Patents

Our Approach to Patents

At Multifactor, our inventions are a direct result of our hard work to reinvent zero trust for the modern web. We seek patents to protect these unique technological contributions, which are central to fulfilling our public benefit mission. This protection gives us the confidence to invest in long-term, mission-driven research and development, ensuring that we can continue to offer innovative and reliable technology to our users.

This policy provides a general overview of how we treat our patents. No express or implied license to any Multifactor patent is granted by this policy.

Our Patent Enforcement Approach

We view our patents as a tool to foster and protect innovation, not to stifle it. Multifactor enforces its patents to prevent the unauthorized commercial duplication of our products and to ensure our technology is not used in a way that undermines its security or integrity. However, our enforcement strategy is guided by our mission. We generally do not assert our patents against academic researchers, non-profit organizations, or other good-faith users who are using our technology for legitimate research or non-commercial purposes that align with building a safer internet. Our goal is to create a clear path for innovation for both Multifactor and the broader community. If you are an academic researcher, non-profit organization, or other legitimate user and have questions about how our patents may apply to your work, we encourage you to reach out to us at [email protected]. We are committed to finding ways to support innovation while protecting our intellectual property.

Use of Software and Services

It is important to understand the distinction between using our software and licensing our patents. The licenses governing our open-source software (e.g., BSD) grant you permissions under copyright, but they do not automatically grant you any rights or license to use our patents. Similarly, your use of Multifactor's commercial products and services grants you the right to use them as they are intended, but it does not grant any broader license to Multifactor’s underlying patented technology. While we want you to build amazing things with our products, that permission does not extend to replicating them. If you have questions about licensing our patented technology, please contact our legal team at [email protected].

Patent Examples

The following is an illustrative, non-exhaustive list of our patents. Although we aim to keep this list up to date, it may not reflect the most current status of all of our patents.