A widely circulated post on social media features an image capturing a document from the US Patent Office, submitted by Rothschild in 2015, outlining a system for testing the new coronavirus. Emphasizing the patent’s initial filing date, these posts claim preplanning of COVID-19. This article aims to fact-check the legitimacy of the assertions made in the post.
The archived version of this post can be found here
Claim: Rothschild filed a patent for COVID-19 testing in 2015.
Fact: Rothschild filed a series of regular, non-provisional patent applications under the name “System and Method for Using, Processing, and Displaying Biometric Data”, starting from 2015. However, there is no mention of COVID-19 in these initial fillings. The patent for a system analyzing biometric data to ascertain COVID-19 infection was applied for in May 2020. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
An Internet search led us to the complete document of the patent referenced as ‘US20200279585A1’ (here & here). The patent details a system for coronavirus testing, outlining a method for detecting the presence of the coronavirus using smartphones.
After scrutinizing the document and its chronological sequence, it is apparent that 13 October 2015, marks the initial provisional application by Rothschild within this patent family. Following this, a series of regular, non-provisional patent applications were submitted for a “System and Method for Using, Processing, and Displaying Biometric Data.”
The patent for a system analyzing biometric data to ascertain COVID-19 infection was applied for in May 2020. Essentially, Richard A. Rothschild, the patent filer, had multiple patent applications within the same patent family.
The viral post alleges that the 2015 priority date indicates preplanning of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the patent filed in 2015 does not make any mention of COVID-19. Most likely, the terms “priority date” and “application date”, could be conflated to make this claim. The priority date denotes the earliest filing date in a set of related patent applications or the earliest filing date of a specific feature of an invention, as seen here.
The viral post additionally asserts evidence of a COVID-19 testing patent filed in 2017. According to the timeline, a patent for a “System and Method for Using, Biometric, and Displaying Biometric Data” was filed in April 2017. However, although this patent serves as a precursor to ‘US20200279585A1,’ it does not reference COVID-19 thus, proving that the initial patents filed in the series are not related to COVID-19.
Previously, when the same claim circulated widely, AFP debunked it. AFP clarified that in their conversation with Rainer Osterwalder, a spokesperson from the European Patent Office, it was emphasized that the initial patent application had no reference to COVID-19 before 2020.
To sum it up, Rothschild did not secure a patent for a COVID-19 test in 2015 or 2017
