Vonage Faces Another Patent Case

Vonage Holdings Corp. has been slapped with another patent lawsuit, this time by Nortel Networks.

The suit, which claims Vonage infringed on 12 patents, comes weeks after the popular VoIP company appeared to be moving past most of its legal problems. The patents in the current case cover features such as 911, 411 and click to call.

But this case has a bit of a different twist than the suits lost by Vonage. Nortel said it is taking the action in response to a separate suit by Vonage.

Vonage sued Nortel seeking to invalidate three of the patents. Nortel denied those allegations and said Vonage infringed on those and nine other patents.

Vonage became involved in the dispute when it acquired Digital Packet Licensing last year, which had filed suit regarding the patents in 2004, and Vonage continued with the case.

Vonage lost separate patent infringement cases to AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel. It settled the last of those cases in October.

Nortel Networks www.nortel.com
Vonage Holdings Corp. www.vonage.com