Judge: no new customers for Vonage

Ouch, this one's gotta sting a little: after Verizon won an injunction against Vonage for copyright infringement, today US District Judge Claude Hilton has imposed an immediate stay on the VoIP provider's business, disallowing them from adding new customers. Like, seriously, you they aren't allowed to sign anyone up. Vonage will still continue providing service to those customers it currently has; it's obviously planning to immediately appeal the decision, however Judge Hilton also managed to tack on a $66 million appeal bond, which doesn't exactly sweeten their deal at all. Things are definitely not looking good for those guys; we'll keep ya updated. [Warning: subscription req'd for link.]

Update: We just called Vonage, and their end-user sales reps haven't gotten the memo yet. In other words, if you wanted to jump on Vonage service, today may be your last day to, at least for a while. (If you're really lucky, you might be able to get a rep to rattle off their official memo on the Verizon case, which accuses them of "stifling their competition by using US courts." Very good stuff.)

Update 2: The stranglehold decision made earlier today to stay Vonage and cut off its new customer signups has already been itself stayed, meaning the VoIP phone service provider can continue signing up new customers. (This news came this evening, well after our call into Vonage where a clueless rep hadn't even yet gotten the memo to stop signing up new users.) The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals will consider Vonage's appeal of the injunction and customer-signup stay set forth by Judge Hilton; looks like this one's only going to get more messy, but thew takeaway is pretty straightforward: if you want to sign up for Vonage, you've still got a window of opportunity, so get in now before even more mad legal drama goes down.

[Nick @ Apr 6th 2007 11:58AM]

Patent infringement NOT Copyright infringment... The article is barely longer than your write up and you still managed to mess it up.

[Bryan Flocks @ Apr 6th 2007 12:01PM]

Proofread, then post.

Rinse and repeat.

[nojok3 @ Apr 6th 2007 1:15PM]

I was thinking same thing...

[Anthony @ Apr 6th 2007 12:05PM]

In my mind Verizon have lawyers in a room saying something to the effect of:

"We can't think of any good ideas, but here are companies that have: X,Y,Z. Now, let's look & see if we can shut them down based on patents we own but don't really know how to utilize properly."

Everyone knows Vonage. No one knows "VoiceWing".

[The Aggie CEO™ @ Apr 6th 2007 12:18PM]

Damn.........

and I was planning on getting Vonage next month.......lol.......

I currently have Digital Phone Thru Time Warner, but its $39/month.......I was gonna get Vonage because from what I understood I could get more extras for the same price.........well there goes that........

[Frankenstein Black @ Apr 6th 2007 12:18PM]

About 15 minutes ago I disconnected Verizon (Local and LD) and went with a cable VOIP provider. Wonder what would happen if others did the same? Exactly!!

P.S. Verizon, first you make it a habit of gimping cell phones (Bluetooth, etc.) and now this crap? Who needs you? PEACE OUT!!

[andy @ Apr 6th 2007 12:18PM]

This judge is really overdoing it according to a few recent decisions. (see Ebay v. Merc Exchange) A permanent injunction is not supossed to be as easy to get anymore, and even so, the injunction preventing Vonage from signing up additional customers is clearly out of bounds. You can only order them to stop practicing the patented invention. This does NOT preserve the status quo pending appeal. Very interesting case.

[xman @ Apr 6th 2007 12:27PM]

This judge must not want to advance his/her career! What a silly move! This case is looking more and more impartial. How will signing up new customers hurt verizon for this particular patent infringement case???

[LC @ Apr 6th 2007 4:51PM]

"This judge must not want to advance his/her career! What a silly move! This case is looking more and more impartial. How will signing up new customers hurt verizon for this particular patent infringement case???"

Umm Xman I think you would want a judge to rule based on the law and not based on his career ambitions. Also, you would want the case to be impartial. That's a good thing.

[Dan S @ Apr 6th 2007 12:47PM]

Unsurprisingly, Judge Hilton - a Reagan appointee - is due for retirement in May, pending his replacement's confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Hilton is also a soon-to-be-former member of the secretive 11-judge FISA court.

Hilton's Eastern District of Virginia is known as "The Rocket Docket" for the ultra-conservative rulings and speedy decisions that rarely find in favor of defendants. It's been the favorite venue of the Bush Administration for terrorism cases, as the Government's case is a sure bet to be swallowed in whole by the judges.

[andy @ Apr 6th 2007 12:58PM]

Yep, it's definitely the Republicans' fault.



wtf are you ranting about man? This judge is just making a decision that he thinks is proper, but is actually not in line with accepted jurisprudence. I guess I'm too stupid to catch the Republican/Democrat link here. I thought it was just a couple of large corporations having at each other with a bad ruling thrown in the mix.

[David Hackett @ Apr 6th 2007 12:50PM]

This is BS. Verizon is the worst company that I have dealth with ever. Vonage is amazing. I have been using them since 2003 and love them.

I hope that they pull through.

[jb @ Apr 6th 2007 1:19PM]

Just finished signing up for voicewing. I've been with vonage since 2004 & its been great, webpage is terrible but phone is great.
Just figured I'd switch before I can't port my number.
I agree with Anthony, no one knows voicewing but I must admit everyone knows verizon.

