Catapulting BlackBerry: A Data-Intensive Look – Part I, Quantity

Unified’s Samuel Baird pens a two-part series that examines the completed sale of the Blackberry portfolio. The first part was published by IPWatchdog.com on May 18, 2022.

At the end of January, BlackBerry announced it had completed the sale of the majority of its patents to Catapult IP Innovations, a special purpose vehicle specifically formed for the acquisition. Approvals for the transaction were granted under the 1985 Investment Canada Act and the 1976 Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. The value of the deal was reported to be $600 million, a figure that makes it one of the largest patent acquisitions in the last ten years and spurs a great deal of speculation about whether it is worth it. This article explores Blackberry’s divested portfolio and disassembles some of the assumptions surrounding the portfolio and the deal’s value.

Click HERE to read the entire article posted on IPWatchdog.com. In Part II of this two-part series, we will examine some of the data around quality and essentiality of the Blackberry portfolio.

VLSI/Fortress IP Patents Likely Invalid Despite OpenSky’s Bad Behavior

Below is an except of an opinion piece written by Unified’s CEO and Co-Founder, Kevin Jakel, for IPWatchdog.com.

“[The PTAB] has been successful over the years in checking significant numbers of asserted invalid patents, by some measures saving the U.S. economy billions of dollars over…. And yet, many self-interested parties would rather the PTAB not exist, and are suggesting the OpenSky email is evidence of systemic malaise.”

You’ve probably heard about all of the VLSI drama: the eye-popping $2.18 billion judgment won by non-practicing entity (NPE) VLSI (funded by Fortress IP), mysterious post-judgment inter partes reviews (IPRs) filed against the VLSI patents, and finally the now-notorious email from OpenSky offering to disrupt their own IPR in exchange for a fee. Folks have jumped all over the email from OpenSky for its obvious bad behavior, but they are also using it as an indictment of the entire Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). What is noteworthy here is not the email—this type of behavior is extremely rare. The real story here is what the system got right, and where it failed.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Breaking the 5G Curve by Looking Beyond the U.S. Patent System

Unified’s Shawn Ambwani and Sam Jaffna published an article in IPWatchdog.com analyzing the growth in 5G Self-Declared Standard Essential Patents (SD-SEPs) and the idea that strategic oppositions and invalidity proceedings filed outside the U.S. could prove useful to manufactures/equipment makers of 5G technology. There are 94,000 active grants and applications (25,700 families) 5G SD-SEPs as of September 2020.

While successful validity challenges of a patent in foreign countries do not conclusively prove the invalidity of the U.S. counterpart, the successful arguments used in these challenges have been effective in the U.S. and used to argue lower portfolio values.

“Manufacturers of equipment implementing 5G technologies should consider strategic oppositions and invalidity proceedings outside the United States against SEPs held by major licensees. These challenges cost a tenth or more less than typical U.S. challenges and could impact the licensing value of up to 50% of the self-declared families of the major SEP holders.”

Click HERE to read the entire article posted on IPWatchdog.com.