Another Dominion Harbor subsidiary, Pure Data Systems, patent held unpatentable

On July 22, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Pure Data Systems, LLC, holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 5,999,947 unpatentable. The ‘947 patent is owned by Pure Data Systems, LLC, a Dominion Harbor subsidiary and well-known NPE, and is directed to distributing database changes to one or more client computers. The ‘947 patent has been asserted in 16 district court cases against such companies as Electronic Arts, Spotify, CNN, CBS, Pinterest, LinkedIn and others.

Unified was represented by Haynes and Boone and in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander, Ashraf Fawzy, and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding. View all district court litigation involving the ‘947 patent here. To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see Unified’s Portal.

Uniloc patent held unpatentable

On July 22, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Uniloc 2017 LLC, holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,020,252 unpatentable. Each claim was invalidated on two different grounds. The ‘252 patent is owned and asserted by well-known NPE, Uniloc 2017 LLC. The ’252 patent, directed to a “communal recording system” that restricts access to recorded audio messages to subsequent users, has been asserted against Apple, Microsoft, and Hike in district court.

Unified was represented by Finnegan and by in-house counsel, Roshan Mansinghani, Jessica Marks, and Jonathan Stroud, in this proceeding. View district court litigation for the ‘252 patent. To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see Unified’s Portal.

Portal Communications, a Dominion Harbor sub, patent held unpatentable

On July 22, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Portal Communications, LLC, holding all challenged claims of  U.S. Patent 7,376,645 unpatentable. The motion to amend was also denied with the Board finding the claim was obvious under both of the prior art grounds Unified presented. The ‘645 patent is owned and asserted by Portal Communications, LLC, a subsidiary of well-known NPE, Dominion Harbor. The ‘645 patent, directed to natural language processing techniques, had been asserted against SoundHound, Microsoft, and Apple.

Unified was represented by Ropes & Gray LLP and by in-house counsel, Jessica Marks, Roshan Mansinghani, and Ashraf Fawzy, in this proceeding. View all district court litigation involving the ‘645 patent here. To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see Unified’s Portal.

JustService patent challenged as likely invalid

On July 20, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 10,476,868, owned and asserted by JustService.net, LLC, an NPE. The '868 patent is related to cloud and data-storage technology and is currently being asserted against Dropbox.

View district court litigation by JustService.net. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Michelle Callaghan and Ashraf Fawzy, in this proceeding.

EPO challenge filed against Velos Media by Unified Patents

1st European challenge by an independent entity against an NPE

Unified believes patent quality is not just a U.S. issue but an international one. For those reasons, on July 17, 2020, Unified filed opposition proceedings against recently issued EP 2 347 591 B1, owned by Velos Media, LLC. The ‘591 patent is generally related to decoding data using macroblocks. This filing is a part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

In mid-July, Velos announced Technicolor as their first public HEVC patent licensee. However, in June, Technicolor declared bankruptcy in the U.S. because of higher than expected costs and lower revenue.

The ‘591 patent is also part of a family that Unified challenged and the PTAB instituted review on all claims as likely unpatentable, IPR2019-00757. This family is one of Velos’ largest and originally owned by Qualcomm. 

Read the entire filing below. Unified is represented by Dr. Simon Q. Lud, European Patent Attorney at Maiwald Intellectual Property, and by in-house counsel, Jonathan Stroud and Ashraf Fawzy.