Motivational Health Messaging patent likely DOA

Unified is pleased to announce the PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners, Rohit Sood and Devarajan Govindaswamy, who split a cash prize of $2000 for their prior art submissions for U.S. Patent 9,069,648.  The EFF previously named the '648 patent as a 'Stupid Patent of the Month' noting that numerous small companies have been threatened with infringement allegations by Motivational Health Messaging, LLC (an NPE). To help the industry fight stupid patents, we have published the winning prior art below.

We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent.  The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests. Visit PATROLL today to learn more about how to participate.

Winning submissions

Sound View patent challenged as likely invalid

On February 8, 2018, Unified, represented by Haynes and Boone, filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,462,074 owned and asserted by Sound View Innovations, LLC, a well-known NPE. The '074 patent, directed to "caching techniques to support streaming media storage and distribution in a network," has been asserted in multiple cases against such companies as Facebook and Hulu.

To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see our PTAB Portal.

Sportbrain patent found invalid

On February 6, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board issued a final written decision in Unified Patents Inc. v. Harry Heslop & Sportbrain Holdings, LLC, IPR2016-01464 invalidating all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,454,002, owned and asserted by Sportbrain Holdings, LLC. The '002 Patent, which describes a system for monitoring and providing feedback on a user's physical data, has been asserted 148 cases (17 of which were pending at the time of this decision). Defendants in these cases span across multiple industries and include such companies as Verizon, Fitbit, Microsoft, LG, TomTom, Garmin, Louis Vuitton, ZTE and Apple.

To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, please visit our PTAB Portal.

Hailo patent determined to be likely invalid

On February 6, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 5,973,619, owned and asserted by Hailo Technologies, LLC, a subsidiary of Red Dragon Innovations, LLC and well-known NPE.  The '619 patent, directed to a taxi dispatch and payment system, has been asserted in multiple district court cases against such companies as Uber and Lyft. 

To read the decision and to view the entire proceeding, visit our PTAB Portal. 

 

NPE Activity Update: Transport Zone 2017

OVERVIEW

Breaking with the trend from previous years, litigation in the Transport zone (f/k/a Automotive) has increased in 2017. From 2012 to 2016, litigation in the Transport zone has followed the trend of overall patent litigation, which peaked in 2013 and gradually decreased since then. However, the volume of Transport zone litigation in 2017 exceeded that for previous years, due in large part to an increased number of assertions targeting automotive electronics and infotainment systems.

TARGETED TECHNOLOGIES IN TRANSPORT ZONE

In 2017, every technology (other than Safety) surpassed the total number of cases litigated in 2016. Notably, litigation involving automotive electronics and powertrain technologies has dramatically increased since 2016. For more information about these categories, view our Transport zone definition.

Infotainment systems are the among the most frequently litigated automotive patents, representing approximately 39 percent of all Transport cases in 2017.

NPE ACTIVITY IN TRANSPORT ZONE

NPEs continue to pose a serious risk to automotive companies and account for 72 percent of litigation in 2017. The majority of these threats came from Patent Assertion Entities (entities whose primary purpose is patent assertion), however auto companies also faced threats from a small handful of individual inventors.

The top 5 plaintiffs for litigation in the Transport zone are all well-known NPEs. 

Figure 5: 2017's most frequent plaintiffs for the Transport zone

  1. Intellectual Ventures (14 assertions)
  2. Somaltus LLC (12 assertions) 
  3. Magnacross LLC (11 assertions)
  4. Location Based Services, LLC (9 assertions)
  5. Blue Sky Networks, LLC (8 assertions)