Verizon continues to try to sue its way out of competing with VoIP services from cable operators, after its successful campaign against Vonage, which brought it $120 million in October.
It has now filed a case against Charter Communications, identical to the one that it filed last month against Cox. Logically Comcast and Time Warner Cable and other smaller cable operators will be having cases prepared against them which will be delivered later.
Verizon went after Vonage with just two patents, which related to translating switched location information to and from IP packet headers so that calls could be routed over the internet.
To that Verizon has added six more patent infringement claims for the cable operators, focusing on QoS and signaling over a hybrid (Packet ‘ Switched) network, along with network management and signaling between the two types of system and for providing directory functions across both types of networks. Once again these are all inventions that it wants to stop being used entirely, and they all focus on how packet switched networks like the internet co-exist with a switched network.
Verizon says that all it is seeking is a reasonable royalty, but if a settlement scales in relation to the size of these companies, compared to Vonage, then royalty plus damages might be bigger than the profits that the cable operators are getting from taking VoIP services up against Verizon. Expect the case to be long and bloody, unlike the Vonage one, and it may get political as well.
The Charter suit has been filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Texarkana which is known for handling this type of patent case.
If the other RBOCs plus Sprint Nextel join in, then there could be all out patent war between cable and telcos in the US. Already VoIP patent suits brought by the US RBOCS against Vonage brought a total of $239 million in settlements against its annual revenue of $830 million.
We had said that we would expect Comcast and others to come to the aid of Cox and Charter and ensure that it fights tooth and claw to keep this verdict from impinging on global VoIP services.
It was only about two years ago that the cable operators in the US began to make inroads into the RBOC telephony markets, using genuine VoIP, instead of switched telephony, but since then the erosion of fixed line telephony services has been rampant in the US, and everywhere else.