The Wall Street Journal reports that Vonage has asked the Federal Circuit to send its patent case back to the district court to consider whether the Teleflex decision renders Verizon’s patents invalid. As I argued last week, at least one of Verizon’s patents should be extremely vulnerable to challenge under Teleflex:
The third patent at issue is patent 6,359,880, “Public wireless/cordless internet gateway.” The patent describes a variety of prior systems that allow telephone calls to be made wirelessly. Some use cellular technology to achieve coverage over large areas, while others serve as a gateway to a traditional phone line, and only work over limited areas. The patent also discusses the existence of several Internet telephony applications that allow Internet users to engage in voice communications via the Internet. However, the patent argues, no prior systems have combined wireless calling with Internet telephony.
In this sense, the patent is a precise analog of the patent at issue in KSR v. Teleflex, due to be decided in the next two months by the Supreme Court. In that case, KSR held a patent that covered the combination of two otherwise obvious components: a gas pedal and an electronic sensor. Here, as in Teleflex, Verizon admits that both VoIP and wireless calling were well-known technologies at the time the patent was filed. However, they claim, no one had thought of having both features in one system.
Vonage should have a pretty strong case that the wireless calling patent is obvious. For the other two patents, they’ll probably have to rely more on Teleflex’s general theme of “common sense,” which doesn’t seem like quite as much of a slam dunk but can’t help but strengthen their hand somewhat.
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