A patent troll that has sued more than 80 companies by laying broad claims to Internet-connected "wearables" may be nearing the end of its road.

The patent appeals board at the US Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to reconsider 16 patent claims owned by Sportbrain Holdings, LLC. The Patent Office's decision comes just three days after Sportbrain filed a lawsuit against Apple (PDF). Taking on its highest-profile target yet, Sportbrain claims that the Apple Watch violates US Patent No. 7,454,002, titled "Integrating personal data capturing functionality into a portable computing device and a wireless communication device."

In dozens of lawsuits, Sportbrain's lawyers have argued that its patent entitles it to collect royalties on a huge range of devices and software products that gather user fitness information. Beginning in January 2016, Sportbrain unleashed a torrent of lawsuits against companies with connected watches and other wearables, like Garmin, Fitbit, Pebble, and Nike (PDF) . It also sued tech companies like Apple, Samsung, and HP, and watchmakers including Timex, Tag Heuer, and Nixon.

It has sued over software, too, filing cases against popular fitness apps like Strava and even Aetna (PDF). Sportbrain argues that the health insurance company infringes its patent with its "Get Active" online platform.

“We will slingshot our IP at the offenders”

Sportbrain Holdings, LLC follows a familiar track for patent-holding companies—a demise after the first dot-com bust and then a reincarnation more than a decade later as a patent enforcement company. In the year 2000, SportBrain Inc. launched a kind of early wearable, a smart pedometer called the SportBrain tracker that connected to a computer via a special "SportPort."

"We believe the SportBrain personal fitness assistant (PFA) should become an essential part of everyone's lives," said Andreas Bibl, SportBrain CEO and cofounder, in a press release sent out that year. "As a nation, we need to get moving."

By 2001, Bibl's company, which filed the '002 patent application, was out of business. After an apparent change in ownership, the reformulated SportBrain Inc. released the iStep X1 pedometer at the end of 2004. There's no apparent press coverage after 2005, however, and there's no evidence that the SportBrain pedometer made any inroads in the smartphone era.

The owner of the second incarnation of SportBrain appears to be a man named Harry Heslop, who's a co-defendant in the inter partes review just instituted at the Patent Office. Patent Office records show that Heslop moved the patents from SportBrain Inc. into Sportbrain Holdings LLC in January of 2016, when the campaign of lawsuits began.

Heslop couldn't be reached for this story, and the attorney for SportBrain Holdings didn't respond to a request for comment. The lead inventor of the '002 patent, Deane Gardner, also didn't respond to a call requesting comment.

"As one of the first to market, successfully traded for 10 years, and then [to be] squeezed out by a plethora of Goliaths was unquestionably devastating," Heslop told Law360 when his litigation began last year. "As the 'David' in this story, we will slingshot our IP at all the offenders and unleash the full extent of the law until justice is served."

The “Anti-Troll”

A petition for inter partes review (IPR) against the '002 patent was filed last year by Unified Patents, a defense-oriented patent company that bills itself as "The Anti-Troll." It was part of Unified's campaign to challenge the "three most prolific patent trolls" of 2016: Sportbrain, Shipping and Transit, and Uniloc USA.

The case against Sportbrain Holdings has passed a key hurdle, with the Patent Office agreeing last week to institute an investigation over all 16 of the claims in the '002 patent.

In its decision (PDF), the Patent Office finds that it's likely that two earlier patents teach "collecting, storing, and compiling performance data at a web server." A Nike patent filed in 1999 by designer Albert Shum, now at Microsoft, describes collecting use information for a product, "such as an article of footwear," and offering "rewards" based on the level of use. In 1998, a company called Liquid Spark filed for a patent on a GPS-based performance monitor.

IPR proceedings, created as part of the 2011 America Invents Act, have proven effective at knocking out patents at lower costs than traditional court proceedings. Most IPRs that are instituted by the Patent Office result in some or all of the patent claims being thrown out.

"This is a great example of a patent that we believe is invalid, and never should have issued in the first place," said Unified Patents CEO Kevin Jakel in an interview with Ars. "We're happy the USPTO instituted the IPR, and the patent is well on its way to ultimately being canceled."