Technology

Read about Moolah Kicks, the first and only women’s basketball brand with sneakers made to biomechanically fit female athletes.

This edition of Mintz Venture Watch reports on the firm’s VC transaction activity in 2022, including data for Q3 and Q4. Mintz represented issuers and investors in the life sciences, cybersecurity, energy, and other sectors in more than 128 transactions valued at more than $3 billion in 2022.  

Read about Ben Zises, angel investor, fund manager, and founder of SuperAngel.Fund, the fund’s investments in quip and other consumer product companies, and the evolution of the fund.

This issue of MintzTech Connect covers top ways to accelerate the growth of emerging companies, our From the Edge podcast on how to run an effective board meeting, and a spotlight on SuperAngel.Fund and its founder Ben Zises.

Read about Radicle Science, a San Diego AI–driven health tech start-up with a virtual, direct-to-consumer (D2C) clinical trial model designed to validate and predict the effects of health and wellness products.

Read about Adgile Media Group, a national out-of-home (OOH) advertising company that provides delivery vehicle wraps and uses a data platform to track exposure to the ads.

Non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) grabbed mainstream attention in 2021 with news of digital art and collectibles selling for millions. But headlines reporting NFTs selling for millions were short-lived. “Crypto winter” cast a chill across the crypto world – prices and interest in the digital art and images that became synonymous with NFTs plummeted.

We previously discussed which portions of an artificial intelligence/machine-learning (“AI/ML”) platform could be patented or protected under trade secret, such as related to biotech and synthetic biology.  Equally important to the discussion of how to protect components of an AI/ML platform, however, is the extent to which copyright protection may be useful or beneficial to the developer of the platform.  In this post, we explain what can be protected by copyright in an AI/ML platform.  We also explore when it is appropriate to protect portions of AI/ML platforms using a copyright, how to properly enforce copyrights, as well as when to consider using copyright protection over patent or trade secret protection.

Used properly, Open Source Software (OSS) is an excellent tool. It saves your business time and money, enables interoperability of product platforms, and developers love it. But used improperly, it can be financially and operationally devastating. For example, the statutory damages for failure to properly adhere to the OSS copyright notice can be up to $150,000 per act of infringement. Those damages can quickly add up to serious consequences, whether preventing a sale or merger of your company or the destruction of the value of the affected products. Another serious risk is that once OSS is used in your code base and deployed in distributed products, if your tech teams are not monitoring and applying bug fixes, known vulnerabilities become Trojan horses of opportunity for bad actors. The good news is that protecting your company from these types of risks is rather simple. We have outlined below key steps and processes in-house counsel should take to work with your business stakeholders to mitigate these risks.   

Interest in cryptocurrency investments has been increasing at a rapid pace and employers don't want to be left behind. In this webinar, team members from Mintz’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Practice break down key considerations employers face towards designing compensation programs to pay employees in the form of cryptocurrencies.

This issue of MintzTech Connect covers stock vesting in start-up companies and how to write an executive summary for a start-up and includes a spotlight on YUR Inc., a fitness technology company targeted at the gaming community.

Founded by Dilan Shah in 2019, YUR fit is a leader in accessible fitness technology in the gaming space. YUR’s gamified social layer pairs with virtual and augmented reality games to allow gamers to sync health data, such as exercise, sleep, and nutrition. YUR can be used within almost any digital space, allowing gamers to use various wearables and gaming platforms for fitness tracking.

This edition of MintzTech Connect covers the patentability of blockchain and cryptocurrency, SEC Rule 148, a Delaware Supreme Court ruling on the advance waiver of appraisal rights, and Miyoko’s Creamery.

This edition covers the patentability of blockchain and cryptocurrency, SEC Rule 148, a Delaware Supreme Court ruling on the advance waiver of appraisal rights, and Miyoko’s Creamery.

Computer-based inventions – especially in the machine learning (ML), bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence (AI) fields – are susceptible to subject matter eligibility challenges. Subject matter eligibility challenges may prevent a patent application from being granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and may even be asserted to invalidate a patent post-grant. In recent years, the Federal Circuit has implemented a multi-step test to determine whether patent claims would survive a subject matter eligibility challenge.

Frank Gerratana discusses the relationship between blockchain and cryptocurrency and the underlying intellectual property issues and opportunities for patent holders.

Machine learning (ML), bioinformatics, artificial intelligence (AI), and other computational tools have become ubiquitous in the biotech and synthetic biology industries because such technology allows for rapid processing of a large amount of complex data to produce advancements in therapeutics and diagnostics. As the landscape becomes increasingly more competitive, it is important for companies, particularly in the aforementioned industries, to obtain patent protection for their AI-related technology.