[Asterisk-biz] Sprint Nextel sueing over VoIP patents

[Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com/]

I don't think its over the ata...  Sprint nextel claimed about 100 patents on voip, scary thought.  If it was the ATA I could see a summary judgement in favor of vonage et al since they don’t make the devices.  I am afraid its more fundamental, and that might be a problem...  For all I know its a codec (g.711 being the most common :(  ) or a generic one that should be tossed like 'anything similar to sip' or 'pstn interconnection' or something that shouldn't have been issued in the first place.

The uspo often issues in the hopes the courts will settle whether it should have been issued in the first place, sometimes to stuff so generic ...  See doubleclicks 96 or so patent (now revoked) for using cookies and embedded images to track users across multiple websites.


-----Original Message-----
    From: "Sergey Kuznetsov"<asterisk_biz at deeptown.org>
    Sent: 10/4/05 6:48:03 PM
    To: "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion"<asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
    Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] Sprint Nextel sueing over VoIP patents
      I found at USPTO patent which is probably is a root of this lawsuit:
    
    * 6,868,081 - they were awarded by ** March 15, 2005
    
    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,868,081.WKU.&OS=PN/6,868,081&RS=PN/6,868,081
    
    *
    Inventors: 	*Akram; Abdul Ghafoor* (Grandview, MO); *Chum; Stanley* 
    (Fremont, CA); *DeNap; Frank Anthony* (Millbrae, CA)
    Assignee: 	*Sprint Communications Company L.P.* (Overland Park, KS)
    Appl. No.: 	* 290855*
    Filed: 	*April 13, 1999*
    
    
    *Abstract*
    
    According to the invention, a method and apparatus are disclosed for 
    providing multiline telephonic and data services */over/* a single 
    access facility. In one embodiment of the present invention, a wall unit 
    is located at a customer premises which terminates a single analog phone 
    line and adaptively encodes using */Voice over Internet Protocol/* 
    technology and multiplexes a plurality of telephonic and data calls 
    */over/* the single analog phone line. A corresponding gateway server 
    (or a plurality of gateway servers), which supports one or a plurality 
    of wall unit calls, is located in the public switched telephone network 
        

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