Vonage has settled its pending patent dispute with Sprint Communications and entered into a licensing arrangement under Sprint’s Voice over Packet (“VOP”) patent portfolio. The parties have entered into an agreement to resolve this patent dispute as well as entered into a business relationship. In addition, Sprint has agreed to license Vonage its VOP portfolio.
The agreement is valued at $80 million, including $35 million for past use of license, $40 million for a fully paid future license, and $5 million in prepayment for services. On September 25, 2007, a Kansas jury handed down a verdict finding that Vonage had infringed six Sprint patents.
“We are pleased to resolve our dispute with Sprint and enter into a productive future relationship,” said Sharon O’Leary, General Counsel for Vonage. “We believe this deal is good news for Vonage, our customers and our shareholders. It allows us to put this litigation behind us and continue to focus on our core business by removing the uncertainty of legal reviews and long term court action.”
Originally posted on October 8, 2007 @ 9:39 am
Pity that this debacle is giving the entire VoIP segment a black eye because there are great companies out there that focused on the technology and not the “sizzleâ€. Hey, I liked the Vonage commercials as much as the next guy, I only wish they had spent more time and money making sure they had the rights to use the technology they did. I still like the idea of VoIP and finding alternatives is hard because I don’t want to be stranded like many Sunrocket customers were recently. It seems there are good alternatives like Net2Phone and Lingo, but it is really too bad that such a high profile provider will probably set this whole category back in people’s minds.
i read some artices that the other country are blocking the voip…
voip is one of the nice way to communicate easily and affordable to us… hmmmmm its unfair that they are blocking the voip how sad….
have a great day!