Free Newsletter
BREAKING NEWS: Damages vacated on Verizon v. Vonage appeal
Free newsletter via e-mail
Tools
A federal appeals court has vacated the $58 million in damages awarded to Verizon by a lower court that found Vonage guilty of patent infringement.
Three specific patents were at issue in the Verizon case. The three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined the lower court was right to find infringement on two, but it said the third had been improperly explained to the jury. The court thus vacated the damage award and the ruling on the third patent, and instructed the lower court to revisit the first two.
“We vacate in its entirety the award of $58,000,000 in damages and the 5.5 percent royalty and remand to the district court for further proceedings. We affirm the injunction as to the ’574 and ’711 patents. We vacate the injunction insofar as it pertains to the ’880 patent,” the appeals court ruled.
The initial $58 million award was handed down by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Verizon’s favor last March. A federal jury in Kansas City on Tuesday found Vonage in willful violalation of patenst owned by Sprint Nextel, which was awarded $69.5 million in damages.
For more:
- The Verizon appeal decision is here
- The Kansas City Star has the Sprint Nextel verdict here
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | October 2, 2007 - 8:50pm
This headline seems to be very misleading; the damages are simply being remanded to lower court to be adjusted; Vonage still must pay. Why the twist folks?
Posted by Deborah McAdams | October 3, 2007 - 11:20am
Dear Anonymous,
I did not intend the head to be misleading, although certainly it represents a response unvetted by a horse shoe desk of copy editors...
Technically, the order states that the lower court judgment is "vacated:"
"We vacate in its entirety the award of $58,000,000 in damages and the 5.5% royalty and remand to the district court for further proceedings. We affirm the injunction as to the ’574 and ’711 patents. We vacate the injunction insofar as it pertains to the ’880 patent."
You are correct as well that the lower court has been instructed to reconsider its instructions to the jury on the '880 patent and therefore reconsider the damages. This will take further administration and give Jeffrey Citron more time to get his ducks in a row.
You will recall that he had The Company post a $66 million cash-collatoralized bond for damages back in April to get the courts to allow Vonage to keep signing up subscribers after the original Verizon ruling. That the fine could be less is not the worst new for Vonage and Citron.
Vonage stock has taken a beating, as it has from the outset, but it seems to be stabilized. I'm not so sure that Vonage will survive in its current form, but it's still standing nonetheless.
From one perspective, it does seem ill-advised that Vonage went bombastically into business on someone else's patents, but the nerve, noise and marketing are what got them 2 million subscribers. I doubt anyone offers $1 billion for the company as was floated two years ago, but it could still be a value add for Comcast or Verizon, or even a large enterprise platform provider.
- Deborah
Posted by VOIP employee | October 4, 2007 - 3:12pm
As a full time college student working on my CCNA, and a sales rep for Voip. I see two sides to this. Both tell me that Verizon and everyone yelling about what Vonage is doing is simply out of fear. Fear to lose profits, and fear of good competition. Yes a court says vonage violated someone's patent. Whats new? How many times has someone done so to only take something that was crappy and not worth implimenting and made it amazing? Vonage and every other VOIP is doing just that. I dont care who it is. Voip is killing land lines. That is what all the fuss is about. MONEY
Comments (4) | Post a comment