$3,000 awarded for Gridley IP prior art

Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners, Mani Manikandan and Kartikeya Srivastava, who split a cash prize of $3,000 for their prior art submissions for U.S. Patent 8,676,668. The patent is owned by by Gridley IP LLC, an IP Edge entity. The '668 patent generally relates to mapping population activity by discerning a location, speed, and direction of wireless mobile devices within a geographic region. It has been asserted against Waitr, Route4Me, WorkWave, Instacart, Doordash, NeighborFavor, Cabconnect, Zum Services, HopSkipDrive, SuperShuttle, and Flywheel Software based on their respective delivery and ridesharing services and apps.

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 SUBMISSION

Consumeron prior art found

Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on U.S. Patent 10,115,067, owned by Consumeron, LLC, an NPE. The '067 patent relates to a method for remote acquisition and delivery of goods involving a server in communication with a customer’s computer through a user interface via the Internet. The patent had been asserted against MapleBear Inc. d/b/a Instacart.

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 SUBMISSION

Catapulting BlackBerry: A Data-Intensive Look – Part I, Quantity

Unified’s Samuel Baird pens a two-part series that examines the completed sale of the Blackberry portfolio. The first part was published by IPWatchdog.com on May 18, 2022.

At the end of January, BlackBerry announced it had completed the sale of the majority of its patents to Catapult IP Innovations, a special purpose vehicle specifically formed for the acquisition. Approvals for the transaction were granted under the 1985 Investment Canada Act and the 1976 Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. The value of the deal was reported to be $600 million, a figure that makes it one of the largest patent acquisitions in the last ten years and spurs a great deal of speculation about whether it is worth it. This article explores Blackberry’s divested portfolio and disassembles some