Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast, it is Tuesday, May 8th, and I'm your host Anastasia Glova.

Today's episode is a phone conversation with Cato adjunct scholar Tim Lee, who was also one of the

founders of the Show Me Institute. He writes prolifically on technology issues and the

subject of our conversation today is how tech patent law has gotten a little out of control.

What have the court battles between Vonage and Verizon been about?

Well, Verizon sued Vonage over the infringement of, at least seven patents of which the court found Von and guilty of infringing three of them.

So officially it's about whether Von and infringed Verizon's patents.

I think to look at a little bit of a bigger picture is really about Verizon trying to use the patent system in kind of an

abusive way to shut down some competitors that threatened one of their

core businesses because Vonage sells internet-based telephone services at prices that are in many cases lower than what Verizon is offering and that really

threatens Verizon's core telephone business.

Well, what's wrong with Verizon then suing Vonage for violating its patents. Is not the purpose of a patent to

protect an invention? Well the problem here is with the term technology when people

use that language and that is the language journalists usually use when they talk about cases like this.

People really think about some breakthrough new technological advance.

What Verizon's patent essentially did, there's three patents, two of which are very similar. The first

one patents the concept of doing voice telephony connecting over the internet and connecting

it with a wireless device. The patent actually admits that there are lots of wireless telephones on the market already

and there are lots of internet-based telephony applications, but their patent is on the combination

of both wireless and the internet. The other patent is on the combination of both wireless and the internet. The other patent is a patent on

translating between telephone numbers and IP addresses, which are the addresses that computers

used to talk to each other on the internet.

...