I don’t understand why Sprint is suing a bunch of folks over VoIP patents. Sprint’s aim in assembling a patent portfolio was primarily to create a bargaining chip that could be used in negotiations with big suppliers. You cross-license your intellectual property in return for ours. This greatly lubricates relationships between the carriers and major suppliers and partners (e.g. IBM).
Licensing revenue has not, generally, been a significant factor. Ability to bleed upstart competitors disintermediating your cash-cow voice business? Hmm, maybe.
There are some cool Sprint patents on how to deploy and operate fibre and wireless networks. There are more cutting-edge technically savvy inside operators than their reputation would suggest. Sprint does some quality stuff over at Sprint Labs. So I would counsel people not to dismiss out of hand that Sprint folks were thinking throuh the challenges of deploying VoIP apps and filing patents well ahead of the curve.
That said, somebody in the legal department must have had one double espresso too many and got over-excited. I can’t see how this lawsuit is worth the PR mess.
How do I know? Seventeen of Sprint’s patent applications have my name on them as sole or joint inventor. None in the space of the current lawsuit, though — mine were mostly around the wireless web and handset features.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:22 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/585.
Nah, just more typical MNO bullshit. Yawn!
Posted by: at October 5, 2005 02:47 PMYour cross licensing comment along with the PR mess that this will create hits the bullseye. Too often Legal does not understand commercial business. Or, maybe after their double espresso they forgot to check with the biz folks. If you were in fact named 'inventor' on some other sprint patent app's, do you know which VoIP patents Sprint is alleging Vonage, et.al infringe? Or, at least where in the PTO archive they can be searched upon?
Posted by: at October 5, 2005 05:18 PMSearching assignee Sprint and packet in the abstract yields an interesting list. However I have no idea if this includes the patents that Sprint is claiming infringement on.
It has not been stated whether or not Sprint offered to license their IP to Vonage and the Globe and were ignored.
I believe the intent of this is to create an IP issue that would reduce the valuation of Vonage. It may also steer it into a relevant patent holding buyers hands where friendly cross-licensing could then take place.
Posted by: at October 5, 2005 06:28 PM
Really cool , you got 7 patents :-)
Martin
It does sound ridiculous but you have to remember that Sprint-Nextel is in close alliance/partnerships with many cable-co's helping them provide their own Voice-over-packet offerings to compete with Vonage. So there may be a shared interest behind the lawsuit. All in all it seems almost frivolous.
Pankaj
Posted by: at October 6, 2005 03:42 PMMartin
It does sound ridiculous but you have to remember that Sprint-Nextel is in close alliance/partnerships with many cable-co's helping them provide their own Voice-over-packet offerings to compete with Vonage. So there may be a shared interest behind the lawsuit. All in all it seems almost frivolous.
Pankaj
Posted by: at October 6, 2005 03:42 PM