This is what Stallman has been saying about software patents for years.
Luis Villa
· 2 years ago
Note that per the court's recent decision in eBay, this may work in Vonage's favor in defeating the proposed injunction in this case. If the option is 'no injunction' or 'make Vonage implement a workaround', then the court is supposed to favor making Vonage implement the work around. If the option is 'no injunction' or 'completely screw Vonage's several million users', the court is supposed to at least take that into consideration when discussing the injunction (though it may not be decisive.)
Doug Lay
· 2 years ago
Luis:
I agree that it's possible the CAFC may overturn the district court injunction and cite Ebay for justification. That's certainly the outcome I hope for. Time is of the essence though - even a few more months of uncertaintly will be enouh to put Vonage out of business.
Of course, this doesn't address the point that granting a broad patent on the very concept of interfacing between two types of network - especially networks as broadly used as the phone network and the Internet - is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumer.
Luis Villa
· 2 years ago
Of course, this doesn't address the point that granting a broad patent on the very concept of interfacing between two types of network - especially networks as broadly used as the phone network and the Internet - is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumer. Of course- this does not help the big picture; if anything, eBay (by taking away a pain point) makes real solutions less likely. But in the small picture, it seems worth noting that this is not necessarily the bad sign for Vonage so many people seem to think it is.
Richard Bennett
· 2 years ago
Tim claims the Verizon patent covers "converting IP addresses to phone numbers." While I haven't read the patent in question, I doubt that it's actually quite that broad, because of prior art and whatnot. It would be interesting to see what the case is really about, without the breathless hyperbole.
Doug Lay
· 2 years ago
Russell Shaw of zdnet did some work abstracting the patents down for us. Decide for yourself:
All Comments
This is what Stallman has been saying about software patents for years.
I agree that it's possible the CAFC may overturn the district court injunction and cite Ebay for justification. That's certainly the outcome I hope for. Time is of the essence though - even a few more months of uncertaintly will be enouh to put Vonage out of business.
Of course, this doesn't address the point that granting a broad patent on the very concept of interfacing between two types of network - especially networks as broadly used as the phone network and the Internet - is anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, and anti-consumer.
Of course- this does not help the big picture; if anything, eBay (by taking away a pain point) makes real solutions less likely. But in the small picture, it seems worth noting that this is not necessarily the bad sign for Vonage so many people seem to think it is.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1517
Just like your resource :).