With the settlement of Nortel, Vonage has cleared the list of lawsuits primarily focused on patent infringement. They have been involved in a lawsuits since mid 2006.
Verizon was the first to claim patent infringement. Vonage acknowledged the lawsuit on June 19, 2006. Verizon claimed infringement on 7 patents, but Vonage was ultimately charged with only 3 of them. The lawsuit was grueling and the original settlement was crushing. Appealed by Vonage, a much lighter verdict was later reached allowing the company to push on.
AT&T also sued Vonage for patent infringement. Although not quite as painful a lawsuit, it still took much focus away from current company projects to continue growth. Not long after the settlement of the AT&T suit, Sprint took the opportunity to get in a few punches. Even bankrupted SunRocket tried to sue for issues concerning their abandoned customer list. Nortel was the last suit.
After clearing out all of these lawsuits, the company is ready to move on and has already released several new products and services. Even through all the rough water, Vonage’s customer base has grown considerably, but not quite as much as hoped for.
Vonage chairman Jeffrey Citron stated that the suits were just a successful strategy to slow Vonage down. With all the smoke cleared, Citron says that Vonage will be able to come out with new features and capabilities every few months.
