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The patents behind the key-capture technique of Nubeva Technologies $NBVAF (TSXV: $NBVA) now belong to Netskope $NTSK, a ~$7.6B cloud security company. In March 2024, Nubeva sold its web-traffic (TLS) technology for $1M to an unnamed “mid-sized U.S. based cyber security company,” keeping the right to support the product’s one remaining customer (still 41% of FY2026 revenue). USPTO records show Nubeva assigning five patents to Netskope in one filing signed March 1, 2024, three days before the sale closed, and recorded March 19, 2024. Three are cloud-security patents from Nubeva’s first business. The other two cover key extraction: 1) U.S. 11,805,107: The patent behind Session Key Intercept (SKI), Nubeva’s TLS key-copying software, granted October 31, 2023 to co-founders Greig Bannister and Randy Chou. It covers software that pulls an encryption key out of a computer’s memory and forwards it to whatever needs to decrypt. 2) U.S. 11,494,484: Granted November 8, 2022, and announced by Nubeva as its “U.S. Patent for Ransomware Decryption Technology,” with Bannister saying it “underpins Nubeva’s ability to continue as an effective solution against ransomware.” Bannister, the co-inventor on every SKI patent, resigned as CTO and director on March 1, 2024, the same day the patent assignment was signed, and went to Netskope with the patents. Following the TLS sale, Nubeva kept the other half of the process, turning captured keys into a working decryptor. It filed two patents on the decryptor side in 2024, both since granted: 1) U.S. 12,430,438, granted September 30, 2025: It covers running the ransomware in a sandbox (an isolated test machine) against a known file and matching the result to a library of standard encryption methods to find the one the malware used. With the method and the captured key, Nubeva can build the decryptor. 2) U.S. 12,561,431, granted February 24, 2026: It covers ransomware that encrypts scattered pieces of a large data store, like a virtual machine’s disk, from several processors at once. Nubeva’s method maps which pieces were encrypted, then decrypts each piece with the captured keys. When granting the second patent, the patent examiner flagged PayBreak, a 2017 Boston University research system that also copied ransomware’s keys as it ran, as earlier work in the same area. Copying ransomware’s keys mid-attack wasn’t new by 2024. Nubeva’s patents protect the recovery built on top of the captured keys. NuRR, Nubeva’s ransomware product, copies keys the same way SKI does, but Netskope now owns the two key-capture patents. Nubeva hasn’t disclosed any license from Netskope that lets NuRR keep using the patents. Any buyer would want the license question answered first. Chou has said Nubeva needs four AI patents granted before it partners or sells, and two are still pending. In a July 2024 video, he said a buyer wants the patents issued, since “if you are patent pending there’s a significant discount on the technology itself.” The last two are now well past the early-2026 timing he called typical, with no new date from Chou.