[eh @ Apr 6th 2007 2:17PM]

The article states the injunction is effective April 12th. Did you see the headline and just posted what you thought was in the article??

[Kevin @ Apr 6th 2007 2:31PM]

You can still sign up till April 12th because the injunction is not effective until that day. I wouldn't expect to have to say this to engadget.com, but RTFA!

[russell @ Apr 6th 2007 2:37PM]

i had verizon at my b/f cabin and they bite. big time. i have charter for my our home and i am getting charter for the cabin.
this judge was wrong for doinf this.
people should have a choice.
i didn't like verizon. if they were the onlyy phone company around i would do with out.

[az @ Apr 6th 2007 2:49PM]

Proofread engadget!

[az @ Apr 6th 2007 2:50PM]

That is to say -

"Like, seriously, you they aren't allowed to sign anyone up. "

PLEASE! This stuff is painful to parse through.

[Ken C @ Apr 6th 2007 3:15PM]

Now allowed to sign people up? I just went to their site 10:43AM PST and https://subscribe.vonage.com/vonage-subscribe/index.htm that link pretty much allows you to sign up.......

[J @ Apr 6th 2007 3:36PM]

A world without Vonage? What will we all do?! Oh yeah, go with one of the multitude other VoIP providers. http://www.packet8.net/

[uberholt @ Apr 6th 2007 4:07PM]

Not true - at least not exclusively so. There are 4 or so patent "rocket dockets" in the US, of which the Eastern District of Texas is probably the best known and most firmly rooted. "Rocket dockets" are so known because a court decides to cultivate expertise in a particular area of law (commercial law, securities, IP, etc.) to draw litigants to their court. The more cases your court has to hear, the bigger its budget gets. Don't blame partisan politics, blame entrepreneurship and self-promotion, which we're all guilty of at some point or another.

On the merits of the case: a jury, not the judge, found that Vonage had infringed Verizon's patent. The judge is following the law. If he's acting arbitrarily or capriciously, that's what interlocutory appeals are for.

Like we all saw with the NTP v. RIM suit not-so-long ago, our "feelings" for one company or another don't dictate the course of the law. What that case also showed us is how much that goes on behind-the-scenes that we never see. If Verizon demanded royalties for Vonage's use of its patent and Vonage told them to go screw instead of negotiating because they didn't think the claims were any good, the jury just proved them wrong. If Verizon owns the method that Vonage is using to make its product, and Vonage refused to license it from them for a reasonable amount of money (to help inflate its balance sheets in the short-term after its own bogus IPO) , it's hard for me to feel any sympathy for them.

[Tommy @ Apr 6th 2007 4:17PM]

anyone have a legal cite to this?

[Scott @ Apr 6th 2007 4:45PM]

It's unfortunate that Vonage appears to run into the pit wall on this one. Is Verizon going after any of the others?

[Mike B. @ Apr 6th 2007 5:28PM]

The Vonage website is still allowing people to sign up, so the ruling must not have taken affect immediately? Or maybe Vonage is trying to see how long they can still take new registrations before they get in even more trouble?

[Mikey @ Apr 6th 2007 6:45PM]

Packet8 has even more features for a few less bucks than Vonage, and their service is excellent (I've been with them since Oct '03). Like someone else already mentioned, Vonage isn't the only game in town!

[ADR @ Apr 6th 2007 9:59PM]

Well if Verizon wants it will lose 6 customers in my family if I lose access to my Vonage service. I wouldn't touch a Verizon cell phone but my fiance, two sisters, her parents, and my mom will drop thier plans as soon as they expire. They aren't happy with it anyway. I'd actually like to start a class action lawsuit against Verizon forcibly removing a service I depend on making me pay more per month for thier service.

Verizon probably doesn't even truly own the patents in question. They are probably legacy patents from AT&T that were part of Verizon's backlog from the government forced breakup of AT&T. You know what its about time that happens again before we once again have a monopoly of all telecommuncation services.

The jury who ruled on this matter probably like many juries today probably had a collective IQ of 10 with no experience or knowledge of patent matters.

[William @ Apr 7th 2007 2:50PM]

Capitalism at its finest!!!!!

Greedy mf's

[Paul @ Apr 8th 2007 12:23PM]

In the long run I believe that Verizon is just showing sour grapes in the loss of business. I was a loyal Verizon customer up until 2005. Always had em. What forced me awaty was the way they consistently raised their rates without improvement in service. Their customer service went down hill and forced me to make a decision. Vonage is an excellent service and for less than a quarter of what I was being charged by Verizon I get 10 times the service and features.

Verizon is just trying to bully themselves back into the market and become a monopoly. Someone ought to ga after Verizon for promising the world without any action.

[FreeToCompete @ Apr 25th 2007 4:44PM]

VOnage won it's first appeal battle against Verizon. There's still a long way to go, but Vonage is making moves forward. Check out how Vonage is defending itself, creating public awareness and letting consumers voice their opinions at FreeToCompete.com.“