Another EPO challenge filed against Velos Media by Unified

On September 3, 2020, Unified filed opposition proceedings against EP 3 113 493 B1, owned by Velos Media, LLC. The ‘493 patent is generally related to decoding image data to generate quantized transform coefficients using certain sized matrices. This filing is a part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

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.

Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbHEuropäisches Patentamt Munich, DRAFT MünchenOfficialMünchen80298 Ref.: EP 16 181 274.8 / 3 113 493 DüsseldorfPatentee: Velos Media International Limited Elisenhof, Elisenstrasse 3Opponent: Unified Patents, LLC 80335 München T +49 89 7472660 F +49 89 776424Our Ref.: U07909EPOP/SQL E H www.maiwald.eu Grounds of Opposition Amtsgericht München SQLTable of contents 1.

Sound View patent determined to have substantial questions of patentability, reexamination request granted

On September 3, 2020, the Central Reexamination Unit of the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Unified Patents' request for ex parte reexamination of U.S. Patent 7,426,715, owned and asserted by Sound View Innovations, LLC, finding substantial new questions of patentability for all challenged claims. The request was filed in an effort to protect Open Source technologies from invalid NPE assertions. The ’715 patent generally relates to shutting down a plurality of software components in an ordered sequence. Sound View recently asserted this patent against Walmart, Vudu, and Delta Air Lines.

View district court litigations by Sound View. Read the order below. Unified is represented by Haynes and Boone and by in-house counsel, Michelle Aspen and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/014,558, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.

Order Granting Reexamination - US7426715 by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd

Velos Media patent held unpatentable; amendment denied

On September 4, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Velos Media, LLC holding all claims of US Patent 9,979,981 unpatentable. Velos also moved to amend the claims, but the Board denied the motion to amend. The ’981 patent is generally directed to techniques for image processing, including encoding efficiency for color difference signals and reduction in address calculations for memory access.

The ‘981 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the largest families known to be owned by Velos. Velos claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard. The ’981 patent is part of a family of patents that were originally assigned to Sony Corporation and transferred to Velos Media in 2017. 

Visit Unified’s Public 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 IPR2019-00707 on the Portal. Unified was represented by David Cavanaugh from WilmerHale, Theodoros Konstantakopoulos from Desmarais LLP, and in-house counsel, Jung Hahm and Jonathan Stroud, in this proceeding.

$2,500 for VoiceAge EVS '073 Prior Art

On September 2, 2020, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,500 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claims 31 and 36 of U.S. Patent 8,990,073. This patent is owned by VoiceAge EVS, LLC, which is associated with Fortress Investment Group LLC, an NPE. The '073 patent relates to concealment of frame erasure caused by frames of an encoded sound signal erased during transmission from an encoder to a decoder.

According to the complaint, these patents are essential to the EVS Standard. The ‘073 patent is currently being asserted against Apple, Lenovo, TCL, and HMD Global. View VoiceAge ‘073 district court litigation.

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.

Amplified has provided a list of highly relevant invalidity search results for interested professionals to quickly begin search and analysis work. 

Traindex, a machine learning enabled search service, has provided an ordered list of most semantically similar patent documents where results are filtered to include only results with the publication date preceding that of the patent being challenged.

The contest will expire on October 31, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

Lighthouse cancels patent as the result of Unified's challenge

On September 2, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) granted Lighthouse Consulting Group’s request for adverse judgment and cancellation of all instituted claims in IPR2020-00194 filed by Unified. This request comes after the PTAB’s decision to institute trial for U.S. Patent 8,590,940, directed to image-based check depositing technology. Lighthouse asserted this patent over 30 times. The defendants in these cases were primarily banks and financial services companies such as Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Charles Schwab, AMEX, Bank of America, Capital One, Morgan Stanley, Ally Financial, JP Morgan, and BB&T. Wells Fargo also filed an IPR petition challenging claims of this patent in April 2020.

View Lighthouse's district court litigation. To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see Unified's Portal. Unified was represented by Raghav Bajaj at Haynes and Boone in this proceeding.