PTAB

Unified Defeats PTAB Bias Arguments at Federal Circuit

On October 13, 2021, the Federal Circuit (2-1 majority) ruled in favor of Unified Patents, rejecting Mobility Workx's arguments that the PTAB has a financial interest in instituting IPRs. All of Mobility Workx's constitutional arguments were found to be "without merit."

In line with other Arthrex cases, the PTAB's finding the patent is unpatentable has been remanded back to the Acting Director for the limited purpose of determining whether review is warranted. The arguments, which appear copied verbatim from another appeal, were not raised below.

The complete opinion can be found below:

Smart Path Connections patent challenged

On October 11, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 7,551,599 owned and asserted by Smart Path Connections, LLC. The ‘599 patent generally relates to methods and systems for improved utilization of communications networks configured as layer-2 ring networks. The patent has been asserted against Juniper Networks and Adtran.

View district court litigations by Smart Path. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by Cono Carrano, Ryan Stronczer, and Sohrab Hajarian of Akin Gump and by in-house counsel, Roshan Mansinghani and David Seastrunk.

Another ETRI AV1/HEVC patent held invalid in China

On October 8, 2021, the China National Intellectual Property Administration declared all claims of CN104219523B invalid. The patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The CN’523 patent is related to patents that are designated essential to the Access Advance (formerly known as HEVC Advance) patent pool as well as SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools. It is also related to U.S. Patent 8,867,854, which Unified challenged in IPR2020-01048.

Unified is represented by Tao Chen at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case is managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

ETRI AV1/HEVC patent held invalid in China

On October 8, 2021, the China National Intellectual Property Administration declared all claims of CN103384333B invalid. The patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The CN’333 patent is related to patents that are designated essential to the Access Advance (formerly known as HEVC Advance) patent pool as well as SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools. It is also related to U.S. Patent 8,867,854, which Unified challenged in IPR2020-01048.

Unified is represented by Tao Chen at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case is managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

Jeffrey M. Gross entity Netcom Global Solutions' patent challenged

On October 8, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 8,316,128, owned and asserted by Netcom Global Solutions LLC, a Jeffrey M. Gross entity. The '128 patent is generally directed to a firewall that can enforce communication management and filtering policies using the identities of the sender and receiver of the communication. It has been asserted against Microsoft and Cisco.

View district court litigations by Netcom Global. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, David Seastrunk and Roshan Mansinghani.