Last week I saw You Can See Everything, and I’ve been going down rabbit holes about Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos and Nathan Fielder ever since.
I decided to look at Theranos Inc.’s trademark portfolio. It was illuminating. Here are some fun facts:
– Theranos filed 46 U.S. trademark applications, but only one was ever registered. The filings ran from 2005, when Holmes was 21, until 2018.
– The only mark that registered was THERANOS (U.S. Reg. No. 3797610). This application was filed in 2005 and registered in 2010. It covered multiple classes including “biological and chemical preparations” in Class 5 and “medical and scientific research services in the field of health care monitoring; pharmaceutical research services; pharmaceutical research and development” in Class 42.
– The registration also covered “medical devices, namely, point of care and handheld devices for analysis of drugs, proteins and other substances,” and claimed first use in November 2006.
– This registration is fascinating for several reasons. First, the filing in 2010 to prove use included a photo of the Edison device that Holmes was famously secretive about! According to the Internet, Elizabeth Holmes first publicly introduced the Edison device and shared details about it in 2013, and before that time, “Theranos operated in a highly secretive, “stealth” mode and did not issue its first press release or make its technology public until announcing its collaboration with Walgreens…”
– Second, use “in commerce” requires more than in-house use, and according to all reports, Theranos hadn’t sold its devices to consumers in 2006, making its registration suspect.
– The Theranos scandal broke publicly in October 2015, when John Carreyrou published his exposé in The Wall Street Journal revealing that Theranos’ “Edison” machines did not work.
– Theranos filed 45 other trademark applications between 2012 and 2018. It never responded to office actions or filed statements of use, and all of them were abandoned.
– The single THERANOS registration was canceled in 2017, because (of course) Theranos couldn’t (and didn’t) file the required declaration of continued use.
– Someone else now owns a registration for THERANOS! A New Mexico company, FactorX LLC, applied to register THERANOS for “development of pharmaceutical preparations and medicines.” The mark registered in August 2025. The website shown in the specimen, theranos.ai, didn’t resolve to a working site when I checked. Could this business be related to Holmes? Or is it run by a trademark profiteer?
– Holmes’s partner, Billy Evans started a new company called HAEMANTHUS. Three intent-to-use applications for it are pending.
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Journalists doing deep dives into companies might learn a lot from publicly available trademark filings.
Is anyone else as intrigued by You Can See Everything? Let me know if you have thoughts on Theranos and its trademarks! And if you’re also as interested in this topic as I am, I recommend Fielder’s The Rehearsal and Nathan For You, and The Dropout, and another Holmes documentary, The Inventor.
#YouCanSeeEverything #Theranos #Trademarks #TrademarkLaw
