April 12th, 2007
A quick and easy guide to the Verizon patents in the Vonage case
Earlier this week I posted a detailed synopsis of the three Verizon patents at the heart of the infringement dispute with Vonage. You can find those posts here, here, and here.
Network World's Denise Pappalardo now offers a cogent summary of just what exactly the disputed Verizon patents at the heart of the infringment controversy with Vonage entail.
She notes that patent 6,282,574 is about how VoIP systems perform packet translation, which entails changing domain names into PSTN phone numbers and back.
"It details the way addresses are processed on the domain name server by providing a name server for translating textual domain names into telephone numbers," she writes. "The patent also describes how to support “name-to-address processing” on a name server based on specific parameters such as time, party or terminal making the request.
Then she goes on to describe how a second patent ( 6,104,711) describes supporting features like Caller ID and call waiting for VoIP customers.
"These features include call waiting, caller ID and three-way calling," Denise explains. "The patent maps out how the 'enhanced Internet domain name server' allows the Internet to communicate with a separate AIN to support these features for VoIP customers."
The third patent at the heart of this dispute (6,359,880) describes how calls can be moved from the Internet to a wireless network at a customer's home or business.
"The patent details how a local wireless gateway can be used to support VoIP calls," she explains. "It describes how calls can be transferred from the Internet to a wireless gateway at a customer’s location to support the call on a Wi-Fi or other public domain spectrum."
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
