A federal judge ruled today that Vonage cannot service new customers while it appeals that it infringed Verizon patents. The judge also ordered that the company post a $66 million bond.
Roger Warin, Vonage’s lawyer, told the court that prohibiting Vonage from seeking new customers is equivalent to “cutting off oxygen or a bullet to the head” for Vonage.
Back in early March, a jury found that Vonage had infringed three Verizon patents. It ordered that Vonage pay $58 million and 5.5 percent royalties on future sales.
Last May two days after the IPO, we rated Vonage a ‘C’ using our Disruption Scorecard, still the lowest of any company we have ranked. Many enthusiasts thought this view was absurd… after all Vonage was the definition of “disruptive,” wasn’t it? And how could a subjective spreadsheet scorecard produce anything of value?
Why did Vonage rate so low? Vonage seemed to have a dot-com business model and its service had no unique attributes of value.
Details:
http://www.ondisruption.com/my_weblog/2006/05/vonage_disrupti.html