Over at Ike Elliott's Telecosm blog he has put together an excellent summary of the VoIP patent landscape and who owns the estimated 1,000 patents claimed to operate in the VoIP sector. According to Elliott, Stanford, in fact, had the first-ever VoIP patent in 1981. Cisco these days has the most VoIP/internet telephony patents with 161 patents, followed by Nortel with 156 and AT&T with 145 patents.
How a relatively simple technology like VoIP can have so many patents associated with it says a lot about whats wrong with the U.S. patent system (a view no doubt shared by Vonage).
As Elliott explains: "Having a large portfolio of good VoIP claims can really help you preserve freedom to operate a VoIP service, since you can cross-license your patents with other patent holders instead of paying royalties to each other."
Patents can be easily checked using the Google patent search [1] or the U.S. patent office site [2].
More Reports:
- The VoIP Patent Landscape Report [3]
Related articles:
- Is Vonage the victim of a bad patent system? Report [4]
- Vonage seeks review of patent appeal Report [5]
Links:
[1] http://www.google.com/patents
[2] http://www.uspto.gov/
[3] http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2007/11/the-voip-patent.html
[4] http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/is-vonage-a-victim-of-a-bad-patent-system/2007-04-30
[5] http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/vonage-seeks-review-patent-appeal/2007-10-11