Second Fortress Amicus Filed

On November 3, 2020, Unified Patents, together with CableLabs, filed a second amicus brief in the refiled Intel Corp. v. Fortress Investment Group LLC, et al., and took the opportunity to help educate the Court on Fortress' now-frequent practice of using high-interest recourse loans to acquire questionable patents for serial assertion. A copy of the as-filed brief can be found below, and a copy of the original brief, which went into detail about litigation financing and other forms of serial NPE assertion, is also listed below.

Unified's Patent Quality Initiative aims to provide data, studies, and testimonials to give policymakers and practitioners a clear picture of the state of the patent system. More information about our PQI efforts can be found here.

Motion to File Amicus in Intel v. Fortress 3Nov2020 by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd

Second Amicus of Unified Et Al. in Intel v. Fortress 3Nov2020 by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd

First Amicus Brief - Unified March2020 by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd

Qwikcash settles with Unified Patents

On October 7, 2020, the Board issued an order terminating IPR2020-00972 pursuant to a joint settlement request filed by Unified Patents and Qwikcash, LLC, an NPE. U.S. Patent 8,714,445, related to a cash transfer system, has been asserted against Blackhawk Network, Inc.

Unified was represented by Jason Mudd of Erise IP in this proceeding. View Qwikcash’s district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. 

EPO challenge filed against GEVC by Unified

On October 8, 2020, Unified filed an opposition proceeding against EP 3 410 716 B1, owned by GE Video Compression LLC (GEVC). The ‘716 patent is generally related to coding of significance maps and transform coefficient blocks. This filing is a part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

Read the entire filing below. Unified is represented by Dr. Simon Q. Lud, European Patent Attorney at Maiwald Intellectual Property, and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy.

EPO Opposition on GEVC '... by Jennifer M Gallagher

Jenam Tech patent determined to be likely invalid

On October 8, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,923,995, owned and asserted by Jenam Tech, LLC, an NPE and Oso IP affiliate. The ’995 patent, generally directed to sharing information for detecting an idle network connection between two nodes, has been asserted in district court cases against LG, Samsung, and Google.  

View Jenam Tech’s district court litigation. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jung Hahm and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

Optima Direct patent determined to be likely invalid

On October 5, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 8,646,060, owned and asserted by Optima Direct, LLC, an NPE and 2S Ventures affiliate. The ’060 patent, generally directed to adaptive authentication methods using a mobile device, has been asserted in district court cases against HID Global Corporation, OneLogin, Ping Identity and Okta.

View Optima Direct’s district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.  Unified is represented by Andrew Sommer of Greenberg Traurig in this proceeding.