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AT&T is latest to sue Vonage over patents

The Internet telephone company Vonage, has disclosed that it was the target of another patent lawsuit from a telephone company, in this case AT&T.

AT&T is now the third major telephone company to sue Vonage, which until recently was a market leader in selling phone services that use the customers broadband connection.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Vonage said AT&T filed the lawsuit Wednesday in United States District Court in Madison, Wis. It said it had been in discussions with AT&T to resolve the dispute but could not guarantee the case will not go to trial.

The single patent in question, filed in 1996, appears to broadly describe the idea of routing telephone calls over data networks like the Internet. The listed inventor is Alexander Fraser, AT&T’s former chief scientist.

Vonage, which is based in Holmdel, N.J., settled a patent dispute with the Sprint Nextel Corporation last week for $80 million.

A suit filed by Verizon Communications is still in the courts, but Vonage suffered a significant setback in that process in March, when a jury awarded Verizon $58 million in damages, plus future royalties, after finding that Vonage had violated three Verizon patents. Vonage denies infringement and says it has deployed ways to work around two of the patented technologies.

And last week, Vonage settled a fourth legal dispute, with Klausner Technologies, a small company with patents on voice mail technology, for an undisclosed sum. Klausner had sued for $200 million.

Stock in Vonage fell 13 cents yesterday, to $1.54 a share.

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