Pendo Wins Decisive Patent Victory

U.S. District Court Throws Out Lawsuit, Concludes WalkMe Patent is Invalid

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Apr 03, 2019, 10:30 ET

RALEIGH, N.C., April 3, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Pendo, the product cloud company, today announced that the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York both dismissed a lawsuit filed by competitor WalkMe Ltd. alleging patent infringement and held that the patent at issue in the case was invalid. The lawsuit, filed by WalkMe on August 22, 2018, claimed that Pendo had violated WalkMe's intellectual property in its use of tooltips and lightboxes to guide users inside a software application. Yesterday, Judge Denise L. Cote granted Pendo's Oct. 30, 2018 motion to dismiss.

"We're pleased to move past what we see as a clear attempt to distract us as we continue to grow and thrive," said Todd Olson, Pendo's co-founder and CEO. "Winning this lawsuit is an important moment, but only because it allows us to focus 100% on the more important work of innovating and serving customers. We see it as a win for innovation over litigation. We'd prefer to compete where it counts: in the market, not in the courts."

Pendo was represented by Los Angeles-based Quinn Emanuel Urguhart & Sullivan, the world's largest business litigation law firm.

The rise of patent litigation over the last decade has been especially harmful to small and startup firms. The White House and the Congressional Research Service both cite research suggesting that patent litigation harms innovation. And a pair of recent empirical studies provide strong confirmation that patent litigation is reducing venture capital investment in startups and reducing R&D spending.

Pendo has grown fast, having recently exited its fiscal year ending January 31, 2019 with 140% revenue growth and nearly 400 new customers, including two top 10 national retailers, a global market research firm, major financial institutions and insurance companies, and a worldwide healthcare diagnostics provider.

Over four funding rounds in less than four years, Pendo has raised $106 million in venture capital. In 2018, the company was named to Forbes' Cloud 100 and Next Billion-Dollar Startups lists. It was also named an Inc. Best Workplace.

Pendo counts more than 300 employees across five global offices, and recently announced plans to more than triple its headquarters staff in Raleigh over the next five years.

About Pendo
Pendo is a product cloud that provides user insight, user guidance and user communication for digital product teams and application owners. With Pendo, these product teams can understand product usage, collect feedback, measure NPS, onboard users, and announce new features in app—all without requiring engineering resources. Founded in 2013 in the heart of Raleigh and backed by Battery Ventures, Spark Capital, Meritech Capital and Sapphire Ventures, Pendo has raised $106 million and counts 850 customers, including Zendesk, Salesforce, Coupa, Marketo, BMC, and Sprinklr. Pendo is also the producer of ProductCraft, a destination editorial site with insights by and for product leaders; and Pendomonium, a premier product conference. For more information, visit: www.pendo.io

SOURCE Pendo