The Jeff Pulver Blog: So...Did Sprint Nextel also Invent SIP?

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October 04, 2005

So...Did Sprint Nextel also Invent SIP?

It must have been a slow week for the Intellectual Property attorneys at Sprint Nextel Corp.

Earlier today they filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Vonage and Voiceglo, alleging these companies infringed seven of their VoIP related patents.

I have to wonder why Sprint Nextel would single out just Vonage and Voiceglo.

And I have to believe that even if Sprint Nextel can prove some kind of far-fetched patent violation, there should be plenty of “prior art” that would pre-date any of the Sprint Nextel claims from 2001. For the record, it has been over twenty years after voice was first sent over the ARPANet.

From what I remember, Vonage built their service around various SIP RFCs. Does this mean that Sprint Nextel thinks they invented SIP? I wonder who will be next in Sprint Nextel lawsuit parade.

When I read about this lawsuit, the first thing that came to mind were the claims that BT once made asserting that they owned the patent on hypertext links, a claim that they eventually lost.

I have to believe this is a lawsuit with even less merit.

Tags: voip, sip, vonage

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Posted by jeff on October 4, 2005 10:56 PM | Permalink

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As for the lady with the collections. I don't buy it. In order to go to collections it has to be 120+ past due. So....you waited that long to clear it up? Before the merger, by the way, Nextel had one of the highest customer srvice rankings with JD Powers. Maybe you should try paying your bill, or opening a dispute. I left Verizon 5 years ago and went to Nextel. I've never expierence such good service and knowledgeable reps.

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Posted by: pol at April 5, 2006 08:29 AM

These don't look like submarine patents, which are more typically in the application stage for much longer periods of time - this practice was limited by the USPTO making the duration of patents limited from the date of filing rather than of grant.

Also the comment about companies keeping patent applications is a little off-base - within the US a company that encourages a standards committee to use technology with an associated patent application and fails to disclose the existence of the application can get into serious trouble. There was a case of this in the early 90's and the company concerned had their right to collect royalties on their patent revoked by the US government.

Whatever the motivation for Sprint-Nextel filing this suit, it is hard to see what technical grounds could reasonably exist. Not only has packet voice been in existence since the early 1970's but there were many other similar analog-digital telephone systems (e.g. ISDN) that required residential gateway like functionality (e.g. ISDN TA's) and mapping from DTMF signaling to common channel (Q.931).

In my view it is acceptable to develop a patent portfolio to protect investment made in R&D however I think that companies have a duty to consider the impact of legal action on the industry, and to act responsibly in their pursuit of IPR protection. Broadly based lawsuits based on the use of VoIP technology by service providers could shake investor confidence in VoIP and stifle the entrepreneurial character of the emerging VoIP industry.

Alan

Posted by: Alan Clark at October 5, 2005 09:32 PM

Where these "submarine" patents? The U.S. patent office allows, by request, that patent applications to be kept secret for 18 months. This is intended to allow startups with little funding to get more funding and start to produce a product with their technology before announing it to the world.

So called "submarine" patents are those filed by companies and kept secret while they sit on open standards committies. They then steer the comittie to accept a standard that infringes on their patents, sit back, wait for the patent approval and collect big bucks on licensing fees.

I don't know the resolution of this, if any yet, but IBM did it (unintentionaly?) with RFID. The same scientists who developed RFID technology for IBM, were the prime movers behind the open RFID
standards. They used their knowledge and experience to produce what was in their opinion the best technology.

Maybe Sprint Nextel did the same thing? Or possibly the people involved worked for a small company that Sprint Nextel aquired?

Geoff.

Posted by: Geoff Mendelson at October 5, 2005 03:53 AM

October 04, 2005

So...Did Sprint Nextel also Invent SIP?

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