The business of Internet, wireless, and telecom law.

Strategy for Protecting Intellectual Property in the New IMS World: Trade Secret or Patent?

Posted by Barlow Keener

For this post on IMS and FMC developers’ intellectual property, I collaborated with my friend, Michael Dowd, a partner at Foley, Hoag, LLP, in Boston.  I provide counsel on licensing patents and trademarks, and Michael’s practice involves developing patenting strategies and resolving inventorship issues, software licensing disputes and trade secret misappropriation claims.  As we explain below, these are intellectual [...]

VoIP Process of Translating Calls Arguably Obvious

Posted by Barlow Keener

Although reported today by the New York Times  as a “Setback” for Verizon v Vonage, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal District denied in its May 3, 2007 order Vonage’s May 1, 2007 motion for a new trial based on the recent April 30, 2007 Supreme Court opinion in KSR v. Teleflex.   KSR [...]

VoIP Patents – Light at the End of the Tunnel

Posted by Barlow Keener

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 [...]

VoIP Prior Art

Posted by Barlow Keener

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 VoIP Wars Part II

Posted by Barlow Keener

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 [...]