The Connecticut-based data security company, Protegrity Corporation, continued its aggressive stance regarding its data protection patent portfolio this month. On June 6, Protegrity sued Gazzang, Inc., a competitor data security company based in Austin, Texas, in the Connecticut federal district court. This suit marks the fourteenth patent infringement complaint that Protegrity has brought in Connecticut in the last fourteen months.
Notably, the case against Gazzang marks a departure from Protegrity’s typical complaint. In each of the previous thirteen cases, Protegrity asserted two particular data security-related patents. In the Gazzang case, however, Protegrity switched tactics. It chose instead to assert a different patent: U.S. Patent No. 7,305,707, titled “Method for Intrusion Detection in a Database System.” This patent’s claim to fame, according to its abstract, is that it allows for, “real time prevention of [database] intrusion by letting the intrusion detection process interact directly with the access control system . . .”
As the case is in its early stages, it remains to be seen whether Protegrity’s change-up in the patent that it chose to assert is an aberration, or whether this marks some greater change in Protegrity’s patent litigation strategy. Stay tuned!