Federal Circuit rejects RPI arguments against Unified

On July 28, 2020, in the first appeal to be decided by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on real party in interest (RPI) related to one of Unified’s over 200 PTAB challenges, the Federal Circuit rejected Fall Line Patents, LLC arguments that (1) RPI determinations were reviewable on appeal after Thryv, and also rejected (2) that Arthrex was wrongly decided. They then remanded for a new Board panel decision, in line with Arthrex. This appeal came after the PTAB issued a final written decision against Fall Line holding all challenged claims unpatentable.

Judge O'Malley noted that Thryv precluded judicial review of the PTAB’s institution-based RPI determinations. Notably, Fall Line did not appeal the merits of the Board's validity decision. Unified was represented by James Barney and Daniel Cooley of Finnegan, and by in-house counsel, Jonathan Stroud and Ashraf Fawzy. 

See Fall Line Patents, LLC v. Unified Patents for the decision. 

MobilePay patent held unpatentable

On July 29, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. MobilePay LLC, holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,800,706 unpatentable. The ‘706 patent is owned by MobilePay, LLC, an IP Valuation Partners subsidiary and well-known NPE. MobilePay disclaimed some of the challenged claims early in the proceeding, and the Board found the remaining challenged claims unpatentable in the final written decision.

The '706 patent is directed to systems that connect a credit card reader to a mobile phone via the audio port so the mobile phone can be used to transmit credit card data to a cloud service for decoding. The patent has been asserted against PayPal, Bank of America, Mindbody, and Intuit.

View MobilePay's district court litigation.  To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see Unified’s Portal. Unified was represented by White & Case and by in-house counsel, Jessica Marks and Ashraf Fawzy, in this proceeding.

$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

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.