
Company claims exclusive rights to using smartphones to trace Covid-19 contacts - grahamburger
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/05/04/utah-company-claims/
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tssva
The tracking apps Google and Apple will allow to use their implementations
will be developed by the individual states, federal government or contractors
working at their behest. The states enjoy immunity from patent infringement
and most other lawsuits thanks to the 11th amendment. Courts have in general
extended protection to contractors working on behalf and at the request of the
government. The federal government is not exempt from being sued for patent
infringement but the courts have limited such claims to the purchasing of
commercial products which violate a patent versus the government violating a
patent directly. This would leave Apple and Google as really the only 2
potential targets of any patent infringement suit.

Reading through the claims in the patent it isn't clear they apply to a
decentralized system such as Apple and Google have developed. Even if the
claims do apply I suspect the submitting of any infringement suit would result
in legislation indemnifying them from any such claims.

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vikramkr
Here's the patent:

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170352119A1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170352119A1/en)

No clue what the patent office was smoking when they granted it, or how
exactly this is supposed to be novel or nonobvious.

Here's some stuff published before 2016 that looks like it should pretty
easily prior art this patent:
[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/projects/archive...](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/projects/archive/fluphone/)

[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26681710/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26681710/)

