Technology Liberation Front - Latest Comments in Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

Jonney_dam — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:23:02 -0000

Hi, my name is Jonney, I am from Zaire.
Just like your resource :).

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

dimitris — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:12:43 -0000

I haven't followed the V vs V case closely enough, but does anyone know whether obvious prior art has been brought to the court's attention?

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

Doug Lay — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:45:27 -0000

Russell Shaw of zdnet did some work abstracting the patents down for us. Decide for yourself:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-t...

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

Richard Bennett — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 06:09:07 -0000

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.

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

Luis Villa — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:41:15 -0000

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.

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

Doug Lay — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:29:13 -0000

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.

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

Luis Villa — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:51:38 -0000

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.)

Re: Vonage: We Ain’t Got No Work-arounds

rkillings — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:21:37 -0000

This is what Stallman has been saying about software patents for years.