Tracking Innovation: Using Unified’s Portfolio Velocity Tool

Unified’s Portal has added a new component to its Portfolio analysis tab that allows companies to be compared in terms of accelerated or decelerated innovation based on CPC codes.

Innovation Velocity uses two key metrics: ▲ Velocity - the total sum of patents per class code within the last 10 years; and ▲% Velocity - the percentage of change over a given time period. The Innovation Velocity formula is:

 
 

The Final Number of Patents specifically looks at years 2017-2022, while the Initial Number of Patents looks at years 2012-2022. By using these parameters, the tool is able to overcome the natural “dark period” of time within the U.S. patenting process. The dark period refers to the 18 months from which an application is filed to the day it is published. These 18 months make it extremely difficult to understand a portfolio’s trajectory because naturally there will be a decline in publicly available application/patent information. By using the formula, the most recent years are aggregated together to get a holistic view of the number of patents over a given time period and measured against the previous years. This provides a glimpse to either the growth or the decline in a specific classification code.

As an example, we can compare Bank of America’s portfolio against JP Morgan Chase in terms of patenting trends, The Innovation Velocity tool allows users to see the general patenting trends for the top CPC codes, with the total being aggregated. Included are the CPC, ▲ Velocity, ▲% Velocity and a ten year graph to show the general trend.

Users then can see the number of patents granted, within each CPC, on the timeline over a specific time period. The patent count is hyperlinked back to Portal’s Patent Search where more analysis could be done on the set of patents.

Users can also view the macro trends of a company, but looking at all the top CPCs and see an aggregate total for the entire company.

Since CPCs tend to be generic and broad, Unified’s Portal provides the same analysis on the CPC Subclass.

Innovation Velocity not only helps companies understand their specific portfolio, but this tool allows users to compare their portfolio with others to understand both the macro and micro trends of their patenting strategy.

Dominion Harbor entity Liberty Peak Ventures patent likely invalid

On April 26, 2022, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 8,066,181, owned and asserted by Liberty Peak Ventures, LLC, a Dominion Harbor entity. The '181 patent relates to generating an authentication tag for use in contactless transactions and has been asserted against Citigroup.

View district court litigations by Liberty Peak Ventures. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel Michelle Aspen and Roshan Mansinghani.

LBT IP II patent challenged

On April 25, 2022, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 8,531,289, owned and asserted by LBT IP II LLC. The '289 patent is directed to location monitoring systems and has been asserted against Uber.

View district court litigations by LBT IP II. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel Ellyar Barazesh and Roshan Mansinghani.

EPO opposition filed against Dolby patent

On April 14, 2022, Unified filed an opposition proceeding against EP 3490258 B1, currently owned by Dolby International AB. EP ‘258 generally relates to video coding techniques that use data hiding to decrease bandwidth. This filing is a part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

Unified is represented by Dr. Susan E. Keston at HGF Law, and by in-house counsel, Ellyar Barazesh and Jessica L.A. Marks.

$2,000 awarded for Forrester '295 prior art

Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Preeti Dua, who was awarded a cash prize of $2,000 for her prior art submission for U.S. Patent 9,245,295. The '295 patent generally relates to a call-to-action lockout on a mobile device coupled to a data network. The invention has been developed primarily for controlling responses while experiencing media content on mobile electronic devices.

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.

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