Verizon screws Vonage

Judge Claude Hilton issued a permanent injunction against Vonage with the purpose of disallowing their customers to make calls to standard phone lines. The argument is that Vonage is infringing on patents held by Verizon.

This could have permanent and serious consequences for VoIP, since nearly every VoIP service uses the technology that Verizon claims as their own (ie: VoIP to POTS).

IMO, this whole thing is baseless. Other companies were using the technology in question before Verizon patented it, and the whole case was just decided by which side had more money to throw at it. It’s just yet another case of a rich corporation crushing innovation in order to retain their relevance in an evolving market.