March 30, 2021 Patents by Numbers
There were 6,930 new patents issued at the US Patent Office, not counting the Design and Reissue patents. There were 3,401 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. Intellipharmaceutics Corp. comes in number one with 5,436 days from filing to issuance.
The top ten shortest time to patent grant for the week was between 90 and 105 days. Well done to the teams!
Some Top Patent Stories of the week:
Acacia Research Group ($ACTG) reported Q4 and FY 2020 Results and Update. Acacia is quickly becoming my largest stock position with some safety from the ever increasing book value, the appreciation in value from the former Woodford biotech assets including Oxford Nanopore, and the patent litigation which no one is covering. Acacia subsidiary’s had 2 Markman Opinions issued in Q1 2021 which went mostly in their favor versus Cisco, Micron, HP, and Dell. Their subsidiary Monarch Networking knocked out 3 Inter Partes Reviews at the PTAB filed by Cisco. Jury Trial is scheduled for early June 2021 in EDTX. Acacia subsidiary’s also filed 15 new patent cases in Q1 2021. Lastly the company acquired 200+ patents from NEWRACOM.
The Parkervision ($PRKR) v Qualcomm ($QCOM) trial scheduled for July 2021 will be moved to later this year or sometime in 2022. The company also announced a $3.6M capital raise. HJ Byron is not very happy with either party’s litigation tactics in the Order filed on March 26, 2021.
Network-1 ($NTIP) released Q4 and FY 2020 Results and also provided an update. I am glad to see the Cisco contract dispute was resolved with a $18.6M payment being made, which should be reflected in the Q1 2021 Results. The long running case versus HP continues to be briefed in EDTX after the remanded opinion at the Federal Circuit. The case versus Google continues to drag on with SJ briefing completed and a Markman Order that continues to stay outstanding. It was held November 21, 2019 with the Judge indicating it will be resolved at the same time as Summary Judgment.
My friends at IAM Magazine have updated coverage on the upcoming patent portfolio sale from BlackBerry ($BB).
A few new patent grants to report for the week:
Hyliion Inc. ($HYLN) was issued patent 10,960,773 “Motor vehicle accessory to increase power supply and reduce fuel requirements”. This is a continuation patent with a priority date going back to May 2015.
Interdigital ($IDCC) had a solid week of patent grants with 6 new patents granted.
Nikola Corp ($NKLA) was issued patent 10,960,783 “Communication systems and methods for hydrogen fueling and electric charging” with coinventors from Nel Hydrogen A/S from Denmark. A continuation patent related to fueling hydrogen or electric powered vehicles.
Tesla ($TSLA) was issued two patents this week:
10,964,502 - “Electromagnetic switch with stable moveable contact” a continuation patent with a priority back to December 2012.
10,965,728 - “Method and system for aggregating and converting sensor data streams” a parent patent that claims priority from October 2018. Of note 3 out of the 4 named inventors are no longer at Tesla. One became head of electrical at Anduril Industries with the other two accepting high level positions at Intel.
Thank you for reading and the continued support.