Posts Tagged: "Fortress Investment Group"

Is Unified Patents a War Profiteer?

Is Unified a war profiteer?  Of course, they are. But they are only one cog in the larger worldwide scheme of the most powerful multinational corporations whose goal is to monopolize technologies by destroying patents and innovation. This recklessness to preserve their monopolies has brought utter destruction to our nation’s innovation engine – startups.  

Twisting Facts to Capitalize on COVID-19 Tragedy: Fortress v. bioMerieux

Unfortunately, some simply cannot help themselves but to use every opportunity – real or imagined – to take a cheap shot at a patent owner for having the audacity to seek to enforce patent rights, so it should come as no surprise that false and misleading reports would surface in the life sciences world relating to the latest coronavirus (named SARS-CoV-2) and the disease it causes (named “coronavirus disease 2019” abbreviated COVID-19). It was only a matter of time. The true story begins in 2018, when Fortress Investment Group acquired the patent assets of Theranos Inc. Fast forward to March 9, 2020, when Labrador Diagnostics LLC filed a patent infringement lawsuit against BioFire Diagnostics, LLC and bioMerieux S.A., asserting U.S. Patent No. 8,283,155 and U.S. Patent No. 10,533,994, patent assets acquired by Fortress Investment Group from Theranos. This patent infringement lawsuit was not directed to testing for COVID-19, and instead focuses on activities by the defendants over the past six years that are not in any way related to COVID-19 testing.

Subsequently, two days after being sued for infringing the ‘155 patent and the ‘994 patent, on March 11, 2020, bioMerieux announced the forthcoming launch of three different tests “to address the COVID-19 epidemic and to meet the different needs of physicians and health authorities in the fight against this emerging infectious disease.”

Marathon Patent restructuring will put Fortress subsidiary in charge of patent monetization

Marathon is transferring certain parts of its intellectual property portfolio to newly created special-purpose entities (SPEs), which would give greater control over patent monetization strategies to a financial partner of Marathon… DBD’s parent company Fortress Investment Group LLC, who has been making interesting forays into patent licensing operations in recent years. Marathon is only one of several patent monetization companies in which Fortress made investments through its DBD subsidiary.

Partner-up: Risk-sharing provides patent holders better monetization opportunities

Lenders and investors like Gerchen Keller and Fortress, among others, have provided capital to or are partnering with private and public NPEs. These business are well suited to assessing market conditions, especially value, and calculating risk for given rights in a specific industry. That they are still willing to fund activities and co-invest in this climate is a testament to the durability of good patents. Also, there is some expectation that we are at or near bottom, and that there are more opportunities now.

Can New Patent Monetization Models Save American Innovators?

It has been several generations since Congress has enacted changes to the patent laws that gave greater rights to innovators, the Supreme Court today is reminiscent of Courts in the past that had never seen a patent that contained valid claims, and the Federal Circuit is infatuated with de novo review and willingness to rubber stamp invalidity decisions parroting the Supreme Court’s intellectually dishonest and logically inconsistent tests. In the wake of all of this uncertainty and outright vilification of inventors and the patent system, there are some in the licensing and monetization industry who are trying to bring meaningful financial innovations to the fore. For the foreseeable future, given the reality of a completely dysfunctional federal government and judges more interested in being legislators, we can hope that thought leaders with new patent monetization models can provide a solution that will keep innovators inventing and society benefitting from the fruits of their labors.