Litigation

Skysong Innovations, LLC v. Fortinet, Inc.

2:25-cv-00098

Patents at issue (1)

11275900PTAB: discretionary denial

Defendants (1)

Summary

The complaint was filed around May 2025, at the same time as the litigation against CrowdStrike. The current status of this case is not specified in the available information.

Case overview & background

Plain-language overview of the case: parties, accused product, patents at issue, and why the suit matters.

Skysong Innovations, LLC, a non-profit organization and the exclusive intellectual property management and technology transfer arm of Arizona State University (ASU), has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Fortinet, Inc.. Skysong Innovations' mission is to facilitate the rapid dissemination of ASU discoveries and inventions into the marketplace, partnering with industry and investors to commercialize innovations, including those related to information technology and software. Fortinet, Inc. is a major American cybersecurity company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, known for developing and selling a range of security products such as firewalls, endpoint security, and intrusion detection systems, with its core product being the FortiGate line of next-generation firewalls and the integrated Fortinet Security Fabric platform.

The complaint, filed on January 31, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleges that Fortinet's Security Fabric technology infringes on U.S. Patent No. 11,275,900. The patents asserted by Skysong Innovations in related litigation, and broadly described in relation to this case, generally involve "game-theory based methods to model an attacker based on exploit market data actively mined from the darknet to develop strategies for the defender". This case is one of several similar lawsuits filed by Skysong Innovations targeting cybersecurity firms for alleged infringement of university AI patents, including a parallel action against CrowdStrike, Inc..

The case is proceeding in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, before District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. The Eastern District of Texas is a prominent venue for patent litigation, often referred to as a "rocket docket" due to its reputation for quickly adjudicating patent cases and its historical plaintiff-friendly verdicts. Key dates in the current procedural posture include a Markman Hearing set for May 12, 2026, a Pretrial Conference for September 28, 2026, and Jury Selection scheduled for November 2, 2026. This litigation is notable as it represents a university-linked entity asserting patents against significant players in the cybersecurity industry, potentially impacting how cyber threat detection and defense technologies are developed and licensed within the sector. While the specific technical sketch for patent 11,275,900 is not detailed in the provided search results beyond the general "dark net information analysis" and "game theoretic cyber threat detection," the case highlights ongoing intellectual property disputes in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

Key legal developments & outcome

Major rulings, motions, claim construction, settlements, and the present posture or final disposition.

The patent infringement litigation Skysong Innovations, LLC v. Fortinet, Inc. (2:25-cv-00098) in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas is active, with key events scheduled for later in 2026.

Here's a chronological overview of the key legal developments:

Filing & Initial Pleadings:

  • January 31, 2025: Skysong Innovations, LLC filed a complaint against Fortinet, Inc., alleging patent infringement of U.S. Patent No. 11,275,900.
  • February 3, 2025: The case was assigned to District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. Summons was issued to Fortinet, Inc.
  • February 4, 2025: Skysong Innovations, Inc. filed its Fed. R. Civ. P. 7.1(a)(1) Disclosure Statement.
  • February 25, 2025: Fortinet, Inc. was served.
  • March 5, 2025: Skysong Innovations, Inc. filed an unopposed motion for an extension of time for Fortinet to file its answer.
  • March 10, 2025: The Court granted the motion, extending the deadline for Fortinet's answer to May 19, 2025.
  • May 19, 2025: Fortinet, Inc. filed its Answer to the Complaint for Patent Infringement and asserted counterclaims for non-infringement and invalidity of U.S. Patent No. 11,275,900.
  • May 30, 2025: The Court issued a Docket Control Order setting key dates, including a Markman Hearing, Pretrial Conference, and Jury Selection.

Pre-trial Motions of Substance:

  • There is no indication in the provided information of motions to dismiss or transfer filed by Fortinet, Inc. for this specific case as of the current date.

Claim Construction (Markman) Outcomes:

  • A Markman Hearing was scheduled for May 12, 2026, before District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. As of today, May 16, 2026, the outcome of this hearing, such as a Claim Construction Order, is not yet publicly available in the provided search results.

Discovery Milestones:

  • June 13, 2025: A Discovery Order was signed by District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. No further strategically significant discovery milestones are identified in the provided information.

Trial Events, Verdict, and Post-trial Motions:

  • A Pretrial Conference is scheduled for September 28, 2026, at 9:00 AM.
  • Jury Selection is set for November 2, 2026, at 9:00 AM before District Judge Rodney Gilstrap.

Settlement, Dismissal, Judgment, or Appeal:

  • The case is currently active and proceeding towards trial. While one search snippet mentioned a "Status: Closed", this contradicts the detailed Docket Control Order with future scheduled events in late 2026, indicating the case remains ongoing.

Parallel PTAB IPR/PGR Proceedings:

  • August 25, 2025: CrowdStrike Inc., a defendant in a related case filed by Skysong Innovations, LLC, filed an Inter Partes Review (IPR) petition, IPR2025-01398, challenging U.S. Patent No. 11,275,900 B2. The status and outcome of this specific IPR proceeding, and whether it has directly impacted the Skysong Innovations v. Fortinet litigation, are not detailed in the provided information beyond its filing date. While another IPR (IPR2025-01397) by CrowdStrike challenging U.S. Patent No. 10,313,385 was mentioned with a preliminary response filed on August 15, 2025, the immediate impact of IPR2025-01398 on the Fortinet litigation is not specified. There is no information about any IPRs initiated directly by Fortinet, Inc. against patent 11,275,900.

In the news

What the press has reported about this case, summarized with links to the source articles.

Press & analyst coverage

Press coverage of Skysong Innovations v. Fortinet is thin and specialist. The most substantive published account I located is a law-firm analysis syndicated through Mondaq on 2025-05-09, headlined "Another University-Linked Plaintiff Files Suit, This One Launching Cybersecurity Litigation In Texas." It reports that Skysong — "the exclusive intellectual property management and technology transfer organization for Arizona State University" — filed a W.D. Tex. complaint against CrowdStrike (7:25-cv-00040) and an E.D. Tex. complaint against Fortinet (2:25-cv-00098) on the same day, targeting "the provision of the CrowdStrike Falcon Platform and the Fortinet Security Fabric." According to that piece, four patents were asserted across the two suits — U.S. Nos. 10,313,385; 11,275,900; 11,775,831; and 11,892,897 — and the Arizona Board of Regents transferred them to Skysong just two days before filing (2025-01-29). It identifies the inventors as ASU personnel and students, with Paulo Shakarian, an ASU Fulton Schools associate professor of "Computing and AI," named on all but the '831 patent, and Jae-Sun Seo (Cornell Tech, adjunct at ASU) as lead inventor on the '831 patent. The article also notes that Skysong pleaded awareness of the patents "since at least the filing" of the complaints and did not plead any prior licensing history with either defendant, and that Key Kesan Dallmann PLLC of Washington, D.C., filed the complaints. No damages figure, settlement, or market-impact number appears in this account.

The other outlet covering the dispute is the patent-and-antitrust blog ip fray, which published "Skysong sues Fortinet, CrowdStrike at UPC over shared AI vulnerability-scoring patent." Its summary frame is that the ASU licensing arm sued both companies in the Unified Patent Court on the same day over a "shared AI vulnerability-scoring patent," that the Fortinet action pulls in "the operators of the widely used Exploit Prediction Scoring System," and that the CrowdStrike UPC case uses CrowdStrike's EU cloud plans to plead threatened infringement, all while "its parallel Texas cases near trial." That is a materially broader picture than the district-court record summarized in the earlier sections: it depicts a transatlantic enforcement campaign and a multi-defendant patent family rather than the single-patent E.D. Tex. action described in the case metadata. I could not confirm the ip fray article's publication date or retrieve the article's own URL from the search results (only its category-page listings surfaced), so that date should be treated as unverified.

Beyond those two, I found no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, Ars Technica, The Verge, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, or EFF Deeplinks article about the Fortinet case specifically. Law360 tracks the litigation in its attorney/docket database (listing both the January 31, 2025 E.D. Tex. patent case and a June 5, 2026 Arizona miscellaneous action, Skysong Innovations LLC v. Fortinet Incorporated, 2:26-mc-00013), and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists the '900 patent as asserted in the CrowdStrike case, but neither is editorial coverage of the Fortinet dispute. The trade press that has engaged the matter has therefore focused on the university-tech-transfer angle and the parallel CrowdStrike/UPC filings rather than on Fortinet-specific developments — and there appears to be no reporting at all on claim construction, the scheduled November 2, 2026 trial, or any settlement talks.

Two caveats about the press accounts. First, the Mondaq article's statement that "four patents" are in suit conflicts with the case metadata's single-patent framing for Fortinet (U.S. 11,275,900); the PTAB papers in the parallel CrowdStrike IPRs corroborate the broader reading, since Skysong's patent-owner preliminary response states that the '897 patent "is also asserted against Fortinet, Inc." in the E.D. Tex. case — meaning the metadata's patent list is likely incomplete rather than the press being wrong. Second, the ip fray summary goes beyond the court record in characterizing the strategic motive (using CrowdStrike's EU cloud plans to manufacture threatened-infringement standing at the UPC); that is analyst inference, not a court finding, and no source I found quotes Skysong, Fortinet, or CrowdStrike executives, discloses a damages demand, or reports on licensing negotiations.

Sources

Plaintiff representatives

Counsel of record for the plaintiff(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

Based on available information, the counsel of record representing Skysong Innovations, LLC in Skysong Innovations, LLC v. Fortinet, Inc. (2:25-cv-00098) includes the following attorney:

  • Jay P. Kesan
    • Role: Lead Counsel
    • Firm: Key Kesan Dallmann PLLC, Washington D.C.
    • Relevant Experience: Jay P. Kesan is noted as "Lead Counsel for Patent Owner". Key Kesan Dallmann PLLC filed the complaints for Skysong in this case and a parallel litigation against CrowdStrike.

Defendant representatives

Counsel of record for the defendant(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

Here is the counsel of record representing Fortinet, Inc. in Skysong Innovations, LLC v. Fortinet, Inc., Case No. 2:25-cv-00098:

  • Lindsay Cooper Hayman

    • Role: Lead Counsel (appeared Pro Hac Vice)
    • Firm: Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, San Francisco, CA
    • Experience: A litigation partner specializing in high-stakes, complex intellectual property and commercial litigation for technology companies, with extensive trial experience in patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation cases for clients such as Google, NVIDIA, and Samsung.

  • Andrew Dale Gish

    • Role: Lead Counsel
    • Firm: Gish PLLC, New York, NY (with a practice frequently litigating in the Eastern District of Texas)
    • Experience: Focuses on technically complex patent and trade secret matters, including patent infringement cases involving networking security. He has achieved favorable outcomes in claim construction and secured dismissals in patent litigation.

  • John M. Neukom

    • Role: Lead Counsel (admitted in the Eastern District of Texas)
    • Firm: Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, San Francisco, CA
    • Experience: A partner in the IP Litigation Group who joined Debevoise in 2022, he has a strong background in patent litigation and has worked on high-profile cases.

No specific attorney explicitly designated as "local counsel" for Fortinet from a firm based solely in the Eastern District of Texas has been identified from the available information; however, John M. Neukom is noted as being admitted in the Eastern District of Texas.