Unified filed an official Protest in the reissue proceeding stemming from the patent cancelled in Unified's IPR2015-01061 filed against the sole iMTX Strategic, LLC patent asserted against multiple content delivery companies.
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office originally stayed the reissue proceeding in light of the IPR, which in turn canceled all of the claims of the patent. The patent owner did not appeal, and sought to revive the reissue proceeding. Per the office's official position, the reissue does not terminate upon the cancelling of all claims in the original patent, so the reissue examiner unstayed the case and later issued a new office action against the now-amended claims.
The amended claims made two minor claim limitation changes likely meant to overcome the prior art raised during the IPR. In rejecting the amendments, the reissue examiner rejected the claims on multiple grounds, including best mode, but did not apply estoppel over the claims found unpatentable IPR. (Recall that no claims that are not patentably distinct from cancelled claims can issue from the patent office, per statute).
Unified's Protest noted the fact that the changes were minor and obvious in character, and urged the office to apply such estoppel. It is part of Unified's continuing effort to ensure that NPEs whose patents have been found invalid do not later escape with patentably indistinct claims to harass legitimate businesses.
A copy of the Protest is provided below.