WSOU patent determined to be likely invalid

On July 23, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 8,179,960, currently owned by WSOU Investments, LLC. The IPR was filed as part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The ‘960 patent was formerly owned by Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc. (Nokia Corporation) and has been asserted against ZTE. WSOU Investments, LLC is run by Craig Etchegoyen, formerly of Uniloc.

Unified is represented by Jon Bowser from Haynes and Boone 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 IPR2021-00378 on Unified’s Portal.

First Chinese patent to be challenged against IdeaHub held invalid

On July 22, 2021, in a challenge that took less than 6 months to complete, the China National Intellectual Property Administration declared claims 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 14, 16 and 18 of CN103081504 invalid. Owned by IdeaHub, Inc., the CN’504 patent is directed to media content streamed in accordance with the MPEG-DASH standard and to video-on-demand (VOD) systems. It is related to U.S. Patent 8,645,562, which IdeaHub's licensee, Helios Streaming, LLC, has used to sue Showtime, Vudu, Crackle, and Starz.

Unified is represented by Fanghua Zhou at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case is managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Ashraf Fawzy.

IP Investments Group entity patent determined to be likely invalid

On July 20, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 6,560,613, owned by DataCloud Technologies, LLC, an NPE and an IP Investments Group entity. The ‘613 patent relates generally to disambiguating file types on a computer system. The patent has been asserted against Box, Extreme Networks, F5 Networks, 1&1 Ionos, and Wix.com.

View district court litigations by DataCloud Technologies. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by Drew Sommer and Kyle Chen of Greenberg Traurig, and by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander, Jung Hahm, and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

Arigna Technology Limited patent challenged

On July 20, 2021, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 7,397,318. Formerly owned by Mitsubishi Electric Corp, the ‘318 patent is currently owned by Arigna Technology Limited, an Atlantic IP Services Limited subsidiary, and has been asserted against several auto makers such as Daimler AG, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Nissan, and others.

Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Ellyar Barazesh and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/019,015, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.

AutoBrilliance patent held unpatentable

On July 6, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Autobrilliance, LLC, holding all challenged claims (claims 1, 2, and 4-7) of U.S. Patent 6,792,351 unpatentable. The ‘351 patent, directed to multi-vehicle communication, had been asserted in district court litigation against Toyota.

View AutoBrilliance's district court litigation. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified was represented by Raghav Bajaj and David McCombs at Haynes and Boone, and by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander, Roshan Mansinghani, Jess Marks, and Jung Hahm, in this proceeding.