After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art.""In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."
Unsurprisingly, the ambiguity leads to people reading what they want from it.
Granted, this excerpt seems ambiguous at first. A different quote had the phrase about coming back to it later. There's more context here though:
"We weren't impatient," Ilagan said. "We wanted to do the right thing, and not skip any evidence. I think we were thorough... we took our time. We didn't rush. We had a debate before we made a decision. Sometimes it was getting heated."
Even without context, what you quoted is not really that ambiguous. He says they debated it, so much debate that it was "bogging them down". That's not skipping it in the sense most people think skipping it means.
So "skipped it" in his words seems to just mean they moved on. Then since the question was answered on the verdict, they did clearly did come back to it to form a group consensus later.
After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art." "In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."
Unsurprisingly, the ambiguity leads to people reading what they want from it.