TSA Ordered to Pay $100 Million for Patent Infringement

As the Washington Post notes,

Twenty months into the health crisis, travelers are eager for in-person celebrations far from home with family and friends. The number of people expected to fly this holiday season will approach pre-pandemic levels, airline officials say. On Saturday, the Transportation Security Administration said it screened more than 2.24 million people on Friday — the highest number since the beginning of the pandemic.

Anyone traveling via commercial airliner must pass through a security checkpoint, and these checkpoints often create frustrating bottlenecks and delays.

One company’s patented attempt to mitigate such delays has yielded a giant damages award.

The Court of Federal Claims has awarded a federal contractor over $100 million in damages for patent infringement by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

SecurityPoint Holdings, Inc. (“SecurityPoint”) was the plaintiff. It owns a method patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,888,460, for a system of recycling trays through security screening checkpoints by use of movable carts.

As the court noted, the purpose of the patent is to provide:

a cost effective way of providing security trays for a security checkpoint while at the same time generating revenue from the advertising that is contained thereon. Further, the present system provides an efficient system for moving the trays for use and removal after they are used. Security checkpoints are both a time consuming and frustrating part of traveling for frequent fliers and people on vacation alike. The present invention provides a system of speeding up the process of processing people through these checkpoints to decrease the likelihood of delays for travelers. The present invention also has the advantage of increasing passenger flow through checkpoints and increasing traveler satisfaction due to the lack of delays.

The patent application was initially rejected as obvious, but the rejection was overcome by the inclusion of additional language.

The patent discloses a method comprising:

1. positioning a first tray cart containing trays at the proximate end of a scanning device through which objects may be passed, wherein said scanning device comprises a proximate end and a distal end,
2. removing a tray from said first tray cart,
3. passing said tray through said scanning device from said proximate end through to said distal end,
4. providing a second tray cart at said distal end of said scanning device,
5. receiving said tray passed through said scanning device in said second tray cart, and
6. moving said second tray cart to said proximate end of said scanning device so that said trays in said second cart be passed through said scanning device at said proximate end.

Step “f” was the one that was added after the initial rejection.

The patent, which includes the idea of ads on trays, was picked as a “Stupid Patent of the Month” by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The patent was issued in 2005. The plaintiff sued in 2011, alleging that the United States,

acting by and through the TSA, operates and controls security screening at security checkpoints at more than four hundred airports throughout the United Sates and utilizes carts, trays, and scanning devices at these checkpoints in a manner that infringes one or more of the claims of the ‘460 patent at all or most of the airports under its control.

28 U.S.C. § 1498(a) provides patent owners an exclusive remedy for “reasonable and entire compensation” against the US government by suing in the Court of Federal Claims.

The US admitted that it had, in fact, infringed the patent at 10 airports since 2008.

The CEO of plaintiff SecurityPoint offered the TSA a license to use the patent in exchange for granting his company the exclusive right to advertise on the trays, but the TSA refused.

Since the US admitted liability, it was just up to the court to determine the amount of damages, which it calculated at $103.6 million.