Undoubtedly the biggest story of the week is the revelation that Zoom is suing RingCentral for, on the surface, breaching its copyright and trademark. But it’s more complicated than that when you dig a little deeper.
I think most people in the industry will have expected the relationship between the two to weaken somewhat when RingCentral launched its own video offering last year – after years of powering its previous offering with Zoom’s technology.
Frustratingly, it’s not quite clear exactly what Zoom’s grievance is because the court filing is heavily redacted. Perhaps it’s as simple as “they launched their own product which violates our agreement”, but the wording around the redacted parts makes the situation feel more insidious than that. Zoom explicitly states that RingCentral is misleading the public and even shareholders.
What is clear is that Zoom no longer wants RingCentral selling RingCentral Meetings (which is built on Zoom technology).
The story has moved at pace this week with various statements being released. Late on Thursday (UK time), RingCentral announced that it had been awarded an injunction against Zoom allowing it to continue selling RingCentral Meetings. RingCentral had earlier implied that Zoom was stopping customers from using the Meetings, and said it wants to keep selling the Meetings to give customers more choice. Behind the scenes, though, it is in the process of moving people from Meetings to its own offering.
Zoom’s latest statement said that the injunction was ordered by the judge before it could respond, adding that the matter is being heard by a judge next Thursday. Watch this space!
Elsewhere, Teams has continued to dominate the headlines following Ignite but not always for the right reasons.
