Another Dominion Harbor patent determined to be likely invalid

On March 16, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 6,014,089 owned and asserted by First Class Monitoring, LLC, a Dominion Harbor subsidiary and a well-known NPE. The '089 patent, directed to transmitting data via conventional SMS messages over a control channel of a personal communications system transmission protocol, has been asserted against various financial services companies such as Citigroup, Bank of America, USAA, JP Morgan, and PNC.

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

Digital Stream (Dominion Harbor) patent found invalid

On March 9, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board issued a final written decision in Unified Patents Inc. v. Digital Stream IP, LLC, IPR2016-01749 invalidating claims 1, 4, 6-13, 20, and 22 of U.S. Patent 6,757,913, owned and asserted by Digital Stream IP, LLC, a Dominion Harbor subsidiary. The '913 Patent, which describes a wireless music and data transceiver system, has been asserted in multiple litigations against such companies as Best Buy, GM, Mercedes, Nissan, Honda, and Sirius XM. Only Sirius XM remains in active litigation as the majority of these cases settled after Unified filed its IPR.

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

Unified issues bounty on questionable GTX patent

On March 9, 2018, Unified issued a new Patroll (prior art crowdsourcing platform) contest with a $2,000 prize for a winning prior art submission that invalidates US Patent 7,177,838. The '838 patent, directed to a method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens, has been asserted in multiple litigations by GTX Corp., an NPE.

Anyone is eligible to participate in this contest. For full contest details and to register as a Researcher, visit Patroll today.

Unified issues bounty on Red River Innovations "text search" patent

On March 9, 2018, Unified issued a new contest in Patroll (a prior art crowdsourcing platform) with a $2,000 prize for winning prior art submissions that invalidate US Patent 7,526,477. The '477 patent, directed to a method and apparatus for enhancing electronic reading by identifying relationships between sections of electronic text, has been asserted in multiple litigations by Red River Innovations, LLC, a Texas-based NPE.

Anyone is eligible to participate in this contest. For full contest details and to register as a Researcher, visit Patroll today.

Smart Authentication patent determined to be likely invalid

On February 28, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 8,082,213 owned and asserted by Smart Authentication IP, LLC. Smart Authentication, a Dominion Harbor subsidiary and a well-known NPE, declined to file a preliminary response in opposition to Unified's petition. The '213 patent, directed to a user authentication system, has been asserted against such companies as MongoDB, Slack Technologies, Evernote, Etsy, Discover and USAA. 

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