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January 24, 2008

Verizon has now turned its patent guns toward fixed VoIP services. First Target: Cox

On January 11th in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Verizon filed suit alleging Cox cable infringes eight VoIP related patents. The Verizon suit is available here.

Verizon seeks unspecified monetary damages and wants Cox blocked from using the patents in the future.

Below is a list of the specific patents and links to the actual patent. Four of the eight patents are ones that Verizon alleged Vonage had infringed. A federal appeals court affirmed Vonage infringed two of Verizon's patents. In October of last year, Vonage agreed to pay Verizon up to US$120 million.

This case against Cox is significant because rather than seeking the same win it got from Vonage from other similarly situated companies, Verizon is now seeking to expand the breadth of its winning patent portfolio to fixed VoIP. To the extent that Verizon wins here, this could have broad implications for other fixed services using DOCSIS (as Cox and the rest of the cable industry generally use), presumably other fixed VoIP that doesn’t use DOCSIS, and depending on which if any patents are upheld – to VoIP billing systems, routing systems, network management, and other technologies. So while this is the first major suit against a fixed VoIP services, my quick read of the patents suggests that only in a few cases (like the 930 patent) are the patents limited to fixed functionality. Among analysts, there is still speculation as to why Verizon chose to go after Cox cable instead of a cable company like Comcast who presumably uses the same technology, shares a greater competition footprint, and has a larger number of customers.

The patents Verizon says Cox is infringing upon:

U.S. Patent No. 6,970,930 available here (not in Vonage case) Method and system of providing differentiated services

U.S. Patent No. 6,104,711 available here (Vonage was found to have infringed) Enhanced Internet domain name server to translate information from a public, packet-based network

U.S. Patent No. 6,430,275 available here (Vonage found not to have infringed) Enhanced signaling for terminating resource

U.S. Patent No. 6,137,869 available here (Vonage found not to have infringed) Network session management

U.S. Patent No. 6,282,574 available here (Vonage was found to have infringed) Method, server and telecommunications system for name translation on a conditional basis and/or to a telephone number

U.S. Patent No. 6,335,927 available here (not in Vonage case) Multi-protocol telecommunications routing optimization

U.S. Patent No. 6,292,481 available here (not in Vonage case) Inter-carrier signaling and usage accounting architecture for internet telephony

U.S. Patent No. 6,636,597 available here (not in Vonage case) Method of and system for providing services in a communications network

It's no secret that consumers are quickly turning to Internet voice services because they are exciting, innovative and often do things never before possible with traditional PSTN phones. It's just disappointing that rather than trying to win over consumers, companies have tried to win over judges. As TeleGeography notes as Vonage's growth has slowed, "US VoIP subscriber growth is falling well behind the blistering pace set by European VoIP service providers." It means that "by 2011, VoIP penetration in Europe will be approximately twice as great as in the US." One of the key differences as TeleGeography points out is that in Europe, incumbent service providers have had to compete against VoIP providers and now themselves account for 26% of VoIP subscribers, while in the US incumbents have remained largely on the sidelines in terms of VoIP.

At the dawn of a new era, we should be trying to lead the world in broadband based communication technologies and putting new ideas into action for consumers. It would be a shame if because of policy and patents, that America lost its leadership in a key enabling technology because we argued more over who invented which aspect rather than how we advance it.

We can and should do better.

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Posted by jeff on January 24, 2008 09:27 AM | Permalink

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Comments

Posted by: injection molding at June 18, 2009 10:18 AM

They're going after Cox because they have a better chance of getting Cox to settle. Cox doesn't have as many VoIP subcribers as Comcast. It's also not as large a part of their revenue as it is for Comcast, so they don't have as much money to defend themselves, nor do they have as much desire to drag out a patent proceeding for a long time as there's less to defend.

Cox is a logical choice BEFORE going after Comcast. If Cox settles, the precedent will be set and make the Comcast suit far easier to win.

Posted by: Neil Fusillo at January 28, 2008 03:46 PM

If all these patents are enforced majority of the VoIP providers might go belly up.

Posted by: dollarman7 at January 24, 2008 09:41 PM

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