Vonage granted four new patents, expands total to 61

Vonage has been granted four new patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) targeting conferencing, network registration, VoIP quality and Wi-Fi.

In 2014, Vonage was granted 24 U.S. patents and now owns 61 patents.  

With the US Patent No. 8,897,177, "Systems and Methods of Conducting Conference Calls," Vonage can now enable users to set their phones into conference mode so that incoming calls are automatically added to a conference call. Similar to other features such as call waiting, users can disable this feature so they can receive calls in a standard manner. 

Two of the patents also address mobility, Wi-Fi and social media access.

The US Patent No. 8,892,748, "Systems and Methods for Enabling Data Communications to a Telephony Device," will provide what Vonage says is a battery-efficient method for mobile devices using a VoIP service to maintain a connection when the user is not conducting a call. This will ensure that the mobile device can "reliably receive calls over the VoIP connection."

As more users leverage social networking platforms like Facebook and Wi-Fi hot spot networks at the local coffee shops to communicate with friends and work colleagues, US Patent No. 8,879,476, "Method and Apparatus for Performing Network Registration," can establish a system for VoIP service providers to determine the current IP address of a VoIP user.

Finally, US Patent No. 8,885,748, "Systems and Methods of Improving the Quality of VoIP Communications," enables VoIP operators to detect when a subscriber's device may be having difficultly registering with the operator's network, instructing their devices to reboot themselves to correct the problem. 

By proactively gaining patents related to various VoIP service functions, Vonage will be able to potentially extend new capabilities to not only its consumer customers, but its growing small and medium business (SMB) customer base in both the U.S. and international markets like Brazil and Europe.

For more:
- see the release

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