A Virginia court ruled in Cox’s favor over Verizon in a patent dispute over VoIP technology. Verizon was hoping to repeat a VoIP patent victory over Vonage, which resulted in a $117 million settlement. No such luck with Cox. "We remain deeply committed to providing our customers high-quality phone service at a great value, and look forward to competing vigorously with Verizon in the marketplace, not the courtroom," the company said in an e-mailed statement to Reuters. Verizon is pursuing a similar patent infringement suit with Charter. Looks like Charter’s defense just got a little stronger, and Cablevision and Time Warner Cable have a little less VoIP patent issues to worry about.

As many predicted, Verizon has expanded their VoIP patent suit prowess, and now have targeted Charter Communications. This latest suit comes on the heels of a similar and ongoing VoIP patent suit against Cox, and a successful 2007 patent offensive on Vonage. Verizon clearly has cable competitors in their sights, and are using patent suits as a competitive tool to erode, stop, or at least slow down cable’s move on their core wireline voice business. Don’t expect the patent lawsuits to slow down either. Most cable companies that are using VoIP utilize the CableLabs specification for VoIP. Verizon is now targeting those specifications, so every cable company that uses them are vulnerable to a Verizon patent lawsuit. Prospective lawsuit candidates include Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and a variety of tier 2 cable companies, including Mediacom. It’s unlikely that these suits will stop cable companies move on voice service. The “genie is out of the bottle” on that. But Verizon can inflict some pain on their competitors, assuming the lawsuits have merit, and either slow them down a bit or extract millions of dollars in settlements and/or licensing fees. In short, expect this issue to grow, and probably quickly.

Is it just me or does it seem like the patent infringement lawsuits are on the tipping point of getting out of control. Sprint is the latest to join the lawsuit parade, filing VoIP patent lawsuits against NuVox Communications, Broadvox Holdings, Big River Telephone Company, and Paetec Communications. They join Verizon who recently sued Cox for VoIP patent infringement. Sprint is suing these latest companies on the same basis as their successful suit against Vonage, which led to an $80 million dollar licensing agreement between the two. All indicators lead to even more suits between large carriers like Verizon and Sprint targeting not only upstarts like NuVox, but also large MSOs like Cox.

Analysts are beginning to wonder whether companies like Sprint see patent suits as a new top line revenue item. These scenarios may lend credence to the argument for patent reform. Should companies view patent infringement lawsuits as a way to earn revenue, or should they be reserved for protecting innovation and business processes? Maybe a little of both is warranted. I for one hope this industry can get past all the patent lawsuits and let the competitive landscape determine the winners and losers. I suspect many more are waiting in the wings. Let’s just get them all on the table so we can move on. The sooner the better.

Patent lawsuits have long been used as a competitive weapon in many industries. Telecom is now getting their fair share. Vonage suffered a series of patent lawsuits from competitors last year, and now Verizon is suing Cox Communications on similar grounds. Four of the same patents, which focus on technology used to complete IP calls, used as a suit basis against Vonage are also the focus of the Verizon suit against Cox. Verizon filed suit in the Eastern District Court of Virginia on January 11 alleging that Cox infringed on a total of eight patents.

Light Reading speculates that this patent suit may be a sign of things to come, as most cable companies using VoIP, use the same technology that Verizon names in the Cox patent suit. Verizon may be teeing up the suit with Cox to see if it has legs. Should it prove successful, we can probably expect to see a parade of lawsuits between Verizon (and other telecom carriers) and leading cable companies over VoIP technology. It’s doubtful this (and potentially future suits) will materially impact cable’s ability to compete with telecom carriers. But every patent lawsuit action is not designed to stop a competitor cold – just slow them down a little and make life in the competitive telecom landscape a little more complicated.

In what appears to be a sign of the times, Qwest was hit with a patent suit over their VoIP service, branded OneFlex. RTI, based in Smithtown, N.Y., has added Qwest to its stable of VoIP patent suit victims, which previously have included Nortel, Google, and Vonage. RTI seems to have been successful with their suits, extracting settlements from most cases. RTI is seeking an injunction against Qwest, preventing them from signing up any new OneFlex customers and cancelling all existing OneFlex accounts. Looks like SunRocket customers might have one less appealing VoIP landing spot.