Judgment Day - coverage of the judgment preservation insurance market bubble

In an article published by Carrier Management, Jonathan Stroud, General Counsel for Unified Patents, is quoted over the increase in sales of judgment preservation insurance (JPI). JPI is a type of insurance that covers the possibility that an award granted at the trial court level could be reversed or reduced on appeal. The policy guarantees the policyholder would receive an agreed-upon financial amount should the verdict go in an unfavorable direction.

“The brokers really started a push toward sales. Their timing was good, as eye-popping verdicts were happening. People started to think maybe this is something, maybe we’re getting left out by not buying the insurance. The brokers capitalized on these fears.”

Jonathan Stroud, Unified Patents

Read the full article HERE

Comments to the USPTO submitted regarding terminal disclaimer practice

Through policy advocacy work with Unified Edge, Unified Patents has submitted comments to the USPTO's recent NPRM regarding conditions for obtaining terminal disclaimers to obviate obviousness-type double patenting.

In 2022, the USPTO requested comments regarding USPTO Initiatives to Ensure the Robustness and Reliability of Patent Rights. The Office has proposed a rule that would cut down on examiner wear-down and the abusive assertions of obvious variations of continuation patents through current terminal disclaimer practice. Unified has written to support the proposed rule.

Read through Unified’s comments by clicking on the button below:

NPRM comments submitted regarding discretionary denials and serial/parallel petitions

As part of the advocacy work of Unified Edge, Unified Patents has submitted comments to the PTAB's recent NPRM advocating against the codification of rules regarding discretionary denials under § 325(d) and for serial/parallel petitions.

Read through Unified’s comments by clicking on the button below:

Another ETRI HEVC patent revoked in EPO

On June 6, 2024, the European Patent Office announced the revocation of all claims of EP 2672708. The EP ‘708 patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The patent is related to patents that have been declared essential to Access Advance and SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools. The claims are generally directed to video coding/decoding methods and apparatuses that use a clipped motion vector.

Unified is represented by Owain Staines and Susan Keaton at HGF Law and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

Unified Files Amicus in Roku Fed.Cir. appeal from the ITC, Supporting Stronger Domestic Industry Requirement

On March 18, 2024, Unified filed an amicus brief in support of Roku's petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Roku v. ITC on the issue of relaxed enforcement of the economic domestic industry requirement in ITC cases. In the brief, Unified explores the trends of NPE activity at the ITC, where exclusion orders can and have been used to extract larger settlements than would be available in district courts due to this relaxed enforcement of domestic industry. Unified accordingly requests the Court clarify how the domestic industry requirement is analyzed, and argues it should be done in a manner consistent with the ITC's purpose of protecting unfair trade, and consistent with statutory language.

Unified Patents is represented by in-house counsel, David Seastrunk, Michelle Aspen, and Jonathan Stroud. Download the amicus brief below.