Nationwide — George McKinney, the founder and CEO of ViQUAL Medical Technology LLC, a small Black-owned firm, has been embattled in a tooth-and-nail legal brawl with Kaiser Permanente that has intensified over the course of 5 years.
ViQUAL’s story like so many in the history of Black IP firms and inventors that have been squashed by mountains of corporate dollars used to mask the insidious nature of the denigration of their hard work.
He comments, “The theft of African American music, ideas, real property, and intellectual property has been integrated into American culture for years. How many times have we heard about the Black man or woman who has a great idea, something special, but after disclosing it, has found that the idea now belongs to someone else? Our history is replete with innovations, technologies, and patentable ideas that never saw the light of day because they were stolen. African American cities have been bombed because of racial prejudice. Remember Black Wall Street and the devastation that took place because some folks didn’t want equity, they wanted to feel and be superior.”
According to Attorney Ahmed J. Davis of Fish and Richardson and the national chair of the firm’s diversity and inclusion initiative, in his recent article entitled, “The Patent Oath and Its Legacy for Black Inventorship”. Attorney Davis presents the idea that “African Americans continue to be underrepresented among patent holders. To close the patenting gap, inventors, educators, attorneys, law firms, and officers of the court must support underrepresented inventors. Only then can our patent system benefit all investors.” Importantly, the equitable issuing of patents is one struggle and the protection of those patents and ideas leaves Black inventors devastated because of the lack of funding to fight.
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ViQUAL Medical Technology LLC has been fighting the struggle of its life against Kaiser Permanente in a trade secret misappropriation case that involves the technology of a sister company Better Life Technologies Group, Inc. The struggle has been difficult because Kaiser has used underhanded tactics that have prolonged the case to force a company under duress to sign a walk-away agreement based upon fabrication and deception. ViQUAL Medical was created to be a medical device division of Better Life Technologies Group, Inc., and subsequently created its own unique patent-pending and trade-secreted technologies.
The trade secrets involved a technology designed to help monitor patients suffering from diabetes, heart conditions, cancer, and a host of other medical diseases in an encrypted manner that complied with HIPPA regulations which was a completely novel concept in 2012. ViQUAL officials and founders, George McKinney and Keith Mathis assert that their patent-pending technologies and innovations also have been integrated into the healthcare application of IOT(Internet of Things). Further, ViQUAL asserts that because of Kaiser’s breach of contract, they are deprived of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues.
ViQUAL Medical was created to be a medical device division of Better Life Technologies Group, Inc., which received intellectual property from Better Life Technologies Group, Inc., and subsequently created its own unique patent-pending and trade-secreted technologies. The trade secrets involved, “a technology designed to help monitor patients suffering from diabetes, heart conditions, cancer and a host of other medical diseases in an encrypted manner that complied with HIPPA regulations” which was a completely novel concept in 2012.
ViQUAL officials and founders, George McKinney and Keith Mathis, have asserted that their innovative technologies also have been integrated into the healthcare application of IOT(Internet of Things). Further, ViQUAL asserts that because of Kaiser’s breach of contract, they are deprived of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues.
Kaiser has settled a racial discrimination case involving Blacks and Latinos for millions of dollars and has not learned its lesson and is now being sued by the Department of Justice for Medicare fraud in encouraging physicians to exaggerate patient conditions to goose reimbursements…” These examples of corruption and corporate greed are just the tip of the iceberg.
To help support our cause against the corporate Goliath Kaiser Permanente, George says that he needs legal volunteers and funding to survive this injustice.
