Judge to Zoom: ProceedJudge to Zoom: Proceed

A U.S. District Court judge this week dealt RingCentral a blow in the legal battle being waged over the status and terms of its years-long video technology partnership with Zoom.

After listening to arguments from both sides in a hearing last week, the judge: 1) lifted the temporary restraining order they had previously awarded RingCentral against Zoom, and 2) denied RingCentral’s motion for preliminary injunction. The upshot: Zoom can continue pursuing its case against RingCentral for what it sees as the latter’s violation of the terms of the agreement that allows RingCentral to resell Zoom videoconferencing services as RingCentral Meetings (see previous coverage here and here).

In an official statement, Zoom said it is pleased with the decision and its ability to continue with the legal process it set in motion to resolve the issue. Mincing no words, the statement continued: “We believe RingCentral is inappropriately using Zoom to attract new customers, only to then switch them over to its own inferior meetings product. This is unfair to customers, who deserve better. We'll continue to support legacy RingCentral Meeting customers until the end of our contract sunset period, but we are not enabling Zoom for RingCentral customers signed up after the sunset period began on February 1, 2021. If RingCentral truly believes in their own meeting product, they should use it.”

In its official response, RingCentral clarified its positioning around its video offerings since the April 2020 introduction of its homegrown offering, RingCentral Video. "... as part of the RingCentral Office Message Video Phone (MVP) solution, we have been providing customers with a choice between our own video capability, RingCentral Video[,] and RingCentral Meetings, powered by Zoom. We have led with RingCentral Video, and we are very happy with the customer adoption and momentum of RingCentral Video with most of our new customers choosing this option," the company stated. "We believe that our MVP platform provides our customers with the best communications solution and the market has clearly noticed the rapid customer adoption of our video solution. While nearly all existing customers are not affected by the court’s decision, we will continue with the legal case as we believe in giving customers choices," RingCentral said. "We have faith in the judicial process and are confident that we will prevail."