Vonage has been saying Verizon’s patent claims are overly broad for some time, but now people have dug up some prior art.

One of the patents Verizon is complaining about is #6,104,711, what they call an “enhanced internet domain name server.”

In short, it’s all about linking phone numbers to IP numbers, and Jeff Pulver says he was doing that in 1995 with Free World Dialup, an early, noncommercial VoIP service.

Even better, Pulver published his work. The Internet Telephone Toolkit came out in January 1996, and a presentation that drew additional attention:

In November 1996, I gave a presentation to the VoIP Forum in Dallas. The meeting included participation from Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia, Motorola, and Vocaltec for the purpose of making [features of my work] the basis for a VoIP open standard. How do these companies feel about the Verizon’s assertion it owns the idea of name translation? How did Verizon accomplish this when the notion of name translation in H.323 traces back to the original ITU working group in 1993?

GigaOM » Doubts raised over Verizon VoIP patents

Tier 1 Research analyst Daniel Berninger agrees, noting the founding work done by Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel, Intel, Motorola, Lucent, Vocaltec Communications, and other members of the VoIP forum is disclosed in Verizon’s later patent claims.

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Vonage will be in court again tomorrow defending itself against Verizon’s claims of patent infringement. The innovative VoIP company had lost the trial and was ordered to pay $58 Million in damages in early March, when a jury found them to have violated thee of seven related patents held by Verizon. Vonage appealed of course, but it’s uncertain if the company, which has yet to turn a profit, has the stamina for a drawn out battle. The company’s annual 10-K filing painted a stark picture of the challenges Vonage faces (NPR coverage).

The best news for Vonage so far came on April 6, when an appeals court temporarily lifted the injunction that would have forced them to cease operations. And tomorrow the company will face an appeals court in a case that could make or break the company.

I’m among those that’s been saying patent law is broken, and cases like this are a perfect illustration of how laws that were meant to encourage innovation are instead used to protect the establishment. (Take a look at Article I Section 8, where it speaks of promoting “the progress of science and useful arts.”)

The Software Freedom Law Center’s Eben Moglen says Verizon filed for the patents in 1997 specifically so that it could use them as ammunition against the then developing but not commercialized VoIP technology.

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Jason O’Grady introduced me to the Skype-like Gizmo Project by the folks over at SIPphone.

I’ve been a Vonage customer for a couple years now, so I’ve had a chance to get familiar with VoIP, and I’m looking for a good Bluetooth headset so I can try Gizmo and Skype (and others), but I got to wondering what more I could do.

Asterisk is an open source PBX application that runs on Linux, MacOS X, and others. The features include voicemail, voicemail to email, conference calling, call recording, music on hold, and a lot more. The OS X port is by Sunrise Telephone Systems Ltd, and it looks like they did a good job with it — they claim a packaged ten second install.

Ten second install or not, the complexity with a PBX is in the configuration. That’s where VoIP-Info.org comes in. They’ve got deets on how to route calls to route calls to VoIP systems like Skype and Gizmo and lists of VoIP service providers so you can make outgoing calls to the PSTN.

Even with the help at VoIP-Info, this looks complex. So I was happy to find this how-to titled Replacing SkypeOut with Asterisk and a softphone. It looks like a pretty good cookbook, though I have to admit I haven’t tried any of it.

It all looks interesting…very interesting. If you get excited about phone systems.

tags: asterisk, gizmo, gizmo project, pbx, sipphone, skype out, skype, open source, voip, voip providers, voip systems, vonage

Engadget’s interview with Jeffrey Citron, chairman and CEO of Vonage gives an interesting peak into the world of the baby bells, through the eyes of an upstart. Citron dishes about the competition, stomping AT&T, working deals with the bells to make 911 services work, and a possible Palm version of their softphone.
Most interestingly is his notions about what their customers want and expect.

…more and more people are deciding that they don’t even want a land line in the house…?

That trend is very misunderstood. That isn’t a trend. [...] When you own your own house, you don’t want the plumber calling you to schedule an appointment when you’re in the middle of this interview right now. You want that call to go to your house and a message left on your voice mail.

But there’s no denying that an increasing number of people…?

Yes, but those habits will change. Young people today don’t do the things that married people do. They don’t do the things that homeowners do.

In shortening the quote I cut the part where Citron makes it clear that these folks aren’t giving up their cell phones, they’re using both. But it’s a good point, and an interesting counter to the standard message of “the world is changing and your teenager is leading the way.” The question, however, is whether this cycle is true for other social/tech issues. Will the research habits that a student develops today change later in life? Will they give up their iPods?

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