Name: Blyncsy’s Patent On Contact Tracing Isn’t A Medical Breakthrough, It’s A Patent Breakdown
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Blyncsy’s Patent On Contact Tracing Isn’t A Medical Breakthrough, It’s A Patent Breakdown

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Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItContact tracing is critical for limiting the spread of a contagion like COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean it’s inventive to compare people’s locations using their smartphones. Rather, it’s all the more important to protect the basic methods of public health from bogus patent claims.The CDC contact tracing for close contacts of any “confirmed or probable” COVID-19 patients. But doing the job has been left to state and local public health officials.&nbsp;In addition to traditional contact tracing by public health workers, some are using “proximity apps” to track when people are near one another. These apps . And they can’t be a substitute for contact tracing done by public health workers. But, if used carefully, such apps could be a useful complement to traditional contact tracing.&nbsp;&nbsp;Unless someone with an absurdly broad patent stops them. In April, while many states were still under the first set of shelter-in-place orders, a Utah company called Blyncsy was building a website to let government agencies know that it wanted to get paid—not for giving them any product, but simply for owning a patent they’d managed to get issued in 2019. In and its own press release, Blyncsy said that anyone doing cellphone-based contact tracing would need to license its patent, U.S. Patent No. , “Tracking proximity relationships and uses thereof.”&nbsp;By September, Blyncsy had begun from states that released contact tracing apps, including Pennsylvania, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia.&nbsp;&nbsp;“State governments have taken it upon themselves to roll out a solution in their name in which they’re using our property without compensation,” Blyncsy CEO Mark Pittman told Wired.&nbsp;The developer behind North Dakota and Wyoming’s contact tracing apps told Wired that Blyncsy’s threatened patent battle could “put a freeze on new states rolling out apps.”&nbsp;Given Blyncsy’s $1 per person price point, a state like Virginia, with more than 8 million residents, would be vastly overpaying for contact tracing technology. That state’s app cost $229,000 to develop.&nbsp;&nbsp;Unfortunately, our patent system encourages the acquisition and use of bad patents like the one owned by Blyncsy. The company’s patent essentially claims technology that’s well over a century old, and could be performed with pencil and paper. Simply adding a smartphone into the works—a “mobile computing device,” as Blyncsy’s patent describes it—doesn’t make the patent valid.&nbsp;&nbsp;And the patent’s primary claim doesn’t have any technology in it at all. It’s a pure “business method” patent, except that the only business it appears to support is demanding money from state public health departments. Simplifying the language of Claim 1, it describes:&nbsp;That’s just contact tracing, a process that has been done with simple writing and human interviews since at least the mid-19th century. In a famous breakthrough for the field of epidemiology, British doctor John Snow near London to a specific water pump on Broad Street.&nbsp;Patent documents have even more specific descriptions of Blyncsy’s claimed method. Last week, Unified Patents , including a 2003 patent application directed to an “electronic proximity apparatus” that alerts individuals when they are exposed to a contagious disease.Doing research, writing down the results, and trying to figure out how people got sick isn’t a patentable invention—it’s just basic science. The patent’s other claims are no more impressive. The issuance of the Blyncsy patent isn’t a success story, it’s evidence of glaring flaws in our patent system.&nbsp;&nbsp;Too often, patents are issued that don’t embody any innovation. These simply become a 20-year-long invitation for a company to demand payment for the innovation and work of others. Sometimes that’s other companies, and sometimes it’s our own governments. In this case, Blyncsy is trying to make a buck by levying what amounts to a tax—but one that only benefits a single, for-profit company.&nbsp;Unfortunately, we’ve seen patent holders repeatedly try to take advantage of the pandemic. Last year, patent troll Labrador Diagnostics tried to use to sue a real firm making COVID-19 tests. Another patent troll . A health crisis is a time to carefully limit, not expand, the power of patents.&nbsp;Share ItA recently introduced patent bill would authorize patents on abstract ideas just for including computer jargon, and would even legalize the patenting of human genes. EFF wants you to take action against this bill.Finding people near you with shared interests, and talking to them, has a very long history in human culture. We’re social animals. We need to find other people close to us to work together with, play games with, and build relationships and families with. Modern online social networks are built...EFF and the the are seeking to unseal a host of court records documenting a patent dispute between Google and Uniloc, a prolific patent litigant.Secrecy pervades the entire record in Uniloc v. Google. When Google filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the parties...The joy of tinkering, making, and sharing is part of the human condition. In modern times, this creative freedom too often is stifled by secrecy as a means of monetization - from non-compete laws to quashing people’s right to repair the products they’ve already paid for.Adam Savage—the maker extraordinaire best...At EFF, we’ve always stood up for the freedom to tinker and innovate. Unfortunately, our patent system doesn’t promote those freedoms. In some areas, like software, it’s causing much more harm than good. And the system is rife with patent trolls: companies that are focused on licensing and litigating patents,...WASHINGTON, D.C.— On Monday, December 6, at 10 am ET, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), standing up for public access to courts and transparency in patent litigation, will urge a panel of judges to unseal documents that a notorious patent troll is trying to hide. At a federal appeals court...The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) grants more than 300,000 patents each year. Some of those patent grants represent genuine new inventions, but many of them don’t. On average, patent examiners have to spend on each application. That’s not enough time to get it right....Through curious conversations with some of the leading minds in law and technology, we explore creative solutions to some of today’s biggest tech challenges. Listen to EFF's podcast, How to Fix the Internet, today.Even people who get sued over patents often can’t figure out who is demanding money from them. We’re glad to see the issue of patent transparency come back to Congress, in the form of a recently introduced bill called the “Pride in Patent Ownership” Act. However, because the bill lacks...Led by a group of senators that spent much of 2019 , the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has agreed to study the “current state of patent jurisprudence.” The make it clear that its proposers...Share It

Email updates on news, actions,and events in your area.DEEPLINKS BLOGShare ItContact tracing is critical for limiting the spread of a contagion like COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean it’s inventive to compare people’s locations using their smartphones. Rather, it’s all the more important to protect the basic methods of public health from bogus patent claims.The CDC contact tracing for close contacts of any “confirmed or probable” COVID-19 patients. But doing the job has been left to state and local public health officials.&nbsp;In addition to traditional contact tracing by public health...

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Blyncsy’s Patent On Contact Tracing Isn’t A Medical Breakthrough, It’s A Patent Breakdown

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