Will the courts help to decide our messaging future?

Last month, a federal jury found that Vonage had infringed three Verizon patents. The judge in the case could issue an injunction against Vonage this Friday, April 6th, effectively shutting down the VoIP service, although that is unlikely to happen.

As I've discussed in my newsletter, a legal precedent could be set for making voicemails in a unified messaging system subject to e-discovery requirements. However, given that speech-to-text recognition systems are not as robust as they might need to be for this application, there are a variety of problems that could ensue if this precedent were set.

Could the courts be helping to shape the future of messaging and, particularly, the adoption of technologies like VoIP and unified messaging? Courts have long had an impact on messaging and related technologies, from the Carterphone decision in the late 1960s to the DoJ case against Microsoft in the 1990s. However, there is the serious potential for just a few court decisions to have a major impact on how and if certain technologies are adopted. For example, if you're deciding on the adoption of a unified messaging system for your organization and a court rules that voicemails stored in users' mailboxes are subject to the same e-discovery requirements as email, what decision would you make? You could decide that you'll deploy speech-to-text recognition technology on top of the unified messaging system, employ lots of people to listen to voicemails in the event this content is required in a legal action, or you'll decide that unified messaging just isn't worth the risk.