Verizon to sue Charter over VoIP patents

Verizon has already successfully sued Vonage for patent infringement, and recently filed suit against Cox Communications. As in the Cox suit, Verizon is claiming that Charter infringed upon eight different patents, four of which were tried in the Vonage case, with the court ruling in favour of Verizon on three of them.

As before, Verizon has asked for unspecified monetary damages and a court injunction blocking Charter from using the technology in the future.

Of the four new patents being brought to court, some deal with quality of service. The two new cases also include the supposition that Cox and Charter are going so far as to invest money and develop networks based on Verizon technology.

Verizon has steadily been losing wireline voice subscribers on a number of competitive fronts. It lost 8% of its primary access lines in 2007, much of that due to cable VoIP competition. This raises the question of whether Verizon plans to take more cable multiple system operators to court in order to prevent further line losses.

Charter is analysing Verizon's claims and intends to vigorously defend itself in the suit.