A California company has accused Carl Zeiss Microscopy LLC in White Plains of patent infringement on technology used in Alzheimer”™s research.
Rondevoo Technologies LLC of Pasadena filed the patent infringement case April 29 in U.S. District Court in White Plains.
Zeiss, a U.S. affiliate of the German manufacturer of precision camera lenses, microscopes and other optical products, did not reply to a message asking for its side of the story.
Rondevoo appears to be in the patent monetization business ”“ whereby a company acquires patents, does not make anything, but generates revenue by enforcing its intellectual property rights through litigation.
The company was formed in 2017 and has acquired two dozen patents, according to a 
news article posted last year by RPX Insight, a patent litigation newsletter.
A search of federal court documents database shows Rondevoo has filed 46 patent infringement cases in the past three years. Most of the cases were closed within a few months.
The Zeiss lawsuit is built on three medical imaging and analysis patents that Rendevoo acquired in 2018. The inventors ”“ Dan Cotman, Charles Chubb, Brian Cummings and Yoshyuki Inagaki ”“ were looking for a way to understand the pathology of Alzheimer”™s disease on a cellular level.
The brains of patients with the disease have microscopic clumps and threads of proteins, called plaques and tangles, that block nerve signals. The inventors were looking for a way to measure the fibrous bundles.
From 2006 to 2014, they patented software that recognizes cellular differences on computerized medical images. The software also automatically updates the algorithm to continuously improve accuracy.
“The end result was a sophisticated system ”¦ that could do something that no human could ever hope to achieve,” the complaint states, “find and count every single little fiber living in each plaque and tangle in a patient”™s brain.”
The technology is also useful in other types of medical research, according to the complaint, and in fields such as metallurgy and polymer development.
Rondevoo claims that Zeiss uses the same technology in its ZEN Intellesis imaging products.
The company is asking the court to stop Zeiss from using the technology and to pay damages.
Rondevoo is represented by Seattle attorney Nicholas Ranallo and Todd Brandt of Longview, Texas.
