$5,000 for prior art on GE Video Compression patent

On July 13, 2020, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $5,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claims 1 of U.S. Patent 10,250,913, owned by GE Video Compression LLC. Specifically, Unified is seeking prior art on the following elements of claim 1:

• Divide an array of information samples representing a spatially sampled portion of the video information into a first set of root regions based on the first maximum region size

• Determine whether a size of at least one of the first set of sub-regions exceeds the second maximum region size

• Responsive to a determination that the size of at least one of the first set of sub-regions does exceed the second maximum region size, divide at least one of the first set of sub-regions into a second set of root regions of the second maximum region size

The '913 patent generally relates to coding schemes for coding a spatially sampled information signal using sub-division and coding schemes for coding a sub-division or a multitree structure are described, wherein representative embodiments relate to picture and/or video coding applications.

APEX STANDARDS has shared US and non-US prior art as well as corresponding claim charting against the patent.

Techson IP has provided its full validity-focused Limestone|Report, 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.

The Rise of the Super NPE and the Western District of Texas

For years, the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX) was the hot spot for NPE patent litigation, reaching a peak of 2,411 cases in 2015, or roughly half of all filings, nearly all going to Judge Gilstrap. Since 2015, however, NPE cases have fallen off in that district by almost 93%. Meanwhile, the Western District of Texas (WDTX) has seen a 892% increase in NPE litigation, going from very few cases just a few years ago to being the dominant venue for patent cases nationwide. Most of these cases, brought in the last year and a half, began when Judge Albright was appointed to the bench and implemented new local patent rules. The WDTX has now become the leading patent litigation venue (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Western vs Eastern District of Texas NPE Filings

Part of the rise, anecdotally, seemed tied to frequent filers,  co-owned entities, and entities underwritten by private litigation financing.  NPE aggregators were defined as NPEs that have more than one affiliated subsidiary also bringing patent litigation. In its prime, the EDTX averaged nearly 89% of all of its NPE cases from NPE aggregators (such as Acacia Research or Intellectual Ventures) (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Eastern District of Texas Aggregators

An annual breakdown (Figure 3) shows NPE filings in the EDTX were filed primarily by Aggregators like IP Edge or Endpoint IP.

Figure 3: Eastern District of Texas Aggregators Year-byYear

Using public resources, Unified then identified which NPEs were third party financed. Not surprisingly, the distribution of Aggregators mirrored the percentage of third-party litigation financed NPEs in the EDTX (Figure 4).  In total, half of all NPE cases in EDTX showed evidence of financial backing (Figure 5) though the actual percentage could be much higher.

Figure 4: Eastern District of Texas Financing Year-by-Year

Figure 5: Eastern District of Texas Financing

Wider litigation financing availability, the viral rise in WDTX filings, 314, and Covid-19 have created “a Perfect Storm” for ascendancy of litigation financed Aggregators, the new apex-predator responsible for for large swaths of all patent litigation today.  This new species has resulted in WDTX cases almost doubling just in the first half of 2020 (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Western District of Texas NPE Aggregation Year-byYear

This means that almost 68.8% of all NPE cases in the WDTX are brought by an NPE Aggegrator like IP Edge, or one of their many subsidiaries (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Western District of Texas NPE Aggregation

At the same time NPE aggregation has increased and as the economic outlook has darkened, investors have turned to non-cyclical investments like patent litigation. At the same time that pandemic-related economic fallout has taken root, assertions by financed-back NPEs have skyrocketed, both nationally and in particular, in the WDTX. As with NPE aggregation, the first half of 2020 has seen third-party financing for NPEs almost double from 2019 (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Western District of Texas NPE Financing Year-by-Year

The overall amount of NPEs that are backed by third party funding is 46.5% of the cases filed in the WDTX (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Western District of Texas NPE Financing

Obviously, financing and third-party economic backing is shrouded in secrecy, so our numbers likely underestimate the total percentage of cases funded by third parties, whether through private capital groups like Magnetar, Starboard, or Burford Capital, or by private sources unwilling or unable to acknowledge their stake.  But what is clear from an honest assessment of the cases filed is that if a case is funded or part of an aggregation scheme, chances are that it will be filed in the WDTX, to the exclusion of plenty of competitor-competitor suits. 

Copyright © 2020, Unified Patents, LLC. All rights reserved.

AutoBrilliance patent determined to be likely invalid

On July 8, 2020, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 6,792,351, owned and asserted by AutoBrilliance, LLC, an NPE.  The ‘351 patent, directed to multi-vehicle communication, has been asserted in district court litigation against Toyota.

View Autobrilliance's district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.  Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj and David McCombs at Haynes and Boone in this proceeding.

Pebble Tide (IP Edge) patent determined to be likely invalid

On July 7, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in a PGR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 10,303,411, owned by Pebble Tide, LLC, an IP Edge affiliate and well-known NPE. The '411 patent is directed to capturing and outputting digital content. Prior to institution, Pebble Tide already abandoned some of the challenged claims and the PTAB instituted a trial on all of the remaining challenged claims.

The ‘411 patent has been asserted against over 25 companies, involving remote monitoring camera systems, mobile banking apps, online photo-sharing services, and auto insurance claims submission apps. All of the district court litigations have been terminated.

Unified is one of the top petitioners for inter partes review proceedings with over 200 petitions filed against bad NPE-controlled patents. This filing was the first occasion that Unified filed an early, post-grant review petition challenging a patent’s validity.

View Pebble Tide's district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.  Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jung Hahm and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

Transactionsecure abandons patent, terminating proceeding

On July 7, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) terminated proceedings in Unified Patents Inc. et al. v. Transactionsecure LLC et al., after Transactionsecure abandoned all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,738,921. The ‘921 patent, directed to user authentication systems and methods, had been asserted in multiple district court cases against such companies as Formstack, Fitbit, Facebook, Stripe, and Github. All district court cases have been closed.

View Transactionsecure's district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.  Unified was represented by Jason Mudd and Eric Buresh at Erise IP in this proceeding.