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Verizon loses its infringement case against Cox Communications

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia decided against Verizon in its infringement suit against Cox Communications concerning claims within six patents.

Mike Masnick discussed the Vonage/Verizon case in the context of Verizon's loss to Cox:

So, with those patents, Verizon began suing -- and it started with the lame duck in the VoIP space: Vonage. The company has been struggling for a variety of reasons, and a bunch of patent holders swept in to sue the firm that actually made VoIP a viable product in the market. Vonage came under massive pressure from shareholders to get rid of these lawsuits, so it settled rather than deal with a lengthy court room battle.

Not exactly true. Vonage went through and lost a court room battle with Verizon. See for example
KSR decision prompts Vonage to ask CAFC for "vacate and remand"

Separately, one commenter named Iggy criticized a technical aspect of the Masnick post:

Verizon has been offering VoIP longer than most people know. They've been migrating their voice network to a VoIP network for years to lower THEIR costs, but they keep the access consistent so the subscriber doesn't know. A lot of Verizon landline customers are running on a VoIP infrastructure and they don't even know it. The strategy is to increase margin without doing anything that might lead the customer to expect a lower price.

The more recent VoIP-to-the-edge service that you refer to is a more recent add-on to Verizon's VoIP core. And I agree, it's weak. Verizon is one of the better operators at running an efficient and pretty bullet-proof network, but they're pretty much out of touch with most of their customer base. They're definitely a network for old people and other technical illiterates. Verizon FiOS broadband (NOT TV) is a bright spot, but that's more of an effective network attribute than a consumer service.

Masnick, forever clueless.

Full post as published by IPBiz on October 07, 2008 (boomark / email).