KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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comments on Vivint and ADT patent litigation: can anyone explain
September 24, 2026
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comments on Vivint and ADT patent litigation: can anyone explain this from article on September 15, 2026
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Ken
U.S. Patent No. 10,325,159 arose from Vivint’s development of video-based “entity detection” for security and home-automation systems. The important qualification is that the patent has not disappeared entirely, but the claims Vivint relied upon against ADT were declared unpatentable and can no longer support that infringement case.
What the patent originally covered
The ’159 patent, titled “Entity Detection,” was issued to Vivint on June 18, 2019, naming James Ellis Nye as inventor.
Its lineage is:
Provisional application filed December 6, 2013.
Nonprovisional application filed December 4, 2014.
Continuation filed May 8, 2017, which became U.S. Patent No. 10,061,990.
Further continuation filed August 13, 2018, which became Patent No. 10,325,159.
The invention was not merely “a camera detecting motion.” In simplified terms, it covered a system that:
Detects a human or animal entering a predefined area using camera data.
Detects identifying features—such as facial characteristics, audio characteristics, or an associated mobile-device identifier.
Compares those features with previously stored features.
Recognizes the particular person or animal.
Retrieves a previously assigned identifier.
Generates a notification identifying the entity.
One example was a shop camera recognizing a particular person entering a doorway. In a home-security context, it could distinguish a resident, visitor, delivery person, or animal rather than merely reporting generic motion. The published patent record contains its complete history and claims.
Origin of the litigation
On February 25, 2021, Vivint sued ADT in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Vivint, Inc. v. ADT LLC, Case No. 2:21-cv-00115.
Vivint alleged that ADT’s Pulse, Control and Blue security platforms infringed six Vivint patents, including the ’159 patent. Vivint characterized the suit as protecting its smart-home and security technology; ADT responded that it would defend the case and challenge Vivint’s patents. ADT’s contemporaneous statement confirms the filing and ADT’s position.
ADT then attacked the ’159 patent through an inter partes review, or IPR, at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board:
ADT LLC v. Vivint, Inc., IPR2022-00071.
ADT challenged claims 1, 2, 4, 8–10 and 12.
What happened at the Patent Office
On March 28, 2023, the PTAB ruled that every challenged claim was unpatentable:
Claims were anticipated by an earlier U.S. patent application known as Monroe.
They were also found obvious over Monroe.
Additional obviousness findings were based on a Chinese patent application known as Jin, alone and in combination with Monroe.
A central dispute concerned the meaning of “predefined area.” Vivint argued that it meant a user-configured region within the camera image, with defined boundaries separating areas of interest and disinterest. The PTAB adopted the broader, ordinary meaning—essentially an area “defined in advance”—and held that the camera’s entire configured field of view could constitute that area.
Appeal and final determination
Vivint appealed to the Federal Circuit.
On December 11, 2024, the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB in full. It agreed that nothing in the patent required the predefined area to be a smaller, separately delineated region inside the camera’s field of view. Because Vivint did not otherwise successfully challenge the anticipation and obviousness findings, the court upheld the determination that claims 1, 2, 4, 8–10 and 12 were unpatentable. See Vivint, Inc. v. ADT LLC, No. 23-1995.
Current status of the district-court litigation
The Utah infringement suit continued concerning other Vivint patents, but the ’159 patent is no longer being asserted.
On March 18, 2026, Vivint and ADT stipulated that:
Vivint would not assert infringement of the ’159 patent or Patent No. 7,956,739 in the action.
Vivint would not accuse ADT Pulse or ADT Control under any of the remaining asserted patents.
Certain other claims and counterclaims would be dismissed with prejudice.
On September 2, 2026, Judge Clark Waddoups approved the important non-assertion portions of that stipulation. The court therefore accepted Vivint’s commitment not to pursue ADT for infringement of the ’159 patent in this case. The September 2, 2026 order explains the current posture.
The larger case may continue over remaining patents and products, but the ’159 patent component is effectively finished.
Is the patent still valid?
The most accurate answer is:
Claims 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10 and 12 are not valid enforceable patent claims. They were declared unpatentable by the PTAB, and the Federal Circuit affirmed.
Claims 3, 5, 6, 7 and 11 were not included in that IPR determination. They were not invalidated merely because the challenged claims were invalidated.
However, those remaining claims are dependent claims. Their practical enforceability may be quite limited because they incorporate elements from the invalidated independent claims and would still face the same prior-art issues.
Vivint has agreed not to assert any claims of the ’159 patent against ADT in the present litigation.
So, although patent databases may still display the patent as “active” and some unchallenged dependent claims technically remain on the patent, the commercially significant claims asserted against ADT have been invalidated. For practical purposes, Vivint lost the enforceable core of this patent against ADT, but the entire patent was not formally invalidated claim-by-claim.
Peter Goldring
Goldring Protection
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Ken
I did not come up with this conclusion entirely on my own; I used AI to help summarize the lawsuit. Ironically, based on the details, AI-like analysis appears to be at the heart of the dispute—specifically, technology that analyzes information from multiple security devices and uses it to determine what actions the central monitoring station should take.
Vivint alleges that ADT’s Blue smart-home security system copied its patented method of:
Collecting information from home sensors—doors, motion detectors, cameras, smoke alarms, etc.
Sending that information to a central server.
Applying customizable rules to decide what happened.
Automatically notifying authorized people or triggering an action.
So, the remaining dispute is essentially over how ADT Blue combines, analyzes, and responds to data from multiple security devices. These are still allegations; ADT denies infringement.
Randy Bourdon
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Ken,
Some online research revealed this:
Vivint, Inc. was the owner of U.S. Patent No. 10,325,159 (the ’159 patent), which claimed the use of a camera to detect an entity passing through a predefined area, such as assisting a shop owner by detecting people entering the shop’s doorway.
ADT, LLC (ADT) petitioned for inter partes review of several claims on the ground of anticipation and obviousness. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted review and found all of the challenged claims unpatentable.
It appears they are wrestling over the right of ownership of the CCTV cameras to detect a person and notify the user. Now, that would be a valuable thing to own. Sort of like owning the patent on automobile tires being able to roll. Every tire manufacturer would then send you a check. It’s a good deal if you can get it
Lloyd Young
SECURAC, INC
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Ken
You must kidding me or trying to get us subscribers to think even for just a mere moment during the passage of time to look up something for ourselves.
It's simple, a camera, mounted on a computer enabled device (such as a keypad) that looks at a predefined space or area is not a unique enough thing to qualify for a patent.
I found this information in less than two minutes with Google enabled AI (which i neither subscribe to or pay for) on my cell phone.
Now I realize that you are older than me, but you have framed certificates of your formal education as a lawyer, which I do not, but they lead me to believe that you could have done the same amount of work as I did and give us a better blog post for today.
Thanks
Bart Didden
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Ken
They deserve each other.
Robert Kleinman, Esq
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Ken
As usual, your commentaries are informative; this one is unique with the question you have raised, namely one does have to wonder what is going on given the length of this litigation; the only conclusion, without knowing any of the facts, is that the attorneys, all 12 of then are obviously in no rush to conclude this matter- the combined fees in over this 6 year plus litigation have to be fairly astronomical.
Regards
Dennis Stern. Esq
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Ken
Both ADT and Vivint had posted articles on their own sites about this. Here are relevant portions from the their websites:
John Lupino, Executive Vice President
General
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From ADT's Website:
ADT Brings Patent Infringement Suit Against Vivint
June 30, 2021
ADT asks the United States International Trade Commission and federal court to enforce smart home technology patents
BOCA RATON, Fla., June 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ADT, the most trusted brand in smart home and business security, today brought actions for patent infringement against Vivint, a security and alarm company headquartered in Provo, Utah. Separate but related actions have been filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission and in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Vivint has introduced and promoted a series of products willfully infringing upon several of ADT’s patents, the complaint asserts. These patents cover ADT’s investments and innovations in smart home integration, data collection, and control panel functions and interfaces, among other capabilities and features. Specifically, according to the complaint, Vivint products including the Vivint Home Security System, SkyControl Panel, and Vivint Smart Hub violate U.S. Patents No. 8,976,937 and No. 9,286,772, belonging to ADT.
“Vivint launched its SkyControl Panel and related products with the express desire, in the words of its former CEO, to ‘control anything and everything inside the home,’” said David W. Smail, ADT’s Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer. “Apparently Vivint also meant ‘by any means necessary.’”
“To gain an unfair advantage in the smart home security and automation market, where ADT has long been a pioneer and continues to lead, Vivint infringes ADT’s patents covering, among other things, predictive analytics, detection and diagnostics, and advanced user interfaces including voice control,” Smail added. “By defending its robust patent portfolio, ADT is determined to protect its employees, its customers, its products, and its reputation. We are asking the Commission for an exclusion order prohibiting Vivint from importing products infringing on our patents, and we are asking the court for a finding of infringement along with appropriate damages, fees, and other relief.”
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From Vivent's website:
Vivint Sues ADT for Patent Infringement
PROVO, Utah – February 25, 2021 – Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (NYSE: VVNT) (“Vivint” or the “Company”), a leading smart home company, today announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against ADT (NYSE: ADT) in the United States District Court for the District of Utah.
In the complaint, Vivint asserts that ADT infringes six of Vivint’s U.S. patents related to security and smart home technology. As one of the premier providers of smart home technology, Vivint is recognized throughout the industry for its products, innovation and customer satisfaction. Vivint has more than 300 issued patents related to its proprietary technology.
The Company issued the following statement:
“Vivint invests millions of dollars to develop best-in-class products and services for its customers, as well as to patent and protect this technology. We will vigorously protect and defend our unique intellectual property and innovations.”
Vivint pioneered connected devices for the home in 2010 to offer smart home features to its security customers. Vivint developed and launched its own proprietary platform in 2014 to offer customers a fully integrated smart home security system.
Vivint is seeking damages for ADT’s infringement of the asserted patents.
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Ken
Answer from Claude: https://claude.ai/share/43307387-2957-4b58-b677-76e000479f57
Answer from Grok: https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_671e9ab1-ee60-4eb3-9728-7adeb9675cee
Braxton
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Response
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Thanks to all who took the time to contribute. My initial response was remarkably similar to the two esteemed lawyers who responded, Robert and Dennis, that this was a lawyer's lottery win. Dealers took the time to address the issue and turned to AI for answers, which I plan to address tomorrow.
It seems to me that this dispute must involve the entire industry, not just ADT and Vivent, because AI cameras are being offered by other manufacturers. Lloyd may have offered the most provocative question: "It appears they are wrestling over the right of ownership of the CCTV cameras to detect a person and notify the user. Now, that would be a valuable thing to own."
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com
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