$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

• US 20070028121

• US 7437530

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

• CNCF Blog: Announcing the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge

• CNCF Blog: Announcing the Inaugural Contest

• CNCF Blog: List of Cloud Native Heroes Challenges

• Computer Weekly blog

• Cloud Native Now article