Mediacom sued by Sprint for alleged VoIP patent violations

Mediacom has become the latest telecom company to be sued by Sprint for internet phone patents. 

According to the Kansas City Business Journal, the wireless operator filed suit in a Delaware federal court last week, alleging that the cable operator is violating 13 of its patents in its VoIP service. 

“Unfortunately, many companies in the industry, including Mediacom, have realized the great value in this technology and have misappropriated it without Sprint’s permission," the complaint stated in its lawsuit. "It is because of this unauthorized use that Sprint has taken efforts to enforce this patent portfolio against others in the industry in the past and is now enforcing its patents in this case.”

Mediacom reps didn’t immediately respond to Fierce’s inquiry for comment.

RELATED: Comcast settles VoIP patent dispute with Sprint for $250M

The Mediacom suit comes a little more than a month after Sprint settled another VoIP suit with Comcast for $250 million. 

Sprint said in that complaint that company engineer Joe Christie developed the core technology for internet-based phone service in the 1990s, with Sprint eventually developing about 120 patents around Christie’s work.

Over the last decade, Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint has aggressively gone after a number of companies alleged to have violated these patents. Sprint was awarded $69.5 million by a Kansas jury in 2007 in a dispute with Vonage Holdings, for example.

Sprint also successfully sued several smaller competitors—Missouri’s Big River Telephone Co., for example—before winning a $139.8 million Kansas jury verdict over the erstwhile Time Warner Cable in March.