Suit says ‘smart’ bottle cap idea stolen
Its aim is to remind folks to take their medications
Trinity University classmates Gavin Buchanan and Andrew Aertker were brainstorming for a class assignment in 2017, trying to develop solutions to the opioid crisis that had swept the nation.
They originally wanted to make pill bottles harder to open but eventually hit on the idea of a “smart pill-bottle cap” that would remind people to take their medications.
While taking full course loads, the pair toiled for hundreds of hours in a Trinity library basement printing designs using 3-D print software and machines that they taught themselves to use. In 2018, they developed the initial version of the cap known as PATCH — short for Pill-administering Technology for Compliance Healthcare.
Buchanan and Aertker’s company, named Patch Technologies Inc., then hired San Antonio engineering firm BJN Technologies LLC to help develop the product. Instead, the students allege, BJN swiped Patch’s trade secrets and their ideas to develop a competing product.
In a federal lawsuit filed this week in San Antonio, Patch calls BJN a “predatory company” that “apparently believed it could take advantage of Buchanan’s and Aertker’s youth and relative inexperience in the business world in the hopes it could obtain a windfall off the backs of full-time college students.”
BJN even filed a patent application claiming ownership of Patch’s technology, the lawsuit says.
The complaint, with various claims including misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract, seeks unspecified financial damages. Patch also seeks injunctions preventing BJN from manufacturing any products derived from Patch’s technology.
Calls to the four BJN owners or officers named in the suit weren’t immediately returned Wednesday. BJN has yet to file a response to the lawsuit.
Among the defendants is Douglas Conyers, a 1997 Trinity graduate whom Buchanan and Aertker say they placed particular trust in.
Conyers, listed in corporate records as BJN’S CEO, has served on the Trinity Alumni Association Board and was responsible for the school’s senior software project that ultimately would provide software to Patch, the suit says.
Patch says it’s been pushed into a “precarious financial situation” as a result of BJN’S actions. The dispute has made it difficult for Patch to raise money because investors are reluctant to invest, the suit says.
Patch had raised an undisclosed amount from investors and had a corporate valuation of $10 million, the suit adds.
Portions of the lawsuit were redacted to conceal “classified trade secrets,” said R. Laurence Macon, a San Antonio lawyer who represents Patch.
Buchanan, 20, is majoring in mathematical finance and economics and is slated to graduate this year. Aertker, 21, is majoring in computer science and philosophy, and expects to graduate in December.
The two were taking an entrepreneurship class when they started thinking about prescription drugs and people following dosage directions.
The pair spent months working on a smart pill-bottle cap, Aertker said. The cap dispenses medication one at a time, which helps those who have trouble opening the bottle caps.
The cap also lights up and a notification is sent to the consumer’s phone to alert them it’s time to take the medication.
“So it provides you a lot of different reminders and data to help you remember to take your medication and to know if you did
properly,” Aertker said. “This also helps the doctors and physicians, whether it’s in clinical trials or whether it’s in the retail pharmacy space — it helps everyone kind of know if people are being adherent to their medication.”
Patch had been working with BJN for about 18 months when Conyers let the students know BJN was working on a smart bottle cap of its own.
Aertker initially wasn’t alarmed by Conyers’ disclosure.
“Our initial reaction was, hey, this might help accelerate our ability to help people, and that’s really the goal,” Aertker said.
Jacob Kring, a Dallas attorney who also represents Patch, also said BJN officials made assurances they would not market Patch’s technology.
Kring said he believes BJN likely will argue it developed its own product independently from what Patch hired it to do.
“It’s unfathomable,” Kring said of that particular argument. “The idea that they could somehow take their chair and do a 360 and create something independent of what we were already paying them to do is just not believable.”
Patch filed a patent application in late 2018. It’s pending and has not been published yet, Aertker said.
BJN indicated it also had filed a patent application last month, but Kring said they hadn’t been able to verify it.
Patch now is “trying to get its stuff ” back — including computer code, software and electrical schematics — so it can it start working with another engineering firm. But Kring said BJN is holding all of of that property “hostage.”