Why We're Making Our Patent Available for Free During COVID-19

October 22, 2020   |

WRITTEN BY HAYTHAM ELHAWARY, CO FOUNDER & CEO

The coronavirus pandemic has changed our everyday lives in very profound ways. It has confined many of us to our homes, and for many others – essential workers for the most part – it has meant working in spite of fears of contagion. In times like this, it is not business as usual. This is why today I’m excited to announce that we are openly pledging our intellectual property, so that others can build on our innovations and bring products to market to help protect our essential workers.

The Open COVID Pledge

I’m pleased to share that KINETIC is committing to the Open COVID Pledge. By opening the use of our patent for the duration of the pandemic, we hope that other companies can use the technology to help provide solutions to keep our essential workers safe. Rather than competing during these times, we understand the need to be working together to get as many solutions to market as possible, in order to save more lives. It’s simply the right thing to do. 

The terms and conditions of our patent license can be found here.

How Our Patent Helps

As a startup building wearable devices to reduce injuries for industrial workers – a workforce traditionally forgotten by tech entrepreneurs – we adapted quickly when Covid-19 struck. Within weeks, our team added safety features to protect workers from the virus – workers who are now recognized as essential and have had a spotlight thrust upon them. Then last month, we were awarded a patent by the U.S. Patent office, number 10,772,538, for our system and method for monitoring safety and productivity of physical tasks. 

The patent broadly covers using a wearable device to perform contact tracing and provide proximity alerts, two primary challenges that impact essential workers’ exposure to Covid-19.

Proximity Alerts

The reduction of close contacts through social distancing is an important part of reducing essential workers’ exposure to the virus. However, inside an industrial facility such as a factory, warehouse, or school, the practice of social distancing is often difficult and disruptive. Our patent covers methods to calculate when workers come into close contact with each other and to provide an alert to create awareness when social distancing is not being practiced.

Contact Tracing

Should a worker, student, or employee test positive for the virus, isolating those people who had close contact for more than 15 minutes is a key containment strategy to reduce the risk of viral spread. Our patent covers methods to provide a contact tracing report by logging all contacts that happen between workers.

By donating this patent to the public domain, other companies can license our patent through Open COVID Pledge, and ensure they have the IP protection to bring technology for proximity alerts and contact tracing to market.

Protecting Essential Workers

Since our inception, Kinetic’s mission has been to use the best technology in the world to serve and improve the lives of our front-line workers. As we face this pandemic, our commitment to this mission has never been stronger. From working to effectively deploy our connected safety devices in facilities across multiple industries, to donating our patented technology to the public domain to accelerate innovative safety solutions – we’re focused on doing our small part to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

Haytham Elhawary

CEO & Cofounder, KINETIC

2019 KINETIC © All rights reserved.

2019 KINETIC © All rights reserved.