Coincidence is amazing.

After months of waiting, the very same day that I found out Vonage, the VoIP vendor that I want to switch over to (mostly because of their "SimulRing" feature) was now offering my home phone number prefix in the town where I live... I also saw the judgment handed down saying that they couldn't add any more new customers.

Hours later came the stay of execution for this "bullet to the back of the head" (as Vonage's own attorney called it).

Sheesh! So can I get this service or not? Forbes runs it down for us:

Internet telephone company Vonage got a break late Friday in its patent battle with telecommunications giant Verizon Communications.

The U.S. Court of Appeals granted Vonage a temporary stay late Friday, allowing it to continue signing up new customers. An earlier ruling from a federal judge barred Vonage from marketing to new customers while it infringes Verizon's patents.
(read more)

Worldviews matter a lot - maybe more than anything else - when it comes to competitive strategy. This was highlighted last week as Viacom launched a copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube and Google claiming $1 billion in damages from the 150,000 clips of their content (in particular, the vast library of MTV programming) that has been collectively viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom claims that, although YouTube does remove such material if asked, the Google-owned company deliberately puts the burden on the copyright holder, and makes it unreasonably difficult for copyrighted works to be removed. This has led to the fantastic gains in traffic, trending momentum that amounted to a valuation in Google's acquisition of YouTube of $1.65 billion when the companies merged a few months ago despite YouTube's "immaterial" contribution to Google's revenue mix.(read more)