Verizon loses in jury trial against Cox, two patent claims invalidated

By Scott M. Fulton, III , BetaNews In a costly loss in US District Court in Alexandria yesterday, a jury found all of Verizon's claims that Cox Communications infringed upon its VoIP-related patents to be without basis, and even invalidated two of eight patent claims. Back in January, Verizon filed a patent infringement suit against a Virginia division of Cox Communications, which was establishing VoIP service in that state. It was a boilerplate case that asserted its claims to eight US patents in the field of Internet-related voice telephony. Those patents were mostly acquired by Verizon on account of mergers and acquisitions, having been originally issued to such one-time giants as MCI and Bell Atlantic. Two such patents issued to Bell Atlantic in 1997 were both for an "enhanced name translation server." Imagine a DNS... [read full story]