$2,500 for prior art on 2BCom patent

On July 29, 2020, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,500 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 7,184,707, formerly owned by Toshiba but now assigned to 2BCom, LLC, an NPE. The ‘707 patent is generally related to a communication device and a method for controlling a communication device that can load or unload service information at appropriate timings by flexibly designating discriminating conditions of connection or disconnection of a link. The ‘707 patent has been asserted in district court against BMW, FCA, and Kia.

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 September 15, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

$2,000 Awarded for Digi Portal '342 prior art

Unified is pleased to announce the PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Preeti Dua, who received a cash prize of $2,000 for her prior art submission for U.S. Patent 9,626,342. The '342 patent was formally owned by Yahoo and is now owned by Digi Portal, an NPE and subsidiary of Excalibur IP, owned by IP Edge. The '342 patent generally relates to a dynamic page generator.

To help the industry fight bad patents, we have published the winning prior art below.

We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent. The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests. Visit PATROLL today to learn more about how to participate.

WINNING SUBMISSION

• U.S. 5,649,186

• EP0848338A1

• U.S. 5,894,554

US 9,626,342 The '342 patent ("Nazem") was filed on December 21st 2012 and has a priority date of June 12th,1997 as a consequence of being the final installment of a string of continuations. Claim 1 of thepatent discloses a method for implementing a custom webpage with real-time information.

$2,500 for prior art on Heritage IP patent

On July 27, 2020, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,500 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 6,854,067. The patent is owned by Heritage IP, LLC, an NPE subsidiary owned by IP Edge. The '067 patent generally relates to a method and system for interaction between a processor and a power on reset circuit to dynamically control power states in a microcontroller. This patent has been asserted in district court against NXP, Resideo Technologies, Maytronics, Insulet Corp., and August Home.

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 September 15, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

PTAB Discretionary Denials: In the First Half of 2020, Denials Already Exceed All of 2019

Following on Unified’s previous study, the PTAB continues their steady uptick in procedural denials under § 314 through the first half of 2020, and on procedural, non-merits-based denials in general. These § 314 denials have tied 2019’s annual total—and total denials are just 13 denials shy of 2018’s total, with just half the year reported. Projections show procedural denials will most likely greatly exceed those in 2019 by the end of Q3. Most significantly, though, the General Plastic/NHK framework is being used to procedurally deny petitions more than ever—projecting more than double the number of denials in 2019, they are set to make up roughly 30% of all denials this calendar year.

Thus far, 2020 has seen seventy-five § 314(a) denials, which accounts for roughly 30% of the all denials to date (268). This already ties the previous year total, which only saw 75 § 314(a) discretionary denials total. 2018 saw 45, while 2017 and 2016 saw 15 and 5, respectively.

Indeed, § 314(a) now accounts for the majority of procedural denials (including denials under § 325 and those related to joinder). The ratio of § 314(a) procedural denials has grown this year, as you can see below. 2019 saw 49% of all procedural denials be § 314(a) (75 out of 154); in 2020, more than 74% of procedural denials have been under § 314(a) (75 out of 102). This means that the PTAB is expected to issue 162 § 314(a) denials by the end of the year, a 116% increase from last year.

This is a dramatic increase over the life of the Board, where it has denied institution on 7.0% of all petitions to date for purely procedural reasons—including denials of joinder, § 314, § 325, and other requirements. This is an increase of the previous study, based on the rapid rise of the use of such denials over the past six months.

Of all denials to date, roughly a quarter have not been on the merits; indeed, in total 7.0% of all denials have been over § 314(a) (nearly all from the past two years); and 5.7% have been over § 325(d). Note that § 314(a) denials have exploded since 2018, particularly as a percentage of the (falling) filing numbers and institution rates. Both have increased since the last study.

Parallel District Court Cases Affected by Denials: Early Numbers

When looking at the petitioners that are denied on 314(a) with related parallel district court litigation, the California Northern District Court comprises 45% of the cases related to denials, with 208 cases being cited. (It should be noted that often with denials multiple cases are cited for the denial, and these numbers don’t yet distinguish between “multiple petition” denials under General Plastic, “parallel petition” denials under the July 2019 Trial Practice Guide Update, or “trial date” denials under NHK Spring and Aptiv. A large number of these suits are related to sprawling ongoing litigations, like the yearslong Finjan or Rovi v. Comcast disputes.) These numbers encompass the Board’s entire history, and are a lagging indicator of where cases were being filed years ago. 

The Texas Eastern District has 80 cases cited, comprising 17% of all 314(a) denials. The Delaware District Court had 67 cases cited, comprising 15% of all 314(a) denials. The Texas Western District Court has seen 1 case cited in 2019, and this year that number has risen to 4, accounting for 1% of all 314(a) denials to date; as that docket balloons to more than 20% of the US patent docket, that number is set to rise dramatically.

Looking at the jurisdictions breakdown of § 314(a) denials, the venues as a whole average around 457 days. The top five range from 812 days (California Southern) to 435 days (Florida Southern). Interestingly, Texas Western is below the average by only 5 days, 452 respectively. 

Note that many of the cases denied under § 314(a) due to the advanced stages of a district court proceeding are litigations that were filed more than a two years ago, which is the average time of a district court in the United States to get to trial, suggesting this breakdown is a lagging indicator of where trials were filed more than two years ago. Given that the Western District of Texas has recently adopted aggressive local rules establishing early aspirational trial dates and the docket has ballooned, we have begun to see the Western District of Texas account for more cases related to denials under § 314(a). Of the recent denials of the past few months, nearly all have been due to trial dates in either the Eastern or Western Districts of Texas.

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

Helios Streaming/Ideahub patent challenged as likely invalid

On July 23, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 8,645,562, owned by Ideahub, Inc., and licensed to and asserted by Helios Streaming, LLC, an NPE. The '562 patent is directed to an adaptive streaming service using metadata and is being asserted Showtime, Vudu, Crackle, and Starz. Helios is asserting the ‘562 patent against streaming media content in accordance with the MPEG-DASH standard and video-on-demand (VOD) systems. 

View district court litigation by Ideahub and Helios. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by WilmerHale and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and Jung Hahm, in this proceeding.