Patent Lawsuit Aims at Uncommon Defendant: the US Patent Office

A patent infringement lawsuit filed in late March resembles thousands filed annually: it describes an invention, alleges it was used without permission, and claims the patent owner is entitled to damages.

But unlike most cases, the target isn’t a tech company or other business, but the US Patent and Trademark Office—the very agency that scrutinized and issued the six patents it’s now accused of infringing through two-factor authentication on various agency websites.

The government faces a handful of patent infringement lawsuits each year, but complaints targeting the PTO itself are far more unusual. The lawsuit, from Virginia-based Factor2 Multimedia Systems ...