WebProNews

No one's saying how much this cost

Vonage lightened its legal burdens with a settlement of claims of patent infringement brought against the VoIP company by AT&T.

All Vonage wanted to do was to capitalize on the ability to make cheap, voice over Internet phone calls. Unfortunately, in their haste to deliver a working product, the company received complaints that it had trod upon the technology owned by other firms.

AT&T rated among those who Vonage allegedly borrowed from without permission. It has been revealed by Reuters that a settlement between Vonage and AT&T happened on November 7th.

That took place about two weeks after Vonage settled with Verizon over a pair of disputed patents. The settlement may end up costing Vonage as much as $120 million. Vonage also settled patent claims with Sprint Nextel in October for $80 million

Their terms with AT&T for settling the similar complaint have not been publicized, even though the suit was just finalized before Christmas.

Though AT&T isn't in the VoIP business, it's likely their impact online will be seen in 2008 in another area. AT&T acquired Ingenio, a pay per call advertising network, in November.

This will help AT&T monetize traffic to various online yellow pages, and they can use Ingenio to promote across online and offline properties. In that scenario, AT&T shouldn't mind a Vonage call connecting a customer and an advertiser through an Ingenio number, where AT&T picks up the ad revenue.