Skype sued for patent violation

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Internet phone company Net2Phone has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against rival Skype Technologies and its parent company, eBay.

Net2Phone, which filed its lawsuit last week in US District Court in New Jersey, alleges Skype infringed on its VoIP patent, which was issued to Net2Phone in August 2000.

Net2Phone's lawsuit comes as the voice over IP industry has seen a flood of new entrants from small start-ups to large, established ISPs.

Net2Phone alleges Skype, a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, violated its "point-to-point IP" patent. The patent calls for the exchange of IP addresses between processing units in order to establish a direct communications link between the devices via the Internet.

Skype uses a peer-to-peer technology to operate its VoIP service, whereas companies such as AT&T and Vonage largely use a system that is centrally managed to transfer calls to a traditional phone network.

Talkback

Communications between 2 nodes. They exchange addresses!? That is what communications is about. Where is the patentability in that. sounds like yet another software patent that should never have been allowed.
Mind you in conversations with the wonderkids of Firefox, I found out that Computer Science from the 70s has absolutely no relevance today, so maybe these patent people are seeing this for the first time.

via Facebook 6 June, 2006 13:16
Reply

Peer to peer network protocols use the same concept. In active mode the servents exchange IP addresses and form point to point connections for exactly the same reasons as Skype and other net telephony apps. Without the central server as a bottleneck, the system can scale much higher and is more resilient to outages.

via Facebook 7 June, 2006 14:47
Reply

ICMP, SMTP, DNS, etc. Wonder if that exchanges IP addresses between processing units in order to establish a direct communication link between the devices via the Internet.

What's next? Broadcast each and every packet over the entire Internet just to make sure you don't violate some patent? I'm sure that'll do wonders availability wise. Might land you in jail as well since someone (perhaps the same person that granted the patent in question?) might confuse it for a DoS attack.

Customer to ISP: my Internet connection is down!
ISP: No it's not. We're only filtering out the illegal packets. The unicasts to be precise.
Customer: but without unicasts what good is my Internet connection?
ISP: at least now it's legal.

On the other hand. It would solve the spam problem. No more spam for sure. But then they start phoning you up again.

Anyway, I'm not sure about the exact and entire text of the "point-to-point IP" patent but if its basis is "exchanges IP addresses between processing units in order to establish a direct communication link" then you might as well patent the letter "e".

via Facebook 8 June, 2006 00:51
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