The business of Internet, wireless, and telecom law.
More significant than the iPhone (nothing could be that important…) this week there were several events that announced to the general public that fixed mobile convergence is hitting the mainstream. The interesting point is that is not exactly as FMC was anticipated back in 1990. In 1990, PCS “Personal Communication System” was touted as the [...]
Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt’s company, Frontline Wireless, is proposing that one of the requirements of the 700 Mhz auction is to require that certain spectrum be built out by the winner for public safety. GigaOM had a great blog on Frontline last month. I heard Chairman Hundt speak at the Boston TIECON 2007 conference [...]
The upcoming 700 Mhz auction keeps heating politically. This should be a good sign as in the past the voices of wireless commentators without very large company backing were ignored and politicians left the auctions to the expertise of the FCC. This auction is different from prior auctions because a) television stations are aware of [...]
The Football v YouTube action was reported immediately by Reuters on May 4, 2007. In a new twist, the plaintiffs created a web site specifically for the lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the case are England’s soccer club Football Association Premier League Ltd and the Bourne Company, an indie music producer. The suit alleged that YouTube willfully and deliberately encouraged copyright violations [...]
The blog Skype Journal reported that Skype attorneys sent a cease and desist letter to Skype reporting blog, Skype-watch.com Jan Geirnaert had been reporting on and analyzing Skype using the URLs’ Skype-Watch and Skype-Gadgets. The reports were favorable to Skype and Geirnaert apparently participated in Skype panels and conferences for several years as reported by [...]
This is a great quote about “communication” posted by Robert Cannon in Cybertelecom“It is one if the greater ironies of computer history that the vision of the hippies had to be married to the technology funded and fostered by the Pentagon, before the world of integrated information and communication became possible.” Stephen Segaller, NERDS2.0
Om Malik has a great post today about prior art for the VoIP patents. There is also a good Wiki site scratchpad summarizing the claims. One of the papers identified by Om was published on January 13, 1997, describes the process of using a gateway server to translate a VoIP call into a number to be used to [...]
The Court in Verizon v Vonage (see the Feb, 12, 2007 Order) found one of three Verizon patents to be infringed was U.S. Patent No. 6,282,574. Verizon Patent No. 6,282,574, filed on February 24, 2000, provides in Claim 26: “A method comprising: +receiving a name translation request at a server coupled to a public packet data network; +translating a name [...]
The surprising Verizon v Vonage patent order already seems like old news. Most VoIP pundits and VoIP businesses are sitting on the sidelines like England and France did before World War II hoping and smiling and not believing that an aggressor was on the offensive and would soon occupy and destroy most of Europe. (“Peace for [...]
We have entered the time of the VoIP patent wars. Verizon Services Corp. v. Vonage Holdings Corp., No. 1:06-CV-00682 (E.D. Va.) (See, Verizon v Vonage Feb 12, 2007 Order) delivered the first tenative, but not final, results. The positive about this case, according to comments made by Bingham McCutchen telecom patent attorney Ed Pennington at VON [...]
