$2,000 Awarded for Terrestrial Comms '552 prior art

Unified is pleased to announce the PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners, Rahul Vijh and Joonyoul Maeng, who split a cash prize of $2,000 for their prior art submissions for U.S. Patent 7,411,552. The '552 patent generally relates to a "variety of techniques to achieve the desired impedance matching so that there are more opportunities available to a designer, such as choice of geometry, size, or the like, to achieve the desired operating frequency without compromising the performance of the wireless communication device". The patent is owned by Terrestrial Comms, LLC, an entity associated with Texas monetization firm, IPValuation Partners, LLC. Terrestrial Comms had asserted this patent in U.S. district court against Best Buy, Perixx Computer, Acco Brands, and NEC.

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

Oceana Innovations patent challenged as likely invalid

On August 14, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 6,508,678, owned by Oceana Innovations LLC, an NPE and subsidiary of Endpoint IP. The ‘678 patent is generally directed to USB electrical connector assemblies with the patent being asserted against HDMI cable assemblies. In 2017, the previous patent owner, Interface Linx, LLC, asserted the ‘678 patent against TTE, Haier, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sherwood, Sound United, VOXX, and Hisense. Those cases terminated in 2019. The current patent owner, Oceana Innovations LLC, began a new campaign in May 2020, filing suits against JVCKenwood, Charter Communications, and Roku.

View district court litigations by Oceana Innovations. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jessica Marks and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

$4,000 for prior art on Remote Concepts

On August 17, 2020, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $4,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claims 13 and 14 of U.S. Patent 7,016,942. This patent is owned by Remote Concepts, an NPE. The '942 patent relates to client-server network connectivity technology allowing a client computer to act as the host or server for other clients for direct client-to-client communications. This patent is currently being asserted against BlueJeans Network, Inc. in the Northern District of California.

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 30, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

Another IP Bridge patent challenged as likely invalid

On August 13, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 7,817,868 as part of its ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The '868 patent is owned by IP Bridge, which is participating in the HEVC Advance patent pool (HEVC Advance patent list).

HEVC Advance claims that certain claims of the '868 patent are essential to the HEVC standard. After conducting an independent analysis, Unified has determined that the '868 patent is likely unpatentable.

Unified is represented by Jon Bowser of Haynes and Boone, and in-house counsel, Roshan Mansinghani and Ashraf Fawzy, in this proceeding. Visit Unified’s 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 IPR2020-01433 on Unified’s Portal.

AlterWAN patent determined to be likely invalid

On August 13, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,667,534, owned and asserted by AlterWAN, Inc., an NPE. The ‘534 patent, directed to routing packets via VPN, has been asserted in district court litigation against Amazon Web Services.

View AlterWAN's district court litigation. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen, Ashraf Fawzy, and Jonathan Stroud, in this proceeding.