I guess we should be grateful that the federal government has magnanimously agreed to suspend shutting Vonage down on appeal of a patent verdict against it. For now, at least, it may escape the $612M damages that were extorted out of BlackBerry. And why did Vonage lose and might be shut down? Because its service is covered by someone else’s patent, which gives them a monopoly on this concept:
1. we patent the idea of interconnecting voice transmission over the internet and over the regular telephone system;
2. to make idea #1 work there will need to be a cross reference table associating telephone numbers and internet addresses so that calls can be routed to the right place.
Ain’t patent law great?
Update: I wonder if Vonage and BlackBerry are celebrating World IP Day today?
