Plaintiff
6 cases as plaintiff.
Sonus Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: SONS; also doing business as Ribbon Communications Operating Company) was founded in 1997 and headquartered at 5 Carlisle Road, Westford, Massachusetts. It was a publicly traded, small-cap telecom-equipment vendor — its 2014 Form 10-K reported 1,193 employees and revenue in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, with persistent operating losses in its final years as a standalone company. On October 27–30, 2017, Sonus completed a merger with GENBAND and rebranded as Ribbon Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: RBBN), shifting its headquarters to Plano, Texas. (Sources: Sonus 10-K, PRNewswire, stockanalysis.com.)
Products/operations: Sonus supplied VoIP/IMS and IP-voice infrastructure to wireline and wireless carriers and enterprises. Its portfolio included session border controllers (SBC 1000/2000/5100/5200/7000 and software editions), GSX9000/GSX4000 open services switches, the PSX policy and routing server, diameter signaling controllers, media and signaling gateways, Voice-over-WiFi/LTE and WebRTC solutions, and network analytics/management tools, plus Kandy cloud communications (CPaaS) from GENBAND. Named carrier customers included AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI and Verizon. Sonus was an operating company with real products, not a shell licensor.
Litigation posture: The tracked data shows six cases, all as plaintiff and none as defendant, filed April 2018 in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division (Judges Rodney Gilstrap and Robert W. Schroeder III) — a plaintiff-favorable venue, though Sonus was litigating against a direct market competitor rather than asserting an acquired portfolio. Sonus/Ribbon sued Metaswitch Networks Ltd. and Metaswitch Networks Corp., asserting ten patents that originated with Sonus and seeking damages and a willfulness finding; Metaswitch counterclaimed with ten of its own patents, making the dispute effectively two-way.
Notable outcome: The six suits were resolved by a binding mediator's proposal in April 2019 and a Settlement and Cross-License Agreement signed May 29, 2019. Metaswitch agreed to pay Ribbon $63 million ($37.5 million cash in Q2 2019 plus $25.5 million in three annual installments at 4% interest) and to globally cross-license all patents; the cases were dismissed with prejudice in July 2019. Ribbon later acquired ECI Telecom in 2020.
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Sonus Networks, Inc. sued Metaswitch Networks Ltd. and Metaswitch Networks Corp. in a case involving U.S. 6,885,658. The case was stayed pending appeal of the related -33 case, then settled and dismissed with prejudice in 2019.
Sonus Networks (later associated with Ribbon Communications) sued Metaswitch, with U.S. Patent No. 6,934,279 among the asserted patents. The parties mediated and settled; the case was dismissed with prejudice on July 1, 2019.
Sonus Networks sued Metaswitch Networks Ltd. and Metaswitch Networks Corp. in E.D. Tex., alleging continuing infringement of patents from the earlier 2:14-cv-00033 action and false advertising. The Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists this case as involving U.S. Patent No. 7,995,589. The parties settled and the court dismissed the case with prejudice on July 1, 2019.
Sonus Networks, successor-in-interest to Genband, sued Metaswitch in the Eastern District of Texas asserting U.S. 7,990,984. The parties settled through mediation, and the case was dismissed with prejudice on July 1, 2019.
Sonus/Ribbon alleged Metaswitch continued to infringe patents from the first lawsuit, including U.S. 7,184,427, through redesigned products, and also asserted willful infringement and false advertising. The case settled in 2019.
Sonus Networks sued Metaswitch entities in the Eastern District of Texas, asserting the '971 Patent among other patents. The case was settled and dismissed with prejudice on July 1, 2019. The narrative notes conflicting filing dates (March 8, 2018 per SEC disclosure; April 18, 2018 per docket summary).