Defendant
2 cases as defendant.
I'll research this company before writing the profile.
Company overview. SmileCareClub, LLC was a U.S. direct-to-consumer dental/orthodontic startup founded in late 2013 and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded by Doug Hudson (CEO) alongside Jordan Katzman, Alex Fenkell, and David Katzman, and was backed by Camelot Venture Group. It was a private, venture/PE-backed company, not publicly traded. The company rebranded as SmileDirectClub in 2016, and that successor entity (SmileDirectClub, Inc.) later listed on Nasdaq under ticker "SDC" before collapsing; SmileCareClub itself was never a public company. Exact employee and revenue figures for SmileCareClub as a standalone entity are not reliably available — contemporaneous reporting (2015) cited "over 30 employees" and a per-customer treatment price of roughly $1,250, but I could not verify audited revenue or headcount.
Products / services / operations. SmileCareClub was an operating company selling at-home clear dental aligners via a teledentistry model. Customers received a mail-order impression/evaluation kit, then a 3D treatment plan, and were prescribed custom clear plastic aligners, with treatment overseen remotely by a network of affiliated licensed dentists and orthodontists (reportedly ~100 providers across 43 states in early 2015). It also offered retainers and ancillary oral-care products. It is not a patent-assertion entity — it made and shipped physical products.
Patent-litigation posture. SmileCareClub appears in the case data solely as a defendant (3 of 3 cases, 0 as plaintiff) — consistent with an operating company on the receiving end of infringement claims rather than a litigant asserting patents. All tracked cases were brought by Align Technology, Inc. in the Northern District of California (San Jose), not a plaintiff-friendly Texas venue.
Notable cases. The tracked suits stem from Align Technology, Inc. v. SmileCareClub, LLC et al. (N.D. Cal., No. 5:15-cv-04864, filed Oct. 22, 2015), in which Align asserted fourteen patents covering orthodontic treatment planning and aligner manufacturing, plus false-advertising and unfair-competition claims; co-defendants were Camelot SI, LLC (d/b/a SharperImage.com) and Brookstone, Inc. As external context, Align subsequently invested in and took a ~17% stake in the rebranded SmileDirectClub, and those agreements later became the subject of separate antitrust litigation (Snow v. Align Technology, N.D. Cal.).
Align asserted the '037 patent as one of fourteen Align patents against SmileCareClub and related entities. The PTAB's IPR2016-00270 Final Written Decision identifies this action as the litigation involving the '037 patent, but the final disposition was not confirmed in the narrative.
Align Technology sued SmileCareClub, Sharper Image, and Brookstone in N.D. Cal., asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,227,850 as one of fourteen Align patents along with false advertising and unfair competition claims. The final disposition of the case, including as to the '850 patent, was not confirmed in the narrative.