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Start-up Blyncsy risks clash with Apple, Google over coronavirus contact tracing app royalties

  • Utah-based Blyncsy says it has exclusive business rights to the use of electronic devices for tracing people with Covid-19
  • But the company faces a serious uphill battle if it tries to protect the patent, practitioners say

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3D printed coronavirus model and Google logo are placed near an Apple Macbook Pro in this illustration taken April 12, 2020. Photo: Reuters
Bloomberg
A Utah-based start-up says it has exclusive business rights to the use of smartphones and other electronic devices for tracing people who have come into contact with a person with Covid-19, setting up a potential patent-infringement battle with some of the biggest technology companies.

Blyncsy, which describes itself as a “movement and data intelligence” company headquartered in Salt Lake City, holds the business method patent for “tracking proximity relationships and uses thereof” by identifying the movements of people with a contagious disease, chief executive officer Mark Pittman said.

Blyncsy (pronounced BLINK-see) won the patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office in February 2019. It recently launched a website for other companies to request licensing of its contact tracing methods. No company has received a license, yet plenty are offering contact-tracing apps, Pittman said.

But the company faces a serious uphill battle if it tries to protect the patent, practitioners say. Tech giants like Apple and Alphabet, the parent of Google, which both offer contact tracing tools via mobile phone apps, aggressively seek to get patents cancelled through the USPTO and are even more relentless in court. The type of patent Pittman has could be vulnerable under a 2015 Supreme Court ruling that limited the types of software that can be patented.

Even if it got to a court battle, it would come just as the federal and state governments are getting their contact tracing programs running.

Blyncsy’s home state of Utah, for example, has a contact tracing app called “Healthy Together” through which residents self-report their health status on a daily basis, and which has received praise from the White House.

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