Vonage Wants a Do-Over

This week Vonage requested that the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit put away its Verizon patent infringement judgment, which would send the case back to a lower court for retrial.

This action was based on a unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court that the ruling was seen as a reworking of Patent Infringement law.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that Verizon’s parameters set to show obvious patent similarities were too rigid to be protected by Patent Infringement law, as it is.

In a statement, Vonage chief legal officer Sharon O’Leary said:

According to the Supreme Court’s ruling, if you patent an orange picker, and then someone else comes along and puts a glove on it to protect the oranges against bruising, you can’t patent this new invention as ‘novel’ as it is just an obvious improvement of the original invention. The Supreme Court’s decision thus focuses on keeping only what’s truly novel and original protected by patents.