Two Chinese ETRI video codec patents held invalid after appeals

After the China National IP Administration (CNIPA) invalidated the patents in administrative proceedings, and the Beijing IP Court upheld that invalidation, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) filed a second appeal to China's Supreme People's Court. On April 30, 2026, Unified Patents received two judgements where China’s Supreme People's Court upheld the original invalidations on CN103384333B and CN104219523B.

CN'333 and CN‘523 were generally directed to applying the same prediction mode to a unidirectional series of blocks and are related to patents that are designated essential to the Access Advance (formerly known as HEVC Advance) patent pool, as well as, SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools.

Unified was represented by Tao Chen, Yu Yan, and Peter Zhang at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case was managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

Empire IP entity, Fleet Connect, Wi-Fi patent found invalid

On March 26, 2026, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate cancelling challenged claims 1-9, 11-13, 20, 21, 28, and 29 of U.S. Patent 7,742,388, owned and asserted by Fleet Connect Solutions, LLC, an NPE and entity of Empire IP. The '388 patent focuses on a system and method for increased bandwidth in digital communications, particularly within local and wide area networks including WLANs and mobile networks. It has been asserted in over 60 cases, most recently against UAB Xirgo Global, Werner Enterprises, Cedar Electronics, Nextbase, and others.

View district court litigations by Fleet Connect. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, Andrea Shoffstall, Jenn Bisk, and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019840

Dominion Harbor entity, Arlington Technologies, Wi-Fi patent found invalid

On April 3, 2026, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate cancelling claims 1-3, 5-6, and 8-9 of U.S. Patent 7,193,986, owned and asserted by Arlington Technologies LLC, an NPE and entity of the Dominion Harbor Group. The ‘986 patent is generally directed to communications between a master wireless network device and one or more slave network devices using a medium access protocol such as the MAC protocol. It was asserted against Comcast and T-Mobile on products that are wireless access points configured to support 802.11ax.

View district court litigations by Arlington Technologies. Unified was represented by Michael Jones and Jake Rosvold at Rothwell Figg and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Jason Wejnert, in this proceeding.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90015412

InfoGation navigation patent found invalid

On February 24, 2026, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate cancelling all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,898,003, owned and asserted by InfoGation Corporation, an NPE. The '003 patent is generally directed to displaying maps on GPS receivers. It was asserted against TomTom, Nissan, Mazda, Hyundai, Volvo, Toyota, Honda, BMW, and Ford.

View district court litigations by InfoGation. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander and T.J. Murphy, in this proceeding.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019907

Acacia entity, Stingray IP, Wi-Fi patent found invalid

On February 5, 2026, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) issued an Advisory Action in the reexamination filing of U.S. Patent 7,224,678, owned and asserted by Stingray IP Solutions, an NPE and entity of Acacia Research Corporation. The Examiner maintained the rejections of all challenged claims of the ‘678 patent. The ‘678 patent relates to detecting an intrusion in a network system. It was asserted against Leedarson IoT, Schlage Lock, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Vivint, and Allegion.

View district court litigations by Stingray IP. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019718