Clint Eastwood’s patent lawsuit dismissed

A judge has dismissed actor Clint Eastwood’s motion to gain ownership over two diabetes patents currently assigned to Molecular Defenses Corporation (MDC).

Eastwood filed the suit last July, claiming that MDC had been wrongfully assigned ownership of the patent and a derivative patent application for glutathione (US number 9,901,611; and PCT/US/2016/038381), an antioxidant used to treat diabetes.

The actor was seeking for ownership of the patents to be assigned to his 1988 Clinton Eastwood Trust.

In a court order granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss, the judge said that the actor had failed “to allege that the Eastwood Trust, or any of the other plaintiffs, have or ever had any interest in the ‘611 patent or the ‘381 application”.

As there was no basis for the Eastwood Trust having any right to the patents, it lacked the standing to assert a federal inventorship claim.

The Eastwood Trust held shares in Antioxidant Pharmaceuticals Corporation (APC), after it gave financial backing to APC and its owner, Harry Demopolous.

In 2016, APC assigned interest in all of its patents to MDC in exchange for shares in the company, two weeks after Demopolous had suffered a stroke.

Demopolous had been working with MDC owner Kevin Davis in order to “consolidate his business”, court papers said.

In June of that year, Demopolous filed a patent application for glutathione, with Davis listed as a co-inventor. Demopolous and Davis also filed a derivative international patent application later in 2016.

Eastwood claimed that Davis had “nefariously” included his own  name as an inventor on the patent applications in order to “swindle the patents from Dr. Demopolous and APC’s shareholders”.

The actor was seeking for Dempolous to be named as the sole inventor of the patent.

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