[asterisk-biz] Verizon v Vonage

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On 2/21/07, Sergey Kuznetsov <asterisk_biz at deeptown.org> wrote:
>
> That's easy!
>
> Dan Ravicher of Public Patent Foundation (pubpat.org) does that.



In reality that only solves the minor half of the problem. The biggest thing
america needs in this particular arena is tort reform.  If the loser has to
pay the winners court costs, then you would *dramatically* see the number of
frivolous cases (including bogus patent suits) drop.  There will always be
crackpots with more money than sense filing stupid cases, but this would
make people think twice before filing.

The way it stands now people can file stupid suits against you, you can win
every one (and unless you won on summary dismissal its hard to counter sue
for court costs, although not impossible) and you sitll file bankrupcy.  See
the cult awareness network vs 20 'random' church of scientology members
where those people paid $200 to sue, lost every case, but CAN spent about
$1M defending itself.  The church of scientology bought CAN out of bankrupcy
right after the suits were over.  Amazing how CoS is no longer listed as a
cult by them.

Patent reform does need ot happen, but tort reform is much more important.
Who has a big hand in drafting laws?  Lawyers.  Who profits the most from
stupid insane lawsuits?  ...  Coincidence that lawyers are very opposed to
tort reform saying it will prevent people from ever filing with cause?

Tort reform would solve most of the patent problems, if a company refuses to
sue because their patent is bogus (j2's patent on fax2email is based on
someone elses patent which is based on j2s press release, RTI in NY has a
patent on LCR which is bogus due to 10 years of prior art, sprint claims
over 100 patents (and sued vonage as well), verizon claims 85 or so patents,
the list goes on).

It costs $1-2M minimum to fight a patent case on average, RTI charges $20k
licensing fees, and has gotten vonage (after an initial pre-ipo fight then
when the sprint case came up vonage settled), cisco, lucent, and many others
to settle because its cheaper, google called shenanigans on it and grabbed
their brooms, RTI filed for $6B, case is pending.  J2 charges $1 or so per
customer for fax2email.  Unless you have millions of customers its just not
worth it.

Sprint and verizon appear to only go after bigger companies that actually
have money.  They dont have to stop there, they can try to squelch anyone
that poses enough of a threat before they get big enough to actually defend
themselves...

If tort reform happens, then companies run the risk of losing their patent
AND paying for the defense on the people they tried to extort.  That will
certainly stop a lot of people, especially since you might get a better
defense if you have a real case against the bogus patent.

It has been the policy of the USPTO to issue the patent, without regard for
its validity and let the courts decide the matter later on, this has gone on
for at least 15 years, maybe more.  This certainly needs to change, I dont
want to sound like I am minimizing patent reform, I just see it as the
lesser issue in the whole process.

-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
Belfast +44 28 9099 6461        US +1 516 687 5200
http://www.trxtel.com the VoIP provider that pays you!
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