Vonage Thrown To The Ground Once More, This Time By Sprint

Fighting the telecom behemoth that is Verizon has been mighty tough for little US VoIP provider Vonage. Now there’s yet another force the struggling company has had reckon with in court.

Boy, it almost makes you want to offer up some pity, or at least a shoulder to cry on.

According to news reports issued yesterday, Vonage has been ordered by a federal jury to hand over restitution in the form of $69.5 million to Sprint for infringing on six of the latter company’s patents. I scream, you scream, we all scream for patent reform!

I have to say, I don’t purport to be an expert on the subject at hand, nor what should and what shouldn’t fly when dealing with those pesky legal reservations called patents that every Tom, Dick, and Harry seems to be feverishly hoarding these days. But you have to wonder whether it’s at all appropriate to be maintaining a system where lines are crossed just about every which way with no hope in sight of them every getting organized into something of a semi-coherent structure.

One thing’s for damn sure, though. There’s one type of people that are making out great due to this mess we refer to as the world of patents: Lawyers.

And I suppose the plaintiffs make out good, too.

Anywho, the way things look for Vonage now are, well, a lot worse than they did before. And before things look frickin’ grim. The company has fairly consistently been beaten to a pulp this past year, and its vital signs really aren’t looking good at all. They’re looking terrible, really. In months past we said that things could look better for the service provider, but now we can do nothing but read the proverbial cards where they lie: The company basically has to literally hope on a prayer to get it out of its hole.

By the bye, if you’re one of the fools investors who’ve been holding onto the company’s stock all these unattractive quarters, you’ll really be testing your luck now, considering shares of VG dropped another 23 percent on the latest news, bringing each of ‘em to a paltry $1.39 by the closing bell Tuesday. Them stocks are now flying dangerously close to land of junkers. Better to get off the sinking ship with what you’ve still got, rather than go down with the disaster, I think.

Not much more to say about Vonage and its ongoing travails against much larger forces, other than it’s a shame what it’s had to endure, and props to the company for continuing to stick it out through thick and thin. Or would it be more accurate to say very thick and very thin? Don’t know. You decide. Almost seems like Vonage is the modern corporate iteration of poor ol’ Job, eh? It’s too bad. Godspeed, Vonage, godspeed.