Vonage scrambling to avoid shut-down

Vonage is fighting to survive. On Friday, a federal judge ordered the Internet calling company to stop adding new customers to avoid infringing on patents held by Verizon Communications. But a federal appeals court granted Vonage a temporary stay on the lower-court ruling until it decides how to move forward. In early March Vonage lost a patent lawsuit to Verizon over several VoIP patents, including the use of WiFi networks for Internet calling. Vonage faced an outright shutdown, but Vonage lawyers say the ruling is nearly as devastating. Vonage says it is developing a work-around solution and appealing the ruling. We can probably surmise that its recently announced deal with EarthLink for Voice over WiFi is on hold.

To read more about Vonage's woes:
- check out this article from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)