PTAB

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Unified Urges Federal Circuit to Reverse Western District's Prejudged Blanket Rule Denying Contested Stay Motions

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On April 26, 2021, Unified, along with The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and CableLabs, filed an amicus brief in re Vulcan Industrial Holdings, a petition for mandamus of a denial of a stay by Judge Albright in light of an instituted PGR (PGR2020-00065). In the brief, amicus argued Judge Albright has clearly abused his discretion by openly adopting a rule against stays that "smacks of prejudgment." Here, Vulcan diligently filed a PGR two and a half months after the patent grant and just one and a half months after the complaint was filed, but the Court found even that aggressively early filing was dilatory, ignored the certain simplification of issues that the USPTO instituted on all claims, and applied an erroneous legal test despite clear guidance from the Federal Circuit and myriad district court rulings.

A copy of Unified’s amicus brief is provided below.

EPO challenge filed against ETRI and KAIST

On April 16, 2021, Unified Patents filed an opposition in the EPO against EP 2627085. The EP ‘085 patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The patent is related to patents that are designated essential to the HEVC Advance patent pool as well as SISVEL’s AV1 patent pool.

Read the entire filing below. Unified is represented by Leythem Wall at HGF Law, and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

ETRI patent challenged

On April 22, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,781,448, owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), as part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The ‘448 patent is part of the HEVC Advance Patent Pool, as well as SISVEL's AV1 patent pool.

Unified is represented by Eric Buresh of Erise IP and by in-house counsel, Roshan Mansinghani and Jung Hahm, in this proceeding. Visit Unified’s Portal for more information about its Video Codec landscape (OPAL) and standard submission repository (OPEN). To read the petition and review the case record, view IPR2021-00827 on the Portal.

Caselas, a Raymond Anthony Joao entity, patent challenged

On April 15, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,715,691, which is being asserted by Caselas, LLC, a Raymond Anthony Joao entity. The '691 patent is generally directed to providing transaction history information including charge-back information.

Caselas is asserting the '691 patent against 25 banks and merchant services companies, including First Citizens Bank, UBS Bank, First National Bank of Omaha, TruWest Credit Union, and Electronic Merchant Systems.

View district court litigations by Caselas. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by Larissa Bifano and Zach Conrad of DLA Piper and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and Jordan Rossen, in this proceeding.

Flexiworld Technologies patent challenged

On April 13, 2021, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 10,346,114, owned by Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. The ‘114 patent relates to transmitting or streaming protected digital content to client devices over the internet. It has been asserted against Roku.

View district court litigations by Flexiworld. Unified is represented by Wilson Sonsini and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and David Seastrunk.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/014,721, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.