October 8th, 2007
Re Vonage-Sprint: so what, exactly, does "productive future relationship" mean?
Concentrating on what today’s about-face Vonage $80 million licensing-cum-settlement with SprintNextel means for the possibility that Vonage has figured out that it is better to settle than fight, it is easy to overlook this nugget from today’s Vonage press release:
“We are pleased to resolve our dispute with Sprint and enter into a productive future relationship,” said Sharon O’Leary, General Counsel for Vonage.
Keep in mind Vonage’s top lawyer wrote that and had her name- not that of some publicist- attach to that.
Now, I need to ask. Sometimes when I hear the term “productive future relationship,” that sounds like hopefulness about a relationship going forward in time.
In this context, Sharon could have written: “We are pleased to resolve our dispute with Sprint and look forward to concentrating on what we do best- serving our customers.”
Only she didn’t write that.
Corporate lawyers are a careful breed given to intense parsing of every word.
So by using the term, “productive future relationship,” is Sharon O’Leary telegraphing a more formal arrangement in the works? Such as, for instance, Sprint taking a small stake in Vonage?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
