Plaintiff
3 cases as plaintiff.
The Foundry, LLC (commonly "The Foundry") is a privately held medical-device incubator headquartered at 4040 Campbell Avenue, Suite 110, Menlo Park, California. Founded in 1998 by Allan Will and Hanson S. Gifford III, it is run by managing partners including Gifford and Mark Deem. It is venture-backed (New Enterprise Associates, Morgenthaler, Lightstone Ventures, among others) and small — roughly 20–25 employees per Crustdata; PitchBook reports about $5M raised, and no public revenue figure is available.
Operations. The Foundry does not sell its own products; it invents and develops new medical-device companies, providing product development, prototyping, regulatory affairs, intellectual property, and early funding. Since 1998 it has formed 20+ startups, including Evalve (MitraClip, acquired by Abbott), Ardian (renal denervation, acquired by Medtronic), Concentric Medical (Stryker), Cierra (Terumo), Emphasys Medical (Pulmonx), Twelve (Medtronic's Intrepid valve), Half Moon Medical, FIRE1, and Aerin Medical, which markets the VivAer and RhinAer devices for nasal airway obstruction and chronic rhinitis. Aerin is the exclusive licensee of the Foundry-owned patents at issue in the tracked cases.
Patent-litigation posture. The Foundry is an active two-way litigant in a single dispute. It appears as co-plaintiff (with Aerin) in Aerin Medical Inc. et al. v. Neurent Medical Inc. et al., filed July 11, 2023, in the District of Delaware, asserting eight patents covering RF-energy devices for treating nasal airways against Neurent's Neuromark system for chronic rhinitis. It appears as patent-owner defendant in two PTAB inter partes reviews (IPR2024-00279, IPR2024-00280, filed January 18, 2024) that Neurent brought against Foundry-owned patents in the same family.
Notable context. The PTAB instituted review of essentially all asserted patents, and the district court action was stayed pending the IPRs. Final written decisions in July 2025 found certain Foundry-owned claims unpatentable as obvious (e.g., U.S. Patent No. 10,610,675), and the patent owner filed a notice of appeal in September 2025. Aerin also statutorily disclaimed the '597 and '194 patents. The case centers on technology developed by Foundry inventors (including Deem and Gifford) with priority dating to the mid-2000s.
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Aerin and The Foundry asserted eight patents, including the '077 patent, against Neurent's NEUROMARK nasal-airway treatment device. The case was stayed after PTAB instituted IPR2024-00669 and was consolidated with related matters; counterclaims and motions to dismiss were pending.
Aerin and Foundry sued Neurent in Delaware alleging infringement of eight patents, including the '286 patent, by Neurent's NEUROMARK System. The case was stayed pending IPR final written decisions; after the PTAB invalidated the '286 claims and Aerin appealed, the current docket posture was unconfirmed.
The Foundry, LLC appealed PTAB decisions in IPR2024-00279, IPR2024-00280, and IPR2024-00669. The Federal Circuit dismissed the consolidated appeals by order dated August 27, 2026, under Fed. R. App. P. 42(b).