BCS Software reexamination request granted

On April 30, 2021, the USPTO granted Unified's request for ex parte reexamination, finding substantial new questions of patentability on all challenged claims on U.S. Patent 7,302,612, owned by BCS Software LLC. The '612 patent relates to a high-level operational support framework for monitoring, assessing, and managing the health of applications (or components/objects) in a distributed computing environment. The ‘612 patent has been asserted against Hewlett Packard, Elster Solutions (Honeywell), Landis+Gyr, and Itron.

View district court litigations by BCS Software. Unified is represented by in-house counsel David Seastrunk and Ashraf Fawzy.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/014,709, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.

GE Video Compression patent challenged

On April 30, 2021, continuing in the ongoing efforts in the SEP Video Codec Zone, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 6,795,583 owned by GE Video Compression LLC (GEVC). The ‘583 patent is purportedly essential to the H.265 and AV1 standards and is part of the HEVC Advance patent pool as well as SISVEL’s video codec patent pool.

Unified is represented by Theodoros Konstantakopoulos and Christian Dorman of Desmarais, and in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and Jessica L.A. Marks, in this proceeding. Visit Unified’s Public 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 90/014,743, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.

583 GEVC Patent Ex Parte Request FINAL by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd

PATROLL Success: Defeating Low Quality Patents

In 2020, Unified Patents launched several strategic relationships with prior art vendors to increase the quality of the submissions for PATROLL. These vendors, Apex Standards, Techson IP, Amplified, Traindex, InQuartik, IPscreener, and now Google, have led to not only more submissions but high-quality prior art being announced against NPEs on a monthly basis. 

In 2018, there were 337 total submissions for various PATROLL contests. In 2019, that number dropped to 282. However, in 2020 that number climbed back up by nearly 40% to 389 submissions. 

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The increase in submissions allowed for more winners to be identified. While 2018 and 2019 saw only 11 and 18 announcements, 2020 had 24. This was a 50% increase from 2019. With 20 active contests and a new prior art tool that Unified has launched, that number is expected to be even higher.

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Interestingly, the addition of using the various vendors led to 282 unique submissions last year. This would account for nearly 73% of all submissions last year. Of these 282 submissions, 40 were identified as winning submissions. It should be noted that many times, multiple submissions are used for a contest winner. 

Of these 40 submissions, nearly half of them came from one or several of the prior art reports provided by the various vendors. By establishing these relationships with the vendors, it aided our searchers in finding high-quality art to defeat low-quality patents. PATROLL is just one of many tools that Unified provides in helping to improve patent quality. 

Webinar Materials - Automotive 5G: Landscape & Licensing

“Cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) will serve as the foundation for vehicles to communicate with each other and everything around them. This provides a 360º non-line-of-sight awareness and a higher level of predictability for enhanced road safety and autonomous driving.” Our panelists introduced the C-V2X technology, its patent landscape, and its impact on licensing.

Thank you to our panelists for leading a great discussion!

To listen to the recorded webinar, click here: https://vimeo.com/543265122

The slide presentation from this webinar can be seen below.

Our next webinar, How Times Have Changed: Adaptations in NPE Litigation, is scheduled for Thursday, May 27th. Visit our website for topic details and more information.

Context Directions '791 reexamination request granted

On April 29, 2021, the USPTO granted Unified's request for ex parte reexamination, finding substantial new questions of patentability on all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 10,142,791, owned by Context Directions, LLC, which is affiliated with Jeffrey Gross. The patent relates to the use of hierarchical sensor groups in mobile devices. The ‘791 patent and its family have been asserted against Samsung and LG in district court. The grant for reexamination comes exactly one month from filing.

View district court litigations by Context Directions. Unified is represented by in-house counsel Michelle Aspen and Ashraf Fawzy.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/014,712, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.

90014712 by Jennifer M Gallagher on Scribd