Patent Pending, and subsquent thoughts

In Patent Weary, my favorite business writer, Michael Malone, opined the following (responding to a question regarding his thoughts on the patent war between Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft over patents for MP3 technology):

In my experience, digging up your old core patents and suing everyone in sight is the best indicator of a dying company. Fairchild did the same thing with integrated circuit patent, as did Motorola with the microprocessor, and Texas Instruments with everything in between. In the case of TI, the company reached the point where the patent attorney's office was the company's biggest profit center.

Ultimately, TI managed (no doubt with some of that licensing money) to turn itself around and become a major player in digital signal processing. But in most cases, I suspect, Alcatel-Lucent included -- is there any company out there right now with an uglier reputation than Lucent -- this kind of behavior is symptomatic of fatal structural rot. The $1.5 billion the jury awarded to Alcatel-Lucent in February will likely, after various Microsoft countersuits, end up a fraction of that amount, be swallowed up before it ever reaches shareholders and will do nothing for Alcatel-Lucent's future.

Optimistic, forward-looking and successful companies don't have time for this nonsense, and the distractions that come with it. And, sadly, that increasingly seems to be true for patents themselves.

I'm just wondering, could the same be said about Verizon's suit against Vonage? The following is from Bloomberg about the latest today on the "slow-death" of Vonage.

Vonage Holdings Corp. founder Jeffrey Citron replaced Michael Snyder as chief executive officer after spiraling costs and the loss of a patent lawsuit led to an 82 percent drop in the Internet phone company's stock....

... Vonage lost customers at an average monthly rate of 2.4 percent in the quarter, up from 2.3 percent in the previous three months. Subscribers have been defecting amid concerns about customer service and lawsuits that threaten to cut service.

I think all of this is very sad. "Old" companies, being eaten alive by "new" companies with better technology and marketing strategies, use bitter tactics to kill off their competitors, while slowing dying themselves.

Personally, I do not know anything about the science involved in the Verizon/Vonage law suit. Vonage may have infringed on a Verizon patent or not. (I wouldn't trust a district/trial court judge on this matter further than I could throw him). Regardless, if Verizon was a thriving, bustling company, it wouldn't "have time for this nonsense", as Malone puts it. I agree. I'm also reminded of that "old" quarrel, between Napster/Napster-like programs for file-sharing and the RIAA. The RIAA back in 2001 started fighting the new stuff because it couldn't compete. Eventually, it killed Napster/Grogster/Kazaa, etc., but it lost in the long run really. File-sharing is certainly the most prevalent method of getting music these days...thank you Apple. (I personally do not have an Ipod..I have a relic that was once called a "Disc-man" and it works just fine, thank you Sony.) Anyway, more to the point, I certainly hope Verizon has something up its sleeve...an RND section that is currently burning the midnight oil. Else, its future seems rather bleak.