COMTek Tags Samsung Over Data-Dump Security Solutions – Intellectual Property

United States:

COMTek Tags Samsung Over Data-Dump Security Solutions

Communication Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a COMTek) has filed a
second complaint over a single patent broadly directed to a script
for automating the removal of information from a computing system.
This one, filed in the Eastern District of Texas against
Samsung (
2:21-cv-00444), targets features for erasing all data after a
determined set of unsuccessful attempts to enter a passcode, within
certain Samsung devices (i.e., Galaxy-series phones and
tablets, as well as Tizen-series products) that support its Knox
mobile security solution and/or Knox Tizen Wearable operating
system (Wear OS). Litigation against the first defendant in this
campaign, Citrix Systems, was dismissed with
prejudice from the District of Massachusetts after roughly five
uneventful months.

The asserted patent (
6,725,444) issued in April 2004 with an estimated priority date
in December 2000. Joseph E. Fergus is the patent’s sole named
inventor; Fergus assigned the asset, during prosecution, to COMTek,
which appears to have provided IT services from its formation, by
Fergus, in Virginia in 1990 through early 2019. In late 2020, the
company’s website bore a 2009 copyright, archived press
releases through 2010, and noted government contracts, the most
recent of which appeared to have lapsed in April 2019. (COMTek
appears to have other government contracts with end dates that have
yet to pass.) The message…