Unified’s Open COVID Pledge

Though people often don’t connect the two, collective action is required to minimize the effects of COVID-19 and stop patent abuse.  We at Unified are doing our part to help further both, starting with the following: 

First, Unified launched a crowd-sourced prior art campaign against two ex-Theranos patents recently asserted by Laborador Diagnostics, LLC, a Fortress Investment Group / Softbank Group subsidiary, against makers of COVID testing kits—an ongoing effort located here.  Diagnostics companies play a crucial role in combating COVID-19. Fortress has a demonstrated record of asserting invalid patents across industries, and has now targeted U.S. diagnostics makers.  We believe deterring invalid patent assertions is essential to ensuring U.S. companies are focused on beating back the current scourge and saving lives.   

Second, we have joined the Open Covid Pledge, as initiated by a group of scientists and legal professionals, including Professors Mark Lemley and Jorge Contreras.   The pledge asks participants to make all intellectual property under their control available for use to treat or end COVID-19, free of charge and without encumbrances.  Details and simple instructions on how to join can be found on their website.

We urge all entities, practicing and non-practicing alike, to join us in pledging to reduce patent abuse and to accelerate the chances we can eliminate COVID-19.

A copy of our pledge can be found at www.unifiedpatents.com/open-covid-pledge.

Cedar Lane patent determined to be likely unpatentable

On March 18, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 7,173,177, owned and asserted by Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., 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).  The ’177 patent was recently assigned to Cedar Lane from AVInnov (an NPE), and was previously owned by Intellectual Ventures.

View Cedar Lane's district court litigation.  To read the institution decision and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.  Unified is represented in this proceeding by in-house counsel Michelle Callaghan and Roshan Mansinghani, and outside counsel Husch Blackwell. 

Honeyman Cipher settles with Unified Patents

On March 20, 2020, a joint motion to terminate pursuant to settlement was filed in IPR2020-00213 by Unified Patents and Honeyman Cipher Solutions, LLC (an NPE) regarding U.S. Patent 5,991,399. The ‘399 patent, directed to secure distribution of information using encryption, has been asserted against Snap, Groupon, and LogMeIn for uploading mobile apps for authentication and distribution.

The patent was previously asserted in 2015 and 2016 by Plano Encryption Technologies (another NPE) against banks and various other companies (State Farm, Best Buy, Etsy, Match.com, Shutterfly) before being transferred to Honeyman.

Unified was represented by in-house counsel David Seastrunk and Ashraf Fawzy in this proceeding. View Honeyman's district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. 

Synkloud Technologies patent determined to be likely unpatentable

On March 19, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,098,526, owned and asserted by Synkloud Technologies, LLC, an NPE.  The ‘526 patent, directed to providing remote storage for wireless devices, has been asserted against Hewlett-Packard and Blu Products.

Unified is represented by Duane Morris in this proceeding.  View Synkloud's district court litigation.  To read the institution decision and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.

Help stop bad Theranos patents from deterring investment in viral testing

In light of the serious public interest involved in ensuring that questionable patents are not used to extract money and resources from those deploying important diagnostics tests, we at Unified have launched special PATROLL crowdsourcing contests against Labrador Diagnostics / Fortress Investments / Softbank (Fortress) patents U.S. 8,283,155 and U.S. 10,533,994.  Rather than offer a reward, we believe it is in the best interest of the community (and the world) to widely, freely, and quickly publish the results to help eliminate invalid patents that could hinder COVID-19 diagnostics tests in these trying times. 

Fortress recently acquired the Theranos patents (listing Elizabeth Holmes as the lead inventor) and has asserted them against U.S. diagnostics companies through a newly formed NPE called Labrador Diagnostics LLC.  Shortly after they filed suit, a defendant announced it was making COVID-19 diagnostics tests for the government based on the technology at issue. In response, Fortress announced they would offer royalty-free licenses for COVID-19 testing, but they refuse to drop the suit, and are seeking to enjoin the company from making, using, or selling a wide array of diagnostics.  We believe everyone should chip in to deter such bad behavior, especially from entities like Fortress that have a long history of asserting patents often found invalid when challenged.

We kindly ask our crowdsourcing community of thousands of prior art searchers to take a few minutes to help identify prior art on these patents that never should have issued and help rid the world of them, in the process improving the world’s chances of testing for and containing COVID-19 and other dangerous public health concerns.

The contest will expire on April 30, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information or to submit an entry for this contest.