Caltech Sues Zoom, Alleging Patent on Technology Born at CERN

The California Institute of Technology filed a federal patent infringement lawsuit Monday against Zoom Communications, alleging the videoconferencing company’s platform uses technology Caltech developed to support physics research at the European laboratory that runs the Large Hadron Collider.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, targets Zoom products including Zoom Meetings, Zoom Workplace, Zoom Webinars, and Zoom One, according to Bloomberg Law and Law360.

Caltech alleges those products infringe U.S. Patent No. 8,316,104, which covers a system in which a central server directs users to the best available meeting server based on distance, network traffic, and connection quality, then adjusts video performance during a session.

The patent grew out of videoconferencing tools Caltech built beginning in the mid-1990s for physicists working on experiments at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, according to the complaint. Those tools needed to connect thousands of researchers scattered across dozens of countries — a challenge that predated Zoom’s founding by more than a decade.

Caltech’s Virtual Room Videoconferencing System, known as VRVS, went into production in 1997 and was deployed on more than 10,500 registered hosts in more than 60 countries, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report. The system was funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation and supported by CERN’s IT department. Caltech later replaced VRVS with a successor system called EVO, or Enabling Virtual Organizations, which was released in 2007, according to the CERN Courier.

Zoom, founded in 2011, became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic as millions of people turned to its platform for work, school, and social gatherings. The San Jose-based company did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit, according to wire reports. Caltech also did not publicly comment on the filing.

The case is distinct from a series of Wi-Fi patent lawsuits Caltech pursued over the past decade against Apple, Broadcom, Samsung, Microsoft, HP, and Dell. Those cases involved different patents covering wireless data encoding technology used in Wi-Fi chips. A jury in 2020 awarded Caltech $1.1 billion in damages against Apple and Broadcom, though a federal appeals court later ordered a new damages trial. Caltech subsequently settled with Apple, Broadcom, and Samsung in 2023, and later reached agreements with Microsoft, HP, and Dell. Settlement terms were not disclosed in any of the cases.

The new lawsuit against Zoom targets videoconferencing routing and performance technology rather than Wi-Fi chip encoding. The complaint was filed in Delaware, a jurisdiction frequently used in patent cases.

Caltech’s Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships manages the university’s patent portfolio. Under the university’s patent policy, inventors collectively receive 25 percent of licensing income after expenses are deducted.

No hearing date has been set. The next step in the case will be Zoom’s response to the complaint.