YOUR ASHES, THEIR PATENT: How One Company Locked Up the Right to Turn Human Remains Into Stone

# YOUR ASHES, THEIR PATENT: How One Company Locked Up the Right to Turn Human Remains Into Stone

*A Santa Fe startup patented the process of solidifying cremated remains. Six days after the patent issued, it sued a competitor. The FTC Funeral Rule does not cover this. Neither does anyone else.*

In March 2026, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Parting Stone, Inc. a utility patent on a method for turning cremated human remains into polished stones. U.S. Patent No. 12,583,023 covers milling cremated remains, adding water, shaping the mixture, drying it, and firing it in a kiln at up to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit until it sinters into solid objects.

Parting Stone filed a patent infringement lawsuit that same month. The defendant was Remember Me Pebbles, LLC, a competitor selling a similar product. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, was dismissed with prejudice on June 30, 2026. Parting Stone announced the resolution the same day and said it "will continue to protect the solidified remains category" and would "defend that trust wherever our work is being copied."

The category is new. The legal framework governing it is not. It does not exist.

What the patent actually claims

The utility patent has 12 claims. Claim 1 covers milling cremated remains to a reduced particle size, adding water to form a "claylike mass," shaping the mass into objects using grooved plates or rollers, drying the result into "greenware," and firing it in a kiln until solidified. Claim 9 covers a simpler version: milling dry remains, shaping them, and firing them in an oven until solid. Claim 12 covers the product itself, defined as "one or more cremains solids."

The claims are narrow on mechanics and broad on concept. Any process that mills cremated remains, shapes them, and fires them in a kiln to produce solid objects falls within the patent's scope. Parting Stone does not claim to have invented the idea of firing human ash into a solid object. The patent's own background section cites prior patents for combining cremation residues with additives to form decorative objects.

The idea is older than that. Much older.

The 1924 patent

On December 10, 1924, an inventor named Albert Vanderlaan filed U.S. Patent No. 1,640,680, titled "Method of perpetuating human remains and article made thereby." The patent, granted in August 1927, described mixing human ashes with clay to form a permanent object. Vanderlaan's filing date appears in the "prior art" citations of Parting Stone's own design patent, D921,325.

The concept of preserving human remains in a solid, permanent form has been documented in patent filings for a century. The difference between Vanderlaan's 1924 method and Parting Stone's 2026 utility patent is mechanical. Vanderlaan added clay. Parting Stone's patent claims the use of a grooved ball-shaping apparatus and specific firing temperatures up to 2,700 degrees. The underlying idea, firing human ash into a solid object, is the same.

The patent examiner allowed the claims. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has not reviewed them. No party has challenged the patent's validity in court. The case against Remember Me Pebbles was resolved before any discovery on prior art.

The enforcement

The Remember Me Pebbles lawsuit was filed under Case No. 2:26-cv-00931 in the Western District of Washington. Parting Stone asserted infringement of its design patent and trade dress. The case lasted roughly three months. The parties resolved it privately. The docket shows dismissal with prejudice, meaning the claims cannot be refiled. The settlement terms are not public.

Parting Stone framed the resolution as the start of a broader enforcement effort. Justin Crowe, the company's founder and chief executive, said in the June 30 press release that the company "will continue to protect the solidified remains category." The release named the category specifically. It is a market positioning statement and a litigation roadmap in the same sentence.

Four other patents cite Parting Stone's design patent as prior art, according to USPTO records. They include a 2024 filing by an inventor named Maria Garcia Smith for a "water soluble cremation ash product," a 2025 utility patent to Peter Russell for a cremation stone method, and a 2025 design patent to Reterniti Holdings, an Australian company, for a "circular cremation stone and display." The field has competitors. Parting Stone has the first issued utility patent in the United States covering the core method.

Who owns Parting Stone

Parting Stone is a Public Benefit Corporation, a legal structure that requires the company to consider social and environmental impact alongside shareholder returns. The company's own footer describes the structure as committing it "to benefiting society and the environment."

In October 2022, InvoCare, Australia's largest funeral services company, invested $1 million in Parting Stone as part of a joint venture. Connecting Directors reported the investment at the time. InvoCare operates more than 200 funeral homes and cemeteries across Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. The investment gave an international funeral conglomerate a financial stake in a U.S. company that now holds a monopoly on a disposition method.

Parting Stone has served more than 14,000 families, according to the company's published materials. The company appeared on ABC's Shark Tank in 2023. Its pricing is not publicly listed on its website. Funeral homes partner with the company and families order through those funeral homes. The cost of solidified remains relative to traditional cremation is not disclosed in any public filing or consumer resource.

The regulatory vacuum

The FTC Funeral Rule requires funeral providers to give consumers a General Price List for funeral goods and services. It covers providers who sell funeral goods or services for human remains. The rule addresses pricing disclosure at the arrangement table. It does not address patents. It does not address whether a single company can own the legal right to a method of processing human remains for 20 years.

No federal agency regulates intellectual property claims on human remains. The USPTO examines patents for novelty, non-obviousness, and utility. It does not assess whether patenting a process applied to human tissue raises ethical questions specific to the deathcare context. The Patent Office granted Parting Stone's claims in March 2026 without any recorded objection.

State funeral boards license funeral directors and regulate the handling of human remains. They do not adjudicate patent disputes. State attorneys general enforce consumer protection laws against funeral providers. They do not review patent portfolios. The result is a category of human-remains processing that sits outside every existing deathcare regulatory framework, while being fully protected by federal intellectual property law.

A company can obtain and enforce a patent on a disposition method with no deathcare regulator reviewing the implications. A competitor trying to offer the same service faces federal litigation with no regulatory body to petition. A family wanting the option has no government resource explaining the pricing, the alternatives, or the ownership of the underlying process.

The PBC question

Parting Stone's Public Benefit Corporation status creates a documented tension. The company's legal charter commits it to benefiting society. Its litigation strategy is to prevent other companies from offering the same benefit. These are not necessarily contradictory. A company can argue that protecting its investment in developing a method is what allows it to serve families at scale. That is a defensible business position.

It is also a monopoly position. When the only company legally permitted to offer a disposition alternative in the United States is backed by an Australian funeral conglomerate and is actively suing competitors, the consumer interest and the corporate interest point in different directions. The Public Benefit Corporation structure does not resolve that. It documents it.

Parting Stone has not publicly stated whether it intends to license its patent to other providers, or whether its enforcement strategy is to maintain exclusive control of the category. The company's published materials describe partnerships with funeral homes. They do not describe licensing arrangements with competing producers.

What this means

The solidified remains category is small. Fourteen thousand families over several years is a fraction of the roughly 1.9 million cremations performed annually in the United States, according to CANA data. The immediate consumer impact is limited.

The precedent is not. If a process applied to human remains can be patented and enforced as a 20-year monopoly, the same framework applies to every new disposition method. Alkaline hydrolysis equipment is patented. Natural organic reduction systems are patented. The companies building those technologies have the same legal tools Parting Stone is using.

The difference is that hydrolysis and composting equipment are sold to funeral homes and cemeteries that operate within state licensing frameworks. The facilities are inspected. The providers are licensed. Solidified remains processing happens off-site, at a private company's facility, with no funeral director license required for the processing step and no inspection of the facility where human remains are milled, shaped, and fired. The FTC Funeral Rule applies to the funeral home that takes the order. It does not extend to the processor.

No one is counting how many families use solidified remains services. No regulator tracks pricing. No consumer protection agency has jurisdiction over the patent terms that shape the market. The data does not exist. Obitley has documented the same transparency gap across funeral financing, headstone sales, and pet cremation. The regulatory architecture of deathcare was built for funeral homes and cemeteries. Technology companies processing remains in private facilities fall outside it.

What can be done

Families considering solidified remains should ask their funeral home specific questions. What is the total cost, including shipping and processing? How long does it take? What happens if the product arrives damaged? Who is legally responsible if the stones returned do not contain the family's actual remains? No law requires the answers to these questions to be disclosed in writing before purchase. Families have to ask.

Funeral homes that partner with Parting Stone are not required to disclose that the company holds patents on the process, or that no competing provider is legally permitted to offer the identical service. Funeral directors can choose to tell families this. Most will not, because most do not know.

The FTC has the authority to expand the Funeral Rule to cover third-party processors of human remains. The agency's 2022 advance notice of proposed rulemaking on the Funeral Rule did not address off-site processing of cremated remains. A future rulemaking could require any company that receives, processes, and returns human remains to provide a price list, a processing timeline, and a consumer disclosure of ownership terms. The legal mechanism exists. It has not been used.

Congress has not held a hearing on intellectual property claims applied to human remains. No state legislature has considered whether disposition-method patents should be subject to consumer protection review before enforcement. The question of whether one company should own the right to a way of processing human ashes for two decades is a policy question that no policymaker has been asked.

*Sources: U.S. Patent No. 12,583,023 B2 (granted March 24, 2026, USPTO); U.S. Design Patent No. D921,325 S1 (issued June 1, 2021, USPTO); U.S. Patent No. 1,640,680 (filed December 10, 1924, USPTO); Parting Stone press release via Connecting Directors, June 30, 2026; Case No. 2:26-cv-00931, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington; Connecting Directors reporting on InvoCare investment, October 25, 2022; Parting Stone company website (partingstone.com); Reterniti Holdings Ltd. website; U.S. Patent No. 12,220,360 B2 (Peter Russell, 2025); U.S. Design Patent No. D1,101,349 S1 (Reterniti Holdings, 2025); FTC Funeral Rule, 16 CFR Part 453; CANA Industry Statistical Information.*