Defendant
1 case as defendant.
I'll research 3Shape to verify its profile.
Let me verify the ownership structure and the Align litigation context.
3Shape Inc. is the U.S. affiliate of 3Shape A/S, a Danish dental-technology group headquartered in Copenhagen and founded in 2000 by Tais Clausen and Nikolaj Deichmann. 3Shape is privately held: the founders remain majority shareholders, and Sweden's EQT (EQT IX fund) acquired a 20 percent minority stake in December 2021 at a reported valuation of roughly DKK 22 billion. The company reports more than 2,200 employees across roughly 29 countries; its 2024 annual report cites global revenue of DKK 3.317 billion with about a 40.8 percent EBIT margin. U.S. operations are based in Warren, New Jersey.
Products and operations. 3Shape develops and manufactures 3D scanners and CAD/CAM software for digital dentistry, plus software rooted in its earlier hearing-aid work. Its main lines are the TRIOS family of intraoral scanners (including TRIOS 3, TRIOS 5 Wireless, TRIOS Core and, launched in 2025, TRIOS 6), dental lab scanners, the Dental System and 3Shape Unite software platforms, CBCT imaging, and AI-assisted diagnostic software (Dx Plus). It sells to dental clinics and laboratories in over 100 countries and maintains development sites in Kyiv and production in Poland.
Litigation posture. This is an operating company defensively positioned, not a patent assertion entity. In the tracked data it appears once, as a defendant (0 plaintiff cases), consistent with a competitor dispute rather than a licensing campaign. The single tracked entry is a 2017 case in the District of Delaware, a venue driven by the plaintiff's incorporation, not a plaintiff-friendly NPE forum like the Eastern District of Texas.
Notable case context. Align Technology, Inc. v. 3Shape A/S et al. (D. Del., filed November 14, 2017) was one of six parallel Align suits asserting 26 patents against 3Shape's TRIOS scanners and Dental System software, alongside two ITC Section 337 investigations. 3Shape counterclaimed and separately pressed its own infringement and antitrust claims plus numerous IPR petitions. Related Align proceedings ended favorably for 3Shape at the ITC; the tracked case itself is a fragment of that broader dispute.
Align sued 3Shape entities in the District of Delaware, initially asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,227,850 as one of six pleaded patents. The '850 patent was not carried forward, and the currently asserted patents in the related dispute included U.S. Patent Nos. 9,566,132; 8,545,221; 8,092,215; 7,065,115; and 8,734,149; the final disposition as to the '850 patent was not confirmed.