Defendant
2 cases as defendant.
Centripetal Networks, LLC is a privately held cybersecurity company founded in 2009 and headquartered in the Herndon/Reston, Virginia area. The venture-backed company provides intelligence-driven network security solutions and has an estimated 75-115 employees. Sources have reported its annual revenue in the range of $24 million.
Centripetal operates in the field of proactive cybersecurity. Its main offerings are a service called CleanINTERNET® and a hardware appliance known as the RuleGate® Threat Intelligence Gateway. This system is designed to filter network traffic in real-time by applying rules based on a massive aggregation of threat intelligence data, blocking known threats before they can enter a customer's network. The company states its technology is protected by over 90 U.S. and international patents.
The company is an active patent litigant. The provided data shows an even split between plaintiff and defendant cases, which is characteristic of an operating company asserting its intellectual property against competitors and defending those same patents from challenges. Centripetal has filed its infringement suits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The defensive cases against it are reviews before the USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), a common venue for defendants to challenge patent validity.
Centripetal has been involved in high-stakes litigation against major technology companies. The tracked cases show it suing Keysight Technologies and Palo Alto Networks in January 2022 over its network security patents. In February 2024, a federal jury awarded Centripetal over $150 million in its suit against Palo Alto Networks. While not listed in the tracked cases above, the company also won a significant, multi-billion dollar judgment against Cisco Systems in 2020 in the Eastern District of Virginia, although this ruling was later set aside on appeal for reasons related to judicial conduct.
In a Final Written Decision, the PTAB found claims 1-3, 5-13, and 15-20 unpatentable as obvious, but did not find claims 4 and 14 unpatentable. This decision was appealed to the CAFC.
In a Final Written Decision, the PTAB found claims 1–3, 5–13, and 15–20 to be unpatentable, but determined that the petitioner had not demonstrated that claims 4 and 14 were unpatentable.