Tag Archives: patents

Inventing cutting-edge new technology is only the half of it. Wait – no: let’s not be so categorical…

Cutting-edge new technology that’s oh-my groundbreaking sets in motion a life-cycle that’s probably a lot more complex and long-winded than might at first be imagined by many. Of course, without the invention in the first place there’d be nothing, but without the life-cycle that comes after it, even the most amazing revolutionary technology risks going belly up before it’s even gotten off the ground, never to help humankind in the way it could have. Alternatively, the invention could be at risk of falling into the hands of so-called consumer champions or patent trolls.

Among the many business functions that go into the mentioned life-cycle of new technology is that of patenting. For, alas, the system works whereby, if the new tech’s not patented, you don’t have any rights to it – even though you invented it! And history is full of such examples: the karaoke machine, magnetic stipes on plastic cards, fidget spinners, and a whole load more.

So – patenting. It happens to be by far not the simplest or most accessible of business processes, and it requires lots of expertise and lots of money – especially when you’re global. But that doesn’t make it any less necessary. And since our business at K has always been founded upon new technology, as soon as our bottom line allowed it – we straight away got into patent protection: in 2008 we got our very first patent. Ever since, little by little, we’ve been steadily growing our own patent expertise as much as we could allow ourselves down the years. And quite right too!…

The more successful the business became and the more we expanded around the world – all the more often patent trolls would come after us looking for the easy money. Also – unscrupulous competitors, despite having tech that could hardly compete with us on quality, still weren’t happy allowing customers use our products. Altogether, we were hit with 10 patent actions; nine we won; one is currently being considered. Because we never give in. We fight back – and win!

Overall picture.

The pandemic years and current geopolitical turmoil have of course negatively affected our business on the whole, and that has had a knock-on effect on our patent work – also down. And both past and current events look likely to echo into the future for years. However, that’s no reason to lie low until things get better; just the opposite – it warrants hitting the gas stepping on the proverbial accelerator all the harder! And that’s just what we did in 2022 (2021, btw, is here), despite everything. Let me tell you how…

We finished last year with a portfolio of 1367 patents and 330 patent applications in different countries (including the U.S., the EU, Russia, and China). In 2022 we obtained 123 new patents (including in the U.S. – 51; Russia – 37; China – 24; the EU – 9), and submitted 58 patent applications. But let’s not concentrate just on quantity. Check out the quality too: we’ve been granted patents to ~98% of all our patent applications (in some countries – 100%!), while the world average for companies is somewhere around 50%. Go us!

Our overall patent picture looks like this:

Read on…

Hi folks!

I simply must share this good, no – wonderful – news: we took out the most patents by any Russian-origin company in the U.S.A. in 2021! And we were a real trend-bucker, for in 2021 there was a fall of 7.5% in the number of patents registered in the country.

“In the annual patent ranking analysis published by IFI Claims Direct, Kaspersky has been named the top Russian company patented in the US with 43 patents published in 2021. Throughout its history the company has received 412 patents in the U.S. alone, with more than 1200 patents around the world, including Russia, the EU, China and Japan.”

// Btw: despite the overall fall in the number of patents issued last year, those issued for machine learning and quantum computing rose. This is just as quick reminder, in case you weren’t aware, of where this modern world is heading ).

A big thanks from me to all the team in our IP department. Always working hard, working smart, and working successfully (remember the victories over patent trolls, and the antitrust wins against Microsoft and Apple?). And a big thanks too to our developers who came up with our world-beating technologies in the first place – and that’s no mindless marketing hyperbole: our tech wins in independent tests more than any other. Oh da!

This super news about our patents got me thinking… Why don’t we take a closer look at our 2021 patent successes – not just the how many, but also the which, where, how and when? Yes, why not? After all, my patent-blogposts in the past have been popular. It’ll also be a nice complement to my 2021 review…

All righty. Here we go!…

In 2021 we obtained 137 patents and applied for a further 76. This brings our totals to 1240 patents and 392 applications. Here are those figures added to our historical patent graph:

Read on…

We’ve done it again! For the second time we’re in the Derwent Top 100 Global Innovators – a prestigious list of global companies that’s drawn up based on their patent portfolios. I say prestigious, as on the list we’re rubbing shoulders with companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec and Tencent; also – the list isn’t just a selection of seemingly strong companies patents-wise: it’s formed upon the titanic analytical work of Clarivate Analytics, which sees it evaluate more than 14,000 (!) candidate companies on all sorts of criteria, of which the main one is citation rate, aka ‘influence’. And as if that wasn’t tough enough, in five years the threshold requirement for inclusion in the Top-100 on this criterion has risen some 55%:

In a bit more detail, the citation rate is the level of influence of inventions on the innovations of other companies. For us, it’s how often we’re mentioned by other inventors in their patents. And to be formally mentioned in another company’s patent means you’ve come up with something new and genuinely innovative and helpful, which aids their ‘something new and genuinely innovative and helpful’. Of course, such an established system of acknowledging other innovators – it’s no place for those who come up with mere BS patents. And that’s why none of those come anywhere near this Top-100. Meanwhile, we’re straight in there – in among the top 100 global innovator companies that genuinely move technological progress forward.

