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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of J. Oquendo Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 11:48 AM To: asterisk-users@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 _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users