SecureWave patent held unpatentable

On July 7, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC et al. v. SecureWave Storage Solutions Inc. et al., holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,036,020 unpatentable. The ‘020 patent is owned by SecureWave Storage Solutions, an affiliate of Quarterhill Inc. (f/k/a Wi-LAN Inc.), a well-known NPE. The ‘020 patent, directed to securing areas of a memory device to limit access to stored data, has been asserted against Kingston Technology and Micron.  

View SecureWave’s district court litigation here. To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see our Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jung Hahm and Ashraf Fawzy, in this proceeding.

$3,000 for Prior Art on Patent Owned by Acacia's Subsidiary, Unification Technologies

On July 7, 2020, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $3,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 9,632,727. The patent is owned by Unification Technologies, LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corp., a well-known NPE.

The '727 patent generally relates to managing data stored on non-volatile storage media over the provision of solid-state drive (SSD) devices. This patent has been asserted in district court 3 times this year against companies such as Micron, HP, and Dell.

APEX STANDARDS has shared US and non-US prior art as well as corresponding claim charting against the patent. Interested professionals may take them and craft work product from there. The link can be found here:

https://apexstandards.com/pcc/US9632727B2_invalidity/

To view other PATROLL contests APEX STANDARDS has reviewed, please visit:

https://www.apexstandards.com/Unified/

Techson IP has provided its Full validity-focused Limestone|Report which includes: a list of highly relevant prior art patent leads - individually ranked to the claims and tiered by research efficiency; summary predictive analytics about the search; a full CPC technology profile. Interested professionals may take them and craft work products from there. The Full Report link is here.

The contest will expire on August 31, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

IPCO wireless patent challenged as likely invalid

On July 6, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 6,044,062, owned and asserted by IPCO, LLC, an NPE. IPCO, also known as IP Co., LLC and IntusIQ, is affiliated with Glocom Inc. and shares a common ownership with SIPCO, LLC.  

The '062 patent is related to a wireless network system and is currently being asserted against Jasco Products Company and Qolsys for their use of the Z-Wave standard wireless mesh protocol. Prior litigations against Fibar USA, FrontPoint Security Solutions, Emerson Electric, Crestron Electronics, Ingersoll-Rand, Tropos Networks, and Cellnet Technology have been terminated or are currently inactive.

View district court litigation by IPCO. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jung Hahm and Jonathan Stroud, in this proceeding.

Unified Affirmed Against Sound View by the Federal Circuit, Cancelling Claims

On July 2, 2020, the Federal Circuit affirmed Unified Patents' IPR2018-00096 and dismissed as moot the appeals for two other unrelated IPRs. The opinion, written by Judges Lourie, Dyk, and Chen, held that all claims at issue in U.S. Patent 6,125,371, owned by Sound View Innovations, LLC, were invalid. To date, Unified has never lost an appeal before the Federal Circuit. 

The opinion can be found below. To review the case record, view IPR2018-00096 on the Portal.

Velos Media patent determined to be likely invalid

On June 30, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,414,066, owned by Velos Media, LLC. The ’066 patent is directed to video decoding techniques and was originally assigned to Ericsson before being transferred to Velos in 2018.

Velos claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard (such as the ‘066 patent). Unified filed this challenge as part of its ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone after independently determining that the allegedly standard essential ‘066 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 IPR2020-00352 on the Portal.