The holder of a patent for providing local and long-distance service over the Internet is suing three VoIP providers over legal rights to technology he claims to have developed in the mid-1990s. Donald S. Feuer, founder of the apparently defunct CentreCom and the inventor behind holding company Centre One, waited 12 years to sue the companies — deltathree Inc. (DDDC.OB), Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) — he says are infringing on his intellectual property. Is he trying to put the first two providers — both struggling to survive the recession — out of business? Or, if Feuer can drain deltathree, and maybe Vonage, of cash, could he be out to buy the remaining assets for pennies on the dollar?
Then there’s the Verizon suit. That an obscure operation like Centre One thinks it has a case against the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier indicates that Feuer has a solid argument — or believes he can force Verizon into settlement talks.
Feuer’s lawyer at the Dallas offices of Fish & Richardson, a large patent and intellectual property firm, did not return messages seeking an interview. Fish & Richardson has been involved in a number of high-profile cases representing companies many consider “patent trolls.” In August 2007, the anonymous author of Patent Troll Tracker said Fish & Richardson was second only to Potter Minton when it came to representing “trolls” in controversial patent suits. A second law firm representing Centre One, Parker, Bunt & Ainsworth in Tyler, Texas, where the case was filed, also did not respond.
The suit was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas, which is known as a magnet for patent cases and tends to resolve disputes quickly, making it preferable to courts with backlogs of dockets.
Trolling, or Shopping
Centre One filed its lawsuit Dec. 5, saying that the three defendants have appropriated “a method and apparatus for interfacing a Public Switched Telephone Network and an Internet Protocol Network for multi-media communication,” according to a description of Feuer’s patent.
Founded in Southern California in 1997, CentreCom, a Centre One subsidiary, was a registered inter-exchange carrier, similar to AT&T before it was acquired by SBC. The privately held company offered a range of services, including voice mail, toll-free calling and follow-me, just as VoIP was expected to explode. PHONE+, VON magazine’s sister publication, wrote in a November 2000 article, “California-based CentreCom is churning out solutions that automate the Q&A process and that enable unified communications.” But the company’s plans apparently evaporated in the dot-com crash.