Wow, that feels good. It’s like a pat on the back for all our hard work: true recognition of the contributions we’ve been making. Hurray!

Still reeling – glowing! – from all this, ever the curious one, I wondered which, say, five, of our patented technologies are the most cited – the most influential. So I had a look. And here’s what I found…

5^th place – 160 citations: US8042184B1 – ‘Rapid analysis of data stream for malware presence’.

Read on…

Last month was a great month for K-intellectual property. So nice to get such good news to brighten up dull, damp, dreary March days.

But we’ve had other great months IP-wise of late too…

In September of last year, for the second year in a row we were included in the Derwent Top 100 Global Innovators listing, making us the first – and only – Russian company to get onto this meticulously researched list of the world’s 100 most innovative organizations! Hurray!

A few details about this top-100: Every year the independent U.S. company Clarivate Analytics chooses its most innovational companies in the world based on the quality of their patent portfolios. In particular, Clarivate selects its top-100 based on the following four criteria:

1. How successful a company is with its patent applications in actually being granted patents;
2. How global a company’s innovations are;
3. How often a company’s patents are cited elsewhere (in applications of other IT companies); and
4. The total number of patents a company has.

This year eight IT players made the list: Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, Tencent and us! Nice to be rubbing shoulders with such worthy contemporaries!

Now for an update to the numbers of our IP team, who never cease to amaze with their hard work and successful results: Our patent practice was established back in 2005; since then our patent portfolio has grown from 0 to 930+ patents obtained in Russia, the U.S., Europe, China and Japan! Besides, we have more than 500 patent applications pending; we’ve won nine court cases, two are ongoing, and we’ve lost none!

In short, we continue to fight – and beat – patent trolls. Trolls – take note!

That’s all for today folks. See you again tomorrow!…

I couldn’t help but notice the buzz our latest patent news had gotten about our patent lawyers’ amazing win :). So I’m excited to keep the ball rolling with news of another bombshell victory just a few days later…

We reign victorious in a very important patent lawsuit again! This time against Uniloc (the same Uniloc that managed to snake $388 mln from Microsoft). You should know they sued us over the same patent in 2018, but we came out on top.

Recently, during the negotiation process of yet another patent infringement lawsuit filed by Uniloc, we received a message from the company’s representatives that they’re tired of fighting and ready to end this. Meaning: they’re ready to drop the suit if we are. Of course we were, only without the red tape and within the hour. So we drafted a joint statement on the spot for ‘dismissal with prejudice’, which is a final judgement meaning the case is not subject to further action.

Now to get down to brass tacks…

According to Uniloc, the software license and settings management software used in our My Kaspersky license manager was ‘stepping on the toes’ of other patents. My Kaspersky is a web service to remotely renew subscriptions, launch scans, get product reports, and do all sorts of other useful stuff.

Below is a list of the patents containing descriptions of configurable settings for authorized users. The general idea is that a user with several devices who configures their settings on one can then open the product on another and the settings are already saved. All of these patents (with a priority date of 1998) were acquired from IBM. They had 31 respondents, including Akamai, SAP (represented by subsidiary Concur Technologies), Oracle (represented by subsidiary Netsuite), Ubisoft, Tencent (represented by subsidiary Riot Games), and Zendesk.

US6324578
US7069293
US6510466
US6728766

Expert analysis put our potential damages at $7 million, assuming a claim amount of $90 million.

This was a long-haul case starting back in 2016, but it was temporarily put on hold because the patents in one of the claims processes started before us were invalidated. A year later, the United States District Court of Texas confirmed the invalidation of two patents: `766 and `466, but upheld `578 and `293. Regardless, this was still a win for us, even if we were only involved indirectly. It’s important to understand that when patents ‘survive’ the court of appeals, trolls start doubling down on respondents. However, Uniloc withdrew its claims against us, all the while continuing litigation against other companies. This court of appeals decision was one of three key points on our path to victory. We also helped other companies getting sued to formulate their arguments, as we held a stake in their verdicts as well.

The second major point was our case, which Uniloc was already well acquainted with. We had to keep it ironclad to hold up against all their pressure.

And third was an eight-hour face-to-face mediation with the Uniloc team.

Note that Uniloc revoked its claims exactly one week after GBAS closed its case against us. That just goes to show that our reputation as an uncompromising destroyer of dubious patent practice proceeds us. And I couldn’t be happier!

By the way, this was just one of three lawsuits we’ve been tangled up in against Uniloc, all of which ended in our favor — 3:0.

Our overall patent lawsuit score is 9:0 (not counting pre-trial dismissed claims).

1:0 IPAT v Kaspersky
2:0 IPAT v Digital River (indemnity)
3:0 Lodsys v Kaspersky
4:0 Device Security v Kaspersky
5:0 Wetro Lan v Kaspersky
6:0 Uniloc (1) v Kaspersky
7:0 GBAS v Kaspersky
8:0 Uniloc (3) v Kaspersky
9:0 Uniloc (2) v Kaspersky (the lawsuit I’m writing about here).

So there you have it. Don’t bother wasting your time or money.

More: Emulator technology: real crafty malware’s worst nightmare.. . .