Vonage at Supreme Court

Vonage fought back against Verizon late yesterday, arguing that a US appeals court should "vacate and remand" an earlier ruling in favor of the latter provider that would have shut out Vonage's Internet phone service from using any of Verizon's networks.

The sudden change was triggered by a critical patent decision on Monday, Vonage said. A US Supreme Court ruling over a car's gas pedal has set what could become a crucial legal precedent by blocking patents for "obvious" evolutions of an existing design, forcing inventors to focus on truly original leaps in technology.

This would prevent Verizon from wielding its phone service patents to shut down a competitor, Vonage said. The VoIP service operator was set to argue that Verizon couldn't control the workings of a slight change in phone communications without first proving that the innovation was more than the logical result of technical development.

"Everyone knows you can't patent an orange, but you can - and someone likely already does - hold the patent for an orange picker," 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."

Verizon has expectedly rebuffed the Vonage motion, and used its spokesman to call the attempt a "delaying tactic" meant to buy time instead of accommodating the earlier ruling and paying out the $58 million awarded in March.

By Electronista Staff