{"id":6114,"date":"2007-11-23T10:06:33","date_gmt":"2007-11-23T10:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/why-verizon-sued-vonage.html"},"modified":"2007-11-23T10:06:33","modified_gmt":"2007-11-23T10:06:33","slug":"why-verizon-sued-vonage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/technology\/why-verizon-sued-vonage.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Verizon Sued Vonage"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">I receive many questions about patents and why one company sues another. Patent portfolios are like nuclear weapons &ndash; if you have them, you are less likely to end up in a war. I was reminded of this idea as I read Ike Elliot&rsquo;s Telecosm blog where he has an entry focusing on why Verizon is <a href=\"http:\/\/ikeelliott.typepad.com\/telecosm\/2007\/11\/why-doesnt-veri.html\">picking on<\/a> smaller companies to sue.<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">Here is an excerpt:<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\">\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">How does a patent holder decide who to target? They usually consider the following:<br \/>\n1. Are we pretty sure the target is infringing our patent?<br \/>\n2. Are we infringing any of the target&#8217;s patents?<br \/>\n3. Can we win a lawsuit if it goes to court?<br \/>\n4. Is it important to maintain positive relations with the target?<br \/>\n5. Is the target a competitor that we would like to impair?<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">This same argument by the way applies to AT&amp;T and Sprint &ndash; both service providers have also sued the pure-play VoIP provider. Vonage is really vulnerable as it has done such an incredible job branding but not defending itself with a patent portfolio.<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\">This should be a lesson to all companies who compete with powerful players and are taking share&hellip; Make sure you have a portfolio of patents to protect yourself or else.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I receive many questions about patents and why one company sues another. Patent portfolios are like nuclear weapons &ndash; if you have them, you are less likely to end up in a war. I was reminded of this idea as I read Ike Elliot&rsquo;s Telecosm blog where he has an entry focusing on why Verizon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,180,172,160,199,1673,118,191,205],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}