[asterisk-users] Verizon Vonage 101

[Salvatore Giudice]

They could be suing for patents completely unrelated to VoIP as a
technology. There are cases on the book where people like Katz have been
running around suing contact center operators because he has a patent on
"authenticating yourself to a phone service using a pin number and using
that information to access account records". Contact center operators get
hit by that crap all the time and Katz is a master of letting them operate
for years before he comes banging on their door looking for a check.

With VoIP, the news is always talking about subscriber numbers and industry
growth projection. This is like putting blood in the water. It was only a
matter of time until the guys like Verizon, Katz, etc start pulling their
polished patent infringement weapons out on the naive VoIP operators.

This is just how business is done in America.

You want to see a whacked out patent? Take a look at Katz's patent on
Methods and apparatus for intelligent selection of goods and services in
telephonic and Electronic Commerce. This guy has patents on paying by phone
or web for products using a credit card. There are 267 different methods
this clown has patented and he actively sues companies for using these
methods in common business channels.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6055513&id=VGQEAAAAEBAJ

At my former employer, when VoIP was starting to get hot - they had me apply
for a patent on IP contact center technologies which took a lot of what Katz
had produced and expanded it to VoIP. We did this for purely defensive
disclosure purposes, but there are clowns out there who do this to generate
revenue.


--------------------------------------------------
Salvatore Giudice
Salvatore.Giudice at VoIPSecurityTraining.com

VoIP Security Training, LLC
http://VoIPSecurityTraining.com

848 N. Rainbow Blvd. #1676
Las Vegas, NV 89107
Phone: (702) 979-2906
Fax: (212) 279-2906

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of J. Oquendo
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 11:48 AM
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: [asterisk-users] Verizon Vonage 101

I've dug down as far as I could on www.uspto.gov for
anything remotely close to what is going on with
Verizon and all searches end with only two
possibilities in regards to what is going on.

So unless the patent was issued to someone else and
Verizon bought it, these are the only two possible
patents this case could be based on...

US 7,142,646 B2  	
Voice mail integration with instant messenger

US 7,054,308 B1  	
Method and apparatus for estimating the call grade
of service and offered traffic for voice over
internet protocol calls at a PSTN-IP network gateway

According to Google:

They've listed 118 patents assigned to Verizon
Results 1 - 10 of about 118 from uspto.gov for +"assigned to" +verizon

One dealing with PSTN
Results 1 - 1 of 1 from uspto.gov for +"assigned to" +verizon +pstn

Two matches dealing with VoIP but only one is a
patent. And that is related to the above search
Results 1 - 2 of 2 from uspto.gov for +"assigned to" +verizon voip

Three matches dealing with Voice and IP but only
one is a patent. And that too is related to the
above search
Results 1 - 3 of 3 from uspto.gov for +"assigned to" +verizon "voice" IP

Nine matches dealing with telephone and IP but
only one is a patent. And that too is related
to the above search
Results 1 - 9 of 9 from uspto.gov for +"assigned to" +verizon "telephone"
IP.

One patent related to voicemail
Results 1 - 1 of 1 from uspto.gov for +"assigned to" +verizon voicemail


My thoughts, the voicemail one is broad, and
could be circumvented easily. If I were a juror,
I would laugh but an infringment is an infringement
is an infringement. I would make Vonage stop using
the technology.

The VoIP patent however is a bit more detailed,
and although it can be construed as broad, that
too would make me side with Verizon, but not to
the degree of shutting down Vonage.

On the flip side of things, Vonage is no stranger
to infringing on patents.

Of course, turnabout is fair play, and Klausner
Technologies Inc. filed suit against Vonage for
infringing its patent number 5,572,576, which
concerns the retrieval of VoIP voicemail on a
cell phone or handheld device.
http://www.cedmagazine.com/article/CA6351074.html


-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
J. Oquendo
echo @infiltrated|sed 's/^/sil/g;s/$/.net/g'
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x1383A743

"How a man plays the game shows something of his
character - how he loses shows all" - Mr. Luckey 
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