$2,000 for Cogent Insights Licensing retail patent prior art

Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 9,794,797, owned by Cogent Insights Licensing Inc., an NPE. The '797 patent relates to secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. The invention enables secure distribution and control of electronic information via a virtual distribution environment, bolstered by tamper-resistant hardware for enhanced node security. It is involved in a declaratory judgement case with Hisense USA.

The contest will expire on March 31, 2026. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for the contest. PATROLL researchers are required to use Pearl to generate claim charts. Submitted invalidity charts must address every limitation of the challenged claim. This may require using more than one prior art reference. Each PATROLL researcher can generate up to 30 invalidity claim charts per month using Pearl. These charts can be downloaded then submitted to PATROLL.

Stratacor patent validity challenge coming soon

The team at Unified IP Services is using Pearl to identify and chart prior art against a patent owned by Stratacor LLC, an NPE and entity of Ambient Analytics LLC. Unified Patents, the top requester of ex parte reexaminations in recent years, will likely challenge its validity. The patent is generally related to enhancing targeted advertising or directing users to similar content. Stratacor LLC has sued Alibaba Group Holding Limited. For more details contact info@unifiedpatents.com.

$3,000 awarded for Cloud-Native Heroes Challenge - prior art found on Valtrus '686

Unified Patents and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) are pleased to announce the winning prior art submissions in the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge, a patent troll bounty program. The results of this contest demonstrate the benefits of engaging open source developers and technologists with domain expertise in the fight against patent trolls.

We would like to thank the dozens of high-quality submissions that were made on this patent. The ongoing contests are open to anyone and offer tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests. Visit PATROLL today to learn more about how to participate.

Contest & Winning Submissions

Pankaj Kumar was awarded $3,000 for their prior art submission on U.S. Patent 7,904,686, owned and asserted by Valtrus Innovations Ltd., an NPE. The '686 patent describes a method and apparatus for enhancing data security within a file system. The invention addresses shortcomings in existing data security by offering an alternative to traditional encryption-decryption methods and online licensing checks, which can be time-consuming, confusing, or insufficient for preventing unauthorized file reconstruction. The patent has been asserted against Apache Hadoop implementations within applications owned or created by The Home Depot, NetApp, and FedEx.

WINNING PATENT SUBMISSIONS - DOWNLOAD WINNING CHART

Find more information on CNCF and the prior art challenges within the links below:

K.Mizra communication patents campaign - invalidity charts coming soon

The team at Unified IP Services is using Pearl to identify and chart prior art against U.S. Patent 9,235,259 and U.S. Patent 9,602,649, owned by K.Mizra LLC, an NPE. The patents generally relate to facilitating a "tap-to-pair" system for mobile devices. The patents has been asserted against Amazon.

Atlas Global Wi-Fi patent challenge instituted

On February 10, 2026, less than two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on all claims of U.S. Patent 10,348,471, owned and asserted by Atlas Global Technologies, LLC, an NPE and Acacia Research entity. The ‘471 patent is generally directed to Wi-Fi apparatuses and methods for indicating the use of and providing information for a central resource unit (RU) when using channel bandwidths where the central RU is available for allocation (e.g., bandwidths of 80 MHz or greater). The patent is currently being asserted against HPE, accusing Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard features.

View district court litigations by Atlas Global. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and T.J. Murphy.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90015814