Patent, interoperability wars almost sink high-speed modems
The man behind the 56k modem, inventor Brett Townsend took patent fight to the extreme.
In this argument over technologies the winner is not a technology at all, it’s its inventor Brent Townshend.
He ultimately prevailed in his legal claim as inventor of the modem that capitalizes on a vagary of the public phone network that makes it possible to send data to a dial-up modem at 56Kbps, faster than the 33.6Kbps limit on sending data from that same machine.
In 1997, when broadband Internet access hadn’t been invented, the 56K modem was a major advance that industry heavyweights laid claim to, most importantly U.S. Robotics, touting its x2 technology, and Lucent, backing K56flex.
Interest in their modems was sky high, but they didn’t interoperate, so customers – particularly ISPs whose modem banks would have to support the technology in order for end users to reap its benefits – steered clear. No ISP wanted to bet on x2 or K56flex and wind up having to upgrade them later if it turned out they bet wrong.
The warring factions decided they were killing the market for the faster modems, and agreed to a common standard known as v.pcm. After that some 95 million of the modems were in service within two years.
It seemed like a simple solution, but all the issues weren’t settled. Townshend still held five patents on the underlying technology and after protracted lawsuits, exacted royalties that at their peak amounted to $2.50 per modem. That netted him enough money – do the math – to carry on defending the patent for years. As late as 2004, he was still settling with vendors who had been using his invention for years without paying royalties.
For all the trouble it caused him, he thinks it was less hassle than starting up his own modem business. “I said, ‘This is an easy thing to do,’” he said in a 2004 interview with Network World. “I can just license this to people that are in the modem business. I don’t have to start competing with them or set up my own distribution.”
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