[asterisk-biz] Verizon v Vonage

[Peter Beckman]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Sergey Kuznetsov wrote:

> I would say that is the Evolution's major stopper, because small
> companies just afraid to develop anything, knowing that someone big can
> have some broad patent.

  I talked to my patent-lawyer wife again tonight about this.  She said that
  The Federal District courts are very general, and there are some 91 courts
  in the US, but only 12 Federal District Court of Appeals.  She said that
  most of the judges that are familiar with patent law sit on the Appelate
  courts.  A loss at the District court probably won't mean Vonage turns us
  all off, they can (and probably plan to) appeal the judgment, in hopes
  that they will get a better, more knowledgable judge in the area of
  patents, overturn Verizon's overly-broad patent, and all will be well in
  the world.

  Additionally, if this patent being upheld means death for DSL, cable, etc,
  it is unlikely that Vonage will be defending themselves without other big
  players who would be put out of business by this patent being upheld.
  There seems to be a lot of concern that this patent will be enforcable,
  and if it does truly mean lots of businesses will lose money or be forced
  to license Verizon technology, and it looks like Vonage is gonna lose or
  run out of money, others will step forward.

  Maybe. :-)

  She also mentioned that it wasn't out of the question for a federal case
  like this to cost $1m/month in legal fees.  Ouch.

Beckman
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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at purplecow.com                             http://www.purplecow.com/
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