Ever Wonder Who Owns the Right to VoIP Technology?

By now most of us have heard of VoIP--if its not VoIP we are familiar it's with VoIP providers such as Skype and Vonage. But who owns the technology behind VoIP? This seems to be a question the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking as well, and has asked the U.S. Patent office to re-examine the 2001 patent issued to C2 Communications Technologies for this IP phone system technology.

The EFF in a quest to "bust" technology patent holders whom may or may not actually have invented the technology, has come up with the Patent Busting Project. They are hoping to, "combat these annoying and often dangerous legal weapons to take down some of [the] worst offenders," and C2 is on their top ten worst offenders list.

To summarize why the EFF believes C2's patent should be taken away is because in 1994 Bharat Doshi and other employees from Lucent Technologies were granted a patent that covers many of the same developments that the C2 patent is claiming. The EFF is concerned because the information was never cited by C2 when they filed their patent. Since receiving their patent in 2001, C2 has since sued many U.S. carriers including AT&T and Verizon.

EFF's legal director Cindy Cohn told PC World, "VoIP is one of these kinds of technologies that really frees people.. EFF is worried that fear of lawsuits by C2 could inhibit developers from making new VoIP products available. Meanwhile, its patent is one that never should have been granted."

The EFF also believes with these types of law suits, C2 is infringing on any new developments for VoIP technology itself. If you are wondering when we will here news of this review, it is going to be a while. It will take the Patent Office anywhere from 8 months to a year to decide--and longer if C2 files for an appeal.