Resmed provides various medical devices for sleep apnea and other sleep-related conditions and had revenue of $3.539 billion last year. A subsidiary of Resmed, Resmed Sensor Technologies (RST), is much smaller and only had revenue of $7.29 million. Another key difference between Resmed and RST is that RST is based in Ireland instead of the United States. However, RST holds many of Resmed’s US patent assets in Consumer Sleep. RST holds forty-seven (47) patent assets in consumer sleep over the last 10 years, compared to Bose’s fifty-one (51). But why would there be any license agreement between RST and Bose? Bose is missing the sensor technology that RST possesses.

Bose holds twenty (20) patent assets in the Environment Control subcategory but only two (2) patent assets in the Sensor subcategory. Of Bose’s twenty (20) Environmental Control patent assets, fifteen (15) of them require sensor data to provide information to their system. And RST holds thirteen (13) patent assets in the Sensor subcategory. It is unlikely that RST would be acquired by Bose because Resmed likely implements their technology into their own devices, but the situation sounds like the perfect recipe for a license agreement. Although RST is a European-based company, look for a deal to be made that will allow Bose to license RST’s sensors for their Consumer Sleep technology.

For more information, look to the Consumer Sleep Technology Patent Radian®!