As the communication and collaboration environment grows increasingly competitive, it seems that everyone is trying to innovate. In a quest to be more disruptive, intuitive, and compelling, some companies may even accidentally step on the toes of their competitors. Unfortunately, even the slightest issue can lead to a huge storm of legal problems – particularly when patents are involved.
In January 2016, a jury in the District Court for the United States discovered that Metaswitch was infringing on approximately 7 different GENBAND patents. GENBAND – now Ribbon Communications, obviously responded to this issue quickly, working to ensure that they maintained their position as a 2015 CNBC disruptor, and leader in real-time communications.
Details on the Trial
The jury was able to find evidence that Metaswitch had infringed on several GENBAND patents, including a range of innovations in the VoIP realm. For GENBAND, this discovery was an important milestone in differentiating themselves from their competitor, and the CEO of the company David Walsh released a statement to the press. During his statement, Mr. Walsh expressed gratitude and appreciation to the courts for the time they gave the case.
During the trial, GENBAND showed evidence that Metaswitch products were dipping their toes into a selection of patents, including 7,990,984, 7,184,427, 7,047,561, 7,995,589, 6934,279, 6,885,658, and 6,791,971. The products that were found to infringe on GENBAND technology included those in the Integrated Soft switches collection, Session Border Controllers, Call Feature Servers and a range of Universal Media Gateways.
Even the MTAS platform for Metaswitch turned out to be a problem, with its support for click to dial and call jump services.
Moving on From the Legal Battle
The jury chose to award damages of $8.1 million to GENBAND for the infringement, finding that it was awardable for damages all the way from the period of January in 2014, to the summer of 2015. Additionally, the jury confirmed the validity of the patents GENBAND had claimed.
The case obviously caused serious disruption for both GENBAND and Metaswitch. However, it seems that both companies have been able to move on from the legal battle in a positive way. GENBAND has now become Ribbon Communications and is offering an award-winning real-time communications software platform in the form of “Kandy”, to customers around the world.
On the other hand, Metaswitch offers its clients a broad range of rich cloud-native communication solutions for converged and fixed networks. It’s also been recognised as one of the best companies in the industry for customer care.
