October 8th, 2007
Sprint and Vonage in licensing agreement: I predicted this six months ago
Back on April 18, nearly six months ago, I ran a post quoting the independent Vonage Forum owner Dan Connor’s thread in which he forecast that Vonage would settle its patent disputes with Sprint by means of a licensing agreement.
I agreed with him then. And now, guess what.
Turned out today’s news renders Connor’s prognostication right.
Breaking news: Vonage and Sprint have settled their patent infringement suit.
The settlement involves licensing related considerations totalling $80 million, including $35 million for “past use,” $40 million for a paidin-full future license and $5 million in prepayment for services.
Some correctly term this a change in strategy for Vonage, maybe a retreat from their reality distortion field that they will win all their legal battles.
But $1 a share kind of does that to you.
I predict this may just be a first step in a nascent Sprint-Vonage relationship. Could that “small stake” be next?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
