Reporting its third quarter financial results, beleaguered VoIP provider Vonage revealed that it has reached an “agreement in principle” with AT&T to settle the patent infringement lawsuit AT&T filed against Vonage last month.
Although the deal is not finalized, the rough outline has Vonage paying AT&T $39 million over a period of five years to settle the claim. Vonage would also drop a pre-existing suit it has filed against AT&T. (This may be a long-ago dispute over the naming of AT&T’s CallVantage service, but that hasn’t been confirmed.) Vonage says that if settlement efforts with AT&T fall through, it will vigorously defend itself in court.
Despite its seemingly unending serious of patent infringement woes, Vonage also says it managed to add almost 80,000 subscribers during the third quarter of its fiscal year, even after cutting back on its add spending in order to support operational and legal costs. Vonage currently claims just over 2.5 million customers.
In October, Vonage settled patent litigation with Sprint-Nextel for $80 million, and announced a patent infringement settlement with Verizon which will total another $80 million to $120 million, depending on the outcome of a court hearing.
