Omnitek Partners patent determined to be likely invalid

On February 10, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all 4 grounds challenging claims 1-4 (all claims) of U.S. Patent 8,224,569, owned by Omnitek Partners LLC, an NPE. The ‘569 patent generally relates to mapping systems typically used in vehicles. The patent had been asserted in litigation against Toyota and is currently being asserted against Ford, GM, Here Global B.V., Mazda, Volvo, Apple, and Alpine Electronics.

View district court litigations by Omnitek Partners. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander, Ashraf Fawzy, and Jonathan Stroud, in this proceeding.

ETRI Chinese patent challenged

On February 19, 2021, Unified Patents filed a Chinese invalidity challenge against CN104219523. The CN’523 patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The CN‘523 patent is related to patents that are designated essential to the HEVC Advance patent pool as well as SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools. It is also related to U.S. Patent 8,867,854, which Unified challenged in the recently instituted IPR2020-01048.

Unified is represented by Tao Chen at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case is managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.

Another GEVC Chinese patent challenged

On February 10, 2021, Unified Patents filed a Chinese invalidity challenge against CN105187829. The CN’829 patent is owned by GE Video Compression (GEVC) and is related to the CN’755 challenge that Unified filed on February 4, 2021. The CN‘829 patent is related to patents that are designated essential to the HEVC Advance patent pool as well as SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools.

Unified is represented by Fanghua Zhou at Wei Chixue Law Firm, and the case is managed by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Ashraf Fawzy.

Unified invalidity challenge on CN105187829B by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd

KCG Technologies LLC patent held unpatentable

On February 10, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. KCG Technologies LLC holding all challenged original claims of U.S. Patent 9,671,955 unpatentable. The PTAB also denied their motion to amend, finding proposed substitute claims 14-26 unpatentable as well. The ‘955 patent is generally directed to virtual smart phones used in in-vehicle systems.

KCG had asserted this patent against CarMax. The case is now closed. The ‘955 patent has been held to be directed to patent ineligible subject matter by the Federal Circuit.

View KCG Tech’s district court litigation here. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander and Jessica L.A. Marks, in this proceeding. To view the entire case proceeding, see Unified's Portal.

RNIX & SVIX, the first tool set to help objectively save on annuities

With patent annuities sky rocketing into the billions of dollars over the next few years, Unified has developed the world's first tool set to objectively help in deciding what to continue paying annuities on. Unified algorithms calculated 70 million unique patent families based on their Patent Value (PVIX) and an indexed score of their future lifetime cost (SVIX). Combining these two items together makes RNIX, the world's first tool which provides portfolios managers an objective and easy way to quickly ascertain which families are likely to provide the highest value at the lowest cost (and vice versa).

Combined with tools to evaluate patent broadness (BRIX) and validity (APIX), Unified provides the first comprehensive and completely objective set of tools based on academic rigor to help patent portfolio managers effectively evaluate and prioritize.

Read our academic study on SVIX and RNIX below, and for examples of SVIX and RNIX in action on Airbus and Boeing portfolios, please click HERE.