. Pity since it is likely that Vonage will hemorrhage due to the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt). And worse, it will give a black eye to all of the other good providers like Net2Phone and Lingo.
I have Net2Phone and I like them because they seem to have focused primarily on developing technology with a great set of features - rather than throw money at campaigns. After more than 10 years, they are not the Johnny come lately so at least I feel safe with them.
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