Digital Ally, Inc. (NASDAQ: DGLY) rose Monday after the company reported that the U.S. Patent Office has denied Axon's request to invalidate a Digital Ally patent.
Digital Ally, based in Lenexa, Kansas, develops, manufactures and markets advanced video surveillance products for law enforcement, homeland security and commercial applications, and called the ruling a major victory in its legal battles against Axon Enterprise, Inc.
To date, Axon has filed an ex parte reexamination challenge and four different inter partes review ("IPR") challenges against Digital Ally’s patents with the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. Axon’s desperate attempts to have Digital’s patents invalidated have all been unsuccessful.
Over two years ago and before releasing its Axon Signal product, Axon began its campaign to try to invalidate Digital’s patents. The Axon Signal product contains the technology at the heart of Digital’s patents and of the patent infringement lawsuit Digital Ally filed against Axon.
Its first attempt, an ex parte reexamination, failed. Axon then filed four separate IPR challenges against Digital Ally’s Patent Nos. 8,781,292 (the ‘292’ Patent) and 9,253,452 (the ‘452’ Patent).
The Patent Office rejected both petitions against the ‘452 Patent and one of the petitions against the ‘292 Patent. Further, on June 1, Axon lost again on the last IPR challenging the ‘292 Patent. In that decision the Patent Office disagreed with every argument of Axon, found all challenged claims of the ‘292 Patent valid, and noted that Axon “has not demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that the challenged claims are unpatentable.”
DGLY shares were trading up 15 cents, or 5.7%, to $2.80, Monday.
