April 14, 2021 Patent Newsletter
Patents by Numbers, New Patents Issued, Fortress Raising Capital
There were 6,947 new patents issued at the US Patent Office, not counting the Design and Reissue patents. There were 3,398 patents issued to inventors in the United States broken out by state in the following:
Below is the breakdown for the top countries assignee new patents issued:
The table below are some of the top Assignees of the week.
The top ten longest time to patent grant for the week. DIZPERSION TECHNOLOGIES, IN. comes in number one with 5,654 days from filing to issuance. The patent titled “Method and system for providing cooperative purchasing over social networks”.
The top ten shortest time to patent grant for the week was between 98 and 118 days. Well done to the teams!
A few new patent grants to report for the week:
$BIDU was issued a patent that covers a self inspection design for battery energy storage in patent # 10,978,886.
$DASH was issued patent # 10,977,751 which covers managing communications for combining an order.
$DM was issued patent # 10,974,299 related to additive manufacturing using material feed rates. There was not much prior art cited through prosecution and listed on the granted patent. I am curious what kind of prior art my friends at Limestone can dig up.
$GRPO issued patent # 10,977,846 a child patent with priority back to November 2016. The patent covers a mapping system for an unmanned aerial vehicle system.
$NNDM issued patent # 10,980,131, which covers a method for direct printing of printed circuit boards with embedded integrated chips. Again not a lot of prior art cited and I would like to find out what related references Limestone can dig out.
$PTON was issued patent # 10,974,094 titled “Exercise System and Method”. The images are really interesting which can be viewed through this link. Speaking of Peloton, $DISH / Sling filed a new patent lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas alleging infringement of 5 patents related to Adaptive Bitrate streaming.
$REGN was issued patent # 10,975,139 titled “Anti-SARS-CoV-2-Spike glycoprotein antibodies and antigen-binding fragments.” A child patent which builds their COVID19 IP portfolio.
$TSLA was issued patent # 10,978,990 titled “Glass cover with optical-filtering coating for managing color of a solar roof tile.” Very quietly Tesla has been building a formidable patent portfolio that now totals 84 granted patents.
In some pretty big news scooped by Bloomberg and additional reporting from my friends at IAM Magazine, Fortress is in the market to raise between $400m and $900m from investors in a new fund. This makes a lot of sense for Fortress to cash in after their huge $2.18B jury verdict versus Intel from back in March 2021. There is a 2nd trial versus Intel which started this week in the WDTX. Its my opinion , the CAFC will find a reason to kick the $2.18B verdict back to District Court when the appeal is eventually filed. A guest post on Patentlyo, which covered the damages portion was excellent and a must read. Matters are more complicated with the Intel Delaware action related to Fortress purchase of Finjan.
I am not so sure this is the best idea from an investor standpoint. The type of money Fortress is looking for should require a lot of independent due diligence. The Fortress cases that I track have largely been losers in District Court or at the Patent Trial Appeal Board (PTAB). It feels like every week I am seeing a Fortress backed patents killed on a Final Written Decision. The case versus Amazon in the NDNY is progressing pretty well with IPRs denied at the PTAB and a Markman hearing scheduled for April 29, 2021. This portfolio had pretty good success resulting in an 8 figure settlement with Apple when it was still with Marathon Patent Group. I wonder how helpful a litigation and PTAB matrix might be for readers and investors.
With market valuations touching all time highs I don’t see a major rush to make expensive acquisitions, especially in patents, which can take years to monetize. Right now their is a huge window open for patent litigation with the speedy Western District of Texas with HJ Albright who refuses to transfer cases out of his venue and the PTAB who is using the Fintiv ruling to deny Inter Partes Review institution decisions. There is also major anti-big tech sentiment, which is likely contributing to the 9 and 10 figure jury verdicts coming out of Texas. I expect the big tech contingent to start slamming those windows shut.
In other news I have made major progress in getting a set of patent tools developed, which has enabled this newsletter to grow and build more data. I expect the newsletter format, data, and information to continually evolve as more tools are finished and brought online.