Coinbase Sued by Veritaseum Over Patent Infringement Seeking $350 Million in Damages
Less than two months after they released the Q2 financial results for 2022, Coinbase received news last Thursday that they were sued by Veritaseum, alleging patent infringement and requesting $350 million in damages. As a result, the second quarter results showed a loss of $1.10 billion compared to a loss of $430 million in the first quarter and a positive net income of $1.61 billion in the second quarter of 2021.
Veritaseum, in a notable case, paid the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission $9.4 million, settling charges of an alleged fraudulent scheme. SEC accused them of misleading investors about the demand for the VERI tokens and artificially manipulating their price. Veritaseum settled, waiving appeal rights without denying or admitting the charges.
In this lawsuit, Veritaseum mentions its CEO and his work in novel devices, systems, and methods enabling parties with little trust or no trust in each other to enter into and enforce value transfer agreements conditioned on input from or participation of a third party, over arbitrary distances, without special technical knowledge of the underlying transfer mechanism. For this invention, he was awarded a Patent by the USPTO, US11196566, published on Dec., 7, 2021. On this day, the price of the VERI coin increased several times from the average of $25 and reached as high as $182.5 on December 27.
By offering the services through their website, Veritaseum alleges that Coinbase infringes several claims of this patent. In the complaint, it’s argued that Coinbase has made substantial profits due to this infringement, and therefore, Veritaseum requests $350 million in compensation from one of the world's largest platforms for trading cryptocurrency.
Veritaseum is being represented by Rick S. Miller of Ferry Joseph P.a., and Carl I. Brundidge & David E. Moore of Brundidge & Stanger, P.C.