InTouch Health Appealing Patent Lawsuit Decision

By Danielle Lucey



InTouch Health, which makes the RP-VITA telepresence robot in collaboration with iRobot, plans to appeal a patent infringement decision in its lawsuit against VGo Communications Inc., which makes its own VGo telepresence robot. 



The court found that VGo did not infringe on three patents owned by InTouch and that the patents submitted where invalid. 



“We are disappointed with the jury’s verdict, which we believe is erroneous based on what we maintain is strong evidence that the VGo robot infringes our patents,” says Dr. Yulun Wang, chairman and CEO of InTouch Health. “We also believe that the evidence failed to support the invalidity verdict for two of the asserted claims. We are confident that these decisions will be corrected on appeal.”



In a press release by VGo, the company asserts it reviewed InTouch’s patents prior to creating its telepresence robot and consulted with its legal counsel. 



The suit alleges that VGo used a patented arbitration method to determine who could connect to its robot and used a similar call-back mechanism, which VGo asserts it does not use. InTouch also determined that VGo was violating a patent the company purchased from IBM that defines specific methods for videoconferencing. VGo’s statement says the company also does not use that method.