Comments for Vonage Wins Verizon Appeal

Vonage Wins Verizon Appeal

2007-09-27T14:44:18Z

Hey, finally some good news for Vonage! According to Fierce VoIP, "A federal appeals court has vacated the $58 million in damages awarded to Verizon by a lower court that found Vonage guilty of patent infringement." In addition, the $58 million dollars in damages was vacated.

Now Vonage isn't out of the woods yet. According to the Fierce VoIP article, 2 out of the 3 patents will have to be revisited by the lower court and don't forget about the $69.5 million to be paid to Sprint Nextel in a court decision reached two days ago. Check out the Fierce VoIP article for more details on this at least temporary win by Vonage.

Comment from JS on 2007-09-27

2007-09-27T23:24:11Z

Great news for vonage :) They seem to be going through a tough financial battle.

Comment from Greg Anliker on 2007-10-05

2007-10-05T23:37:10Z

According to the SEC Form 8-K that Vonage filed on October 1, they are also going to see if they can get the appellate court to throw out the Sprint/Nextel judgment too. (http://ir.vonage.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1193125-07-211060)

But, they really should have talked to their attorneys before they made this statement:

Vonage will ask the court to set aside the [Sprint] verdict, and if it is not granted, will vigorously pursue an appeal of the decision, including the underlying issue of liability and the willfulness aspect. Vonage believes any damages awarded are inappropriate.

(Pay attention here, this is the part where Vonage says "WE ARE GUILTY".)...

In addition, Vonage will seek to develop technological workarounds that don't infringe on Sprin's patents. [ANYMORE...]

LOL

Vonage also says that they have had the workarounds for the two patents that are still in question in the Verizon case for quite a while. I'm not sure if that will make any difference to the final finding, but it may make a big difference in final monetary judgments. The sooner they can say they had those fixes in place, the less time the courts may make them pay Verizon their 5.5% royalty for using their technology.