An Appeals Court has overturned a $2 million verdict against Global Connect, which was purchased by TCN, in a lawsuit that was filed by NobelBiz, alleging that Global Connect had violated the company’s patents.
A copy of the ruling is available here. The case has been remanded back to the District Court for another trial.
NobelBiz had sued Global Connect back in 2012, alleging that the company had violated a pair of NobelBiz patents. The patents relate to technology that is used to display a local phone number when placing a call to an individual, rather than the actual number of the line placing the call or a general phone number. The thought process is that individuals are more likely to call back a local number than they are one with a toll-free or different area code.
The Appeals Court ruled that the District Court erred by allowing experts for both NobelBiz and TCN/Global Connect to make arguments to the jury about the scope of the claim.
The district court had the responsibility to determine the scope of the asserted claims, and “[a] determination that a claim term ‘needs no construction’ or has the ‘plain and ordinary meaning’ may be inadequate when a term has more than one ‘ordinary’ meaning or when reliance on a term’s ‘ordinary’ meaning does not resolve the parties’ dispute.”
