$1,000 prize for prior art on Riggs Technology "online training" patent

On October 14, 2019, Unified added a new PATROLL contest with a $1,000 cash prize for prior art submissions for US 7,299,067. The '067 patent, generally directed to a system and method for providing and managing training over a network is owned by Riggs Technology Holdings, LLC (an NPE) and has been asserted against various tech companies in district court. To protect innovation and deter future frivolous assertions, Unified is offering a $1,000 cash prize for the best prior art on this patent.

The contest will expire on January 14, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information or to submit an entry for this contest.

Unified Welcomes New Patent Attorneys to its Growing Legal Team

Unified is pleased to announce the addition of Jordan Rossen, David Seastrunk and Michelle Callaghan to its growing team of patent attorneys and IP professionals. Each of these attorneys comes with a wealth of experience and technical expertise from working on post-grant proceedings at distinguished patent law firms to assist Unified’s ever-expanding mission to deter patent abuse wherever it is found.

Additional information about Jordan, David and Michelle is available below as well as under the Team section of Unified’s website.

Jordan Rossen, Senior Patent Counsel
Jordan prepares and litigates post-grant proceedings before the PTAB for Unified Patents. Prior to joining Unified, Jordan practiced in the intellectual property litigation departments at Ropes & Gray and Paul Hastings in Washington, DC for eleven years. In his previous roles, Jordan represented clients in front of the PTAB, International Trade Commission, district courts, and Federal Circuit. Jordan has worked on cases involving various industries and fields, including computer hardware and software, data processing, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and material science, energy and geosciences, insurance, banking, vehicle telematics, semiconductors, and plastics. Jordan also has experience in cases involving trade secret misappropriation, unfair competition, and copyright infringement. Jordan earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

David Seastrunk, Senior Patent Counsel
David prepares and litigates post-grant proceedings before the PTAB for Unified Patents. Prior to joining Unified, David practiced at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP for several years. At Finnegan, David was involved in litigating all phases of post-grant proceedings, district court cases, and investigations before the International Trade Commission. David also practiced patent prosecution and client counseling, developing opinions on infringement, validity, and freedom-to-operate. David’s experience spans a wide range electrical and mechanical technologies, including software, consumer electronics, data processing, wireless communications, industrial manufacturing, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), fibers, textiles, polymers, films, and medical devices. David earned his J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law and his B.S. in Textile Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Michelle Callaghan, Senior Patent Counsel
Michelle prepares and litigates post-grant proceedings before the PTAB for Unified Patents. Prior to joining Unified, Michelle practiced at Erise IP, where she defended clients against patent demands in district courts, challenged patents before the PTAB, and prepared opinions on patent validity and infringement. Michelle worked on a broad range of patent matters in a wide range of technologies including communication networks, video coding and decoding, virtual reality, financial transaction security, mobile devices, vehicle systems, digital rights management, cloud storage, and multimedia content delivery. Michelle earned her J.D. from the University of Colorado Law School, where she focused on IP law and prosecuted patents as part of her law school clinical program. Michelle earned her B.S. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Another Velos Media patent challenged as likely unpatentable

On October 8, 2019, Unified filed a petition (with Finnegan serving as lead counsel) for inter partes review (IPR) against US Patent 9,094,682, owned by Velos Media, LLC (Velos), as part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

The ‘682 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the largest families known to be owned by Velos. Including this petition, Unified has now challenged patents representing over 43% of Velos’ total known U.S. assets.

Velos claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard. The ’682 patent is directed to video decoding techniques and was originally assigned to Panasonic Corporation before being transferred to Velos in 2018.  After conducting an independent analysis, Unified has determined that the ‘682 patent is likely unpatentable.

Visit Unified’s Public 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 IPR2019-01663 on the Portal.

AVInnov patent challenged as likely invalid

On October 3, 2019, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 7,173,177, owned and asserted by AVInnov LLC, an NPE.  The ‘177 patent, directed to indicating on a user interface whether items in an playlist are owned or unowned, has been asserted against Spectrum (Charter Communications).  

View AVInnov's district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.  Unified is represented by Husch Blackwell in this proceeding. 

Twitter and Spotify join Unified

We are pleased to announce that Twitter and Spotify are now Unified members. They are joining 250+ other companies committed to deterring the assertion of bad patents by non-practicing entities (NPEs). With the addition of these companies, almost all major North American and European social media, video, and music platforms are Unified members. Recent studies indicate that NPEs continue to pose a threat to operating companies and account for more than half of all US patent litigation in 2019. Unified is the only entity which deters invalid patent assertions and never pays NPEs.