Rich Tehrani writes a great story with some historical context on how
Verizon lost a VoIP patent case (on all 6 patent counts) to Cox Communications. Unfortunately, a bit too late for
Vonage which paid millions to settle their patent case with Verizon.
Really though the large telcos are the winners here and consumers are the losers. The US patent system continues to be a barrier to true innovation and consumers are being hurt -- severely so in some cases -- by large companies who use the patent system to prevent other companies from succeeding. Instead of competing with better technology alone, these large companies use large amounts of patents at once to scare new entrants into submission. Hopefully, in the IP communications space, Cox Communications will mark a point in time when large companies slow down their IP communications patent infringement onslaught.
Check out
the full story.
Technorati
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Digg
twitter
Leave a comment