Check Point seen vulnerable on IP front

The network security company’s main patents are about to expire.

14 November 2013, Shmulik Shelach and Shiri Habib-Valdhorn

A new book, “True Patent Value” by Larry Goldstein, an expert in technology patents, reveals a possible weak point in the strategy of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) – a leader in IT security and the company that essentially created the industry in the mid-1990s – for protecting itself from patent lawsuits.

Check Point’s first and most important patent, written by founder, chairman and CEO Gil Shwed in 1993 (no. 5606668), is due to expire in February 2014. Around the same time, another patent (no. 5835726, on which Shwed is co-signatory with Shlomo Kramer and Nir Zuk, both of whom are now his rivals), will also expire. Goldstein says that these developments are liable to leave Check Point in an inferior position in terms of patent protection.

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