$1,500 Awarded for Michael Philip Kaufman prior art

Unified is pleased to announce the PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Ekta Aswal, who received a cash prize of $1,500 for her prior art submission for U.S. Patent 7,885,981. The patent is owned by Michael Philip Kaufman, an NPE. The '981 patent generally relates to generating a user interface (UI) for a relational database, where the UI display includes various display modes. The ‘981 patent has been asserted in district court against companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce.

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 SUBMISSIONS

FINAL Revised Mapping_Unified Patents_Winning Submission for US7885981_MPK_12.01.2020 by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd

IP Edge sub, Karetek Holdings, settles with Unified Patents

On January 8, 2021, the Board issued an order terminating IPR2020-01550 pursuant to a joint settlement request filed by Unified Patents and Karetek Holdings LLC, an NPE and subsidiary of IP Edge. U.S. Patent 7,373,515, related to a multi-factor authentication system, had been asserted against RetailMeNot, Golds Gym, HelloFresh, PetSmart, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, and others.

Unified was represented by Wilson Sonsini and by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen and Ashraf Fawzy, in this proceeding. View district court litigations by Karetek Holdings. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal.

ETRI patent challenged as likely invalid

On December 31, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,736,484, owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), as part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The ‘484 patent is part of the HEVC Advance Patent Pool, as well as SISVEL's AV1 and VP9 patent pools.

Unified is represented by Drew Sommer of Greenberg Traurig and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and Roshan Mansinghani, 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 IPR2021-00368 on the Portal.

PTAB Discretionary Denials Up 60%+ in 2020: Fueled Entirely by 314(a) Denials

In 2020, the PTAB logged a record increase in “discretionary” denials, with 228 petitions denied without considering the merits.  The vast majority—62%—came under either the NHK Spring/Fintiv “trial date” framework or were based on the new parallel petition requirements.  In a year where denials were up generally, roughly 20% of all institution decisions (and almost half of ALL denials) were procedurally denied, compared to 12.5% in 2019.  

Remarkably, the Board has accelerated their use of procedural denials based on trial dates, despite district trials continually being delayed—and many cancelled outright—due to the current pandemic. This 60% increase in denial rates was due to the explosive use of 314(a).  Indeed, even in the trial on which this line of decisions were based–-the NHK Spring decision—the trial never materialized.  

That overall decisions were down in 2020 (based on a dip in filings in 2019) throws those numbers in to even starker relief; as you can see from the chart below, “procedural” non-merits denials made up almost half (43+%) of all denials, merits or otherwise. 


PTAB 1.png

The use of 314(a) nearly doubled over that in 2019, following the previous trend from 2018 to 2019. Indeed, this year 314(a) was used in 73% (167) of all procedural denials.

PTAB 2.png

Looking at the last five years, 314(a) denials are now used by the Board nearly 11% of the time by the board, an increase of 1.5% from last quarter.

PTAB 3.png

Meanwhile, 325(d) denials remain consistent with last quarter at 5.4%. 

PTAB 4.png

The NHK Spring/Fintiv framework, in particular, saw a +1,300% increase in 2020—i.e., 85 times in 2020, versus 6 in 2019. Parallel Petition Denials also saw a 60% increase from the previous year as well.

PTAB 5.png

Copyright © 2021, Unified Patents, LLC. All rights reserved.

IP Bridge patent challenged

On December 31, 2020, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 7,515,635 as part of its ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The '635 patent, originally owned by Panasonic, is currently owned by IP Bridge. The patent is claimed to be essential as part of HEVC Advance’s patent pool (HEVC Advance patent list), as well as SISVEL’s VP9 and AV1 patent pools.

Unified is represented by Theodoros Konstantakopoulos of Desmarais LLP 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 view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/014,645, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.

IP Bridge Reexam '635 by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd