MedTech Zone Launches to Deter Patent Troll Activity in the Medical Technology Sector

Unified Patents is pleased to announce the launch of its new MedTech Zone, expanding its proven deterrence model into the rapidly growing medical technology sector. The MedTech Zone was established with the support of leading industry participants and reflects the increasing need for a coordinated defense against non-practicing entities (NPEs), commonly known as patent trolls, targeting medical technology innovators.

The MedTech Zone expands Unified's proven deterrence model into the rapidly growing medical technology sector, where NPEs increasingly target manufacturers, healthcare providers, software developers, and suppliers with low-quality patents and costly litigation demands. As medical devices become more connected, software-driven, and data-intensive, the industry faces heightened exposure to NPE activity that can divert resources away from research, development, and patient care.

With the support of industry leading medical technology Unified members, Unified will proactively deter invalid patent assertions through its comprehensive enforcement and intelligence platform. These efforts include filing ex parte reexaminations, crowdsourcing prior art through PATROLL, publishing defensive prior art, monitoring NPE activity, and pursuing resolutions that eliminate litigation threats without paying patent trolls. Unified's unique model aligns industry participants around a common goal: reducing the incentives for NPEs to target productive companies and healthcare innovators.

The MedTech Zone joins Unified's growing portfolio of technology-focused deterrence zones that collectively protect thousands of companies from abusive patent assertions. By bringing together stakeholders across the medical technology ecosystem, Unified seeks to improve patent quality, reduce unnecessary litigation costs, and help ensure that investment remains focused on advancing life-saving technologies and improving patient outcomes rather than defending against meritless patent claims.

To learn more about MedTech Zone membership or Unified's other services, contact sasha@unifiedpatents.com.

Defensive Alliance to Shield AI Companies from Patent Troll Litigation

Unified Patents is happy to launch the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Zone. This new Zone will deter patent abuse and bring together a large and growing network of members to address non-practicing entities that assert vague software patents.

The Zone combines ex parte reexamination challenges, litigation trend monitoring, ownership intelligence, prior‑art workflows, and USPTO challenges to change trolls’ cost–benefit calculus across AI domains.

Members gain access to shared data on litigation trends, patent ownership changes, and aggressive actors in the AI patent space. As part of the AI Zone, Unified Patents has developed the first-ever GenAI patent landscape.  This landscape, OPAL for GenAI, will help companies identify and mitigate risk, plan their legal strategies, grow their portfolios, and understand their own value.

This tool, available exclusively to the members of Unified Patents’ new Zone, allows for a new way to identify and value patents, analyze risk, and determine the total top-down patent landscape quickly and easily—and be more prepared and better value the competition and litigations of tomorrow.

To learn more about membership, the landscape, or other services, contact sasha@unifiedpatents.com.

Blockchain Zone launches with support from COPA to deter Patent Trolls

We are pleased to announce that the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a non-profit community of 20+ companies formed to help adoption of cryptocurrency through cross-licensing and encouraging, is now a member of Unified’s Transactions and Blockchain Zones.

With COPA’s support, Unified is launching the Blockchain Zone to target NPE/patent troll activity in related technologies. Several Unified members are also expanding membership to support the Blockchain Zone. Unified now will deter invalid NPE assertions in the Blockchain space through challenges, crowdsourcing (PATROLL) and publishing prior art, and obtaining no-money settlements from NPEs.

Unified has successfully challenged over 100 NPE patents that threatened electronic transactions, online bill payments, authentication, and other technologies in the Transactions Zone. COPA is joining 300+ other companies committed to deterring the assertion of bad patents by non-practicing entities (NPEs). 

The full announcement can be found here:

https://www.opencrypto.org/2024-10-01-copa-uniified-patents-partnership/

Wi-Fi SEP Zone launched by Unified

Unified Patents is happy to announce a new zone to deter patent abuse in the Standard Essential Patent (SEP) space through its newly launched Wi-Fi 6 Zone. This new Zone brings together a fast-growing network of members to address asymmetries in licensing Wi-Fi 6 standard essential patents and creates a fair and transparent patent licensing process around core patents supporting the next wave of consumer technology growth.

The current Wi-Fi patent landscape is complicated, to say the least. Sisvel’s launched Wi-Fi 6 pool, composed mostly of Huawei patents, constitutes less than 14% of the SEPs needed based on our OPAL Landscape tool at the time of posting.  Also, implementing Wi-Fi 6 requires licenses to Wi-Fi 1-5. However, only one common licensor exists between Sisvel’s Wi-Fi 1-5 and Wi-Fi 6 pools - Philips.

According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, Wi-Fi 6 will represent almost $265B, or nearly one-third, of Wi-Fi-Enabled GDP by 2025. Given these economic implications and the ubiquitous nature of Wi-Fi in our everyday lives, members need the tools and data necessary to negotiate FRAND licenses in good faith.

Zone members get access to Unified’s tools – the Wi-Fi landscaping (OPAL) tool and the standard submission (OPEN) tool. Unified has also commissioned an economic report (OVAL) to determine FRAND for Wi-Fi 6, due out Q2 2023.

Unified’s OPAL tool objectively scores the statistical essentiality of patent publications to Wi-Fi 6 functionality. Experts manually evaluated over three thousand patent families to create the AI training set and scored them all for statistical essentiality. Full-text search is available via patent, application number, family ID, filing date, etc.

Unified’s OPEN tool provides an indexed and full-text searchable repository of all 122,000 IEEE Wi-Fi submissions, including the 7000+ technical submissions to the Wi-Fi 6 working group.

Finally, Unified’s OVAL tool is a commissioned economic report to determine a Wi-Fi 6 FRAND. Using Innovatio, similar cases, and the likely changes in Wi-Fi 6 chip prices, the economic report will determine the incremental value of new Wi-Fi 6 applications and products. 

Unified Patents’ SEP Wi-Fi 6 zone provides members with the tools and data necessary for impactful FRAND negotiations and to deter invalid or unessential assertions.