Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

by on April 20, 2007 · 16 comments

In this week’s podcast, James Gattuso asked about the possibility of a Vonage work-around for Verizon’s patents. The Indianapolis Star reports that talk of a workaround was just that:

Vonage has finally confirmed what many had feared: The embattled Internet phone company has no “workaround” in hand to sidestep Verizon’s patented Internet phone technology. Moreover, Vonage isn’t sure that such a plan is even “feasible,” given the expansiveness of Verizon’s patents, which set out methods for passing calls between the Web and conventional phone networks. Vonage’s chilly assessment, contained in a filing submitted to a federal court Friday, marks the first time it has admitted that it doesn’t have a plan for getting around Verizon’s technology. Vonage couldn’t be reached for comment.

Vonage elaborates in a filing with the Federal Circuit:

In its Friday filing, Vonage, which is now trying to get a permanent stay, painted a far different picture. “Vonage currently has no workarounds that moot the need for a stay,” the company said. “While Vonage has studied methods for designing around the patents, removal of the allegedly infringing technology, if even feasible, could take many months to fully study and implement.”

This is more or less what Research in Motion said in early 2006, and they ended up having to fork over $600 million to NTP. The problem is that the “technology” at issue in these cases usually isn’t “technology” at all in the usual sense of the term. It’s a legal monopoly over a broad category of functionality. In the BlackBerry case, it was (more or less) “checking your email with a wireless device.” In this case it’s converting IP addresses to phone numbers. When you think about it in those terms, it’s not even obvious what it would mean to come up with a workaround. Any device that doesn’t infringe the patents in question wouldn’t work.

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

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  • rkillings

    >

    This is what Stallman has been saying about software patents for years.

  • http://tieguy.org/blog/ Luis Villa

    Note that per the court’s recent decision in eBay, this may work in Vonage’s favor in defeating the proposed injunction in this case. If the option is ‘no injunction’ or ‘make Vonage implement a workaround’, then the court is supposed to favor making Vonage implement the work around. If the option is ‘no injunction’ or ‘completely screw Vonage’s several million users’, the court is supposed to at least take that into consideration when discussing the injunction (though it may not be decisive.)

  • rkillings

    >

    This is what Stallman has been saying about software patents for years.

  • http://tieguy.org/blog/ Luis Villa

    Note that per the court’s recent decision in eBay, this may work in Vonage’s favor in defeating the proposed injunction in this case. If the option is ‘no injunction’ or ‘make Vonage implement a workaround’, then the court is supposed to favor making Vonage implement the work around. If the option is ‘no injunction’ or ‘completely screw Vonage’s several million users’, the court is supposed to at least take that into consideration when discussing the injunction (though it may not be decisive.)

  • Doug Lay

    Luis:

    I agree that it’s possible the CAFC may overturn the district court injunction and cite Ebay for justification. That’s certainly the outcome I hope for. Time is of the essence though – even a few more months of uncertaintly will be enouh to put Vonage out of business.

    Of course, this doesn’t address the point that granting a broad patent on the very concept of interfacing between two types of network – especially networks as broadly used as the phone network and the Internet – is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumer.

  • Doug Lay

    Luis:

    I agree that it’s possible the CAFC may overturn the district court injunction and cite Ebay for justification. That’s certainly the outcome I hope for. Time is of the essence though – even a few more months of uncertaintly will be enouh to put Vonage out of business.

    Of course, this doesn’t address the point that granting a broad patent on the very concept of interfacing between two types of network – especially networks as broadly used as the phone network and the Internet – is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumer.

  • http://tieguy.org/blog/ Luis Villa

    Of course, this doesn’t address the point that granting a broad patent on the very concept of interfacing between two types of network – especially networks as broadly used as the phone network and the Internet – is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumer. Of course- this does not help the big picture; if anything, eBay (by taking away a pain point) makes real solutions less likely. But in the small picture, it seems worth noting that this is not necessarily the bad sign for Vonage so many people seem to think it is.

  • http://tieguy.org/blog/ Luis Villa

    Of course, this doesn’t address the point that granting a broad patent on the very concept of interfacing between two types of network – especially networks as broadly used as the phone network and the Internet – is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumer.
    Of course- this does not help the big picture; if anything, eBay (by taking away a pain point) makes real solutions less likely. But in the small picture, it seems worth noting that this is not necessarily the bad sign for Vonage so many people seem to think it is.

  • http://bennett.com/blog Richard Bennett

    Tim claims the Verizon patent covers “converting IP addresses to phone numbers.” While I haven’t read the patent in question, I doubt that it’s actually quite that broad, because of prior art and whatnot. It would be interesting to see what the case is really about, without the breathless hyperbole.

  • http://bennett.com/blog Richard Bennett

    Tim claims the Verizon patent covers “converting IP addresses to phone numbers.” While I haven’t read the patent in question, I doubt that it’s actually quite that broad, because of prior art and whatnot. It would be interesting to see what the case is really about, without the breathless hyperbole.

  • Doug Lay

    Russell Shaw of zdnet did some work abstracting the patents down for us. Decide for yourself:

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1517

  • Doug Lay

    Russell Shaw of zdnet did some work abstracting the patents down for us. Decide for yourself:

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1517

  • dimitris

    I haven’t followed the V vs V case closely enough, but does anyone know whether obvious prior art has been brought to the court’s attention?

  • dimitris

    I haven’t followed the V vs V case closely enough, but does anyone know whether obvious prior art has been brought to the court’s attention?

  • http://edu.za Jonney_dam

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  • http://edu.za Jonney_dam

    Hi, my name is Jonney, I am from Zaire.
    Just like your resource :) .

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