Company claims exclusive rights to using smartphones to trace Covid-19 contacts

The tracking apps Google and Apple will allow to use their implementations will be developed by the individual states, federal government or contractors working at their behest. The states enjoy immunity from patent infringement and most other lawsuits thanks to the 11th amendment. Courts have in general extended protection to contractors working on behalf and at the request of the government. The federal government is not exempt from being sued for patent infringement but the courts have limited such claims to the purchasing of commercial products which violate a patent versus the government violating a patent directly. This would leave Apple and Google as really the only 2 potential targets of any patent infringement suit.

Reading through the claims in the patent it isn't clear they apply to a decentralized system such as Apple and Google have developed. Even if the claims do apply I suspect the submitting of any infringement suit would result in legislation indemnifying them from any such claims.

Here's the patent:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170352119A1/en

No clue what the patent office was smoking when they granted it, or how exactly this is supposed to be novel or nonobvious.

Here's some stuff published before 2016 that looks like it should pretty easily prior art this patent: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/projects/archive...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26681710/