18 April 2007

Two patents owned by Verizon Communications in its
infringement lawsuit against Vonage Holdings are invalid, and if
allowed to stand, could threaten all competing VOIP (voice over
Internet Protocol) services, a telecommunications industry veteran said
Tuesday.

Two of the three Verizon patents a jury
upheld in a March decision were described in a standards group called
the VOIP Forum before Verizon filed for the patents, said Daniel
Berninger, who had a hand in launching Vonage but now works as a
telecom analyst for Tier1Research.com. The VOIP Forum described the
name translation call-processing step in an open standard developed in
1996, and Verizon applied for the two patents in March 1997 and
February 2000, he said in an interview about the case.