Vonage Hit With Another Lawsuit

Vonage Holdings Corp. has been slapped with another patent infringement lawsuit, this time from Klausner Technologies Inc.

Klausner Technologies, which owns more than 20 patents, said it is seeking damages and royalties of $180 million. The company claims Vonage is illegally using its VoIP voice mail platform. Klausner Technologies also said it has licensed the platform to AOL Inc., the company it sued last year for patent infringement. The suit reportedly was settled for $200 million.

Judah Klausner, Klausner Technologies’ founder, said in a news release on Monday his company approached Vonage earlier this year about the infringement and offered the Internet telephony company a chance to license its platform. Klausner’s lawyer, Greg Dovel, said Klausner Technologies had not heard from Vonage aside from a request in February for more time to study the situation.

“We have already granted a license under the same patents to Time Warner's AOL and are unable to wait any longer for a response from Vonage," Klausner added.

Vonage spokesman Mitchell Slepian said the company had no comment on Klausner Technologies’ claims. Executives had seen the press release, but not the alleged lawsuit.

In June, Verizon Communications Inc. filed suit against Vonage, claiming it used Verizon’s patented technology in its VoIP services, including Verizon’s inventions relating to gateway interfaces; billing and fraud detection in commercial VoIP telephony; services such as call forwarding and voice mail in commercial VoIP telephony; and methods relating to the use of Wi-Fi handsets in a VoIP network.

On the same day it was hit with another suit, Vonage said it had acquired three patents from Digital Packet Licensing Inc. that would help it fight accusations from Sprint Nextel and Verizon. The Klausner Technologies suit was not mentioned. The three patents cover the compression of packetized digital signals used in VoIP technology. Vonage said obtaining the patents gives it leverage in the lawsuits and the company now is in cross-licensing negotiations with regard to them.

A prepared statement noted that telecommunications companies including Motorola Inc., Qwest Communications International Inc., Time Warner and others already have settled with and/or taken a license from Digital Packet on the VoIP patents; because it acquired the VoIP patents, Vonage also assumes ownership and control over the agreements, the company said.

Vonage stock finished trading on Monday at $7.40. The company has come under scrutiny for allegedly overpricing its IPO in May; since then, shares have steadily declined.

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Vonage Holdings Corp. www.vonage.com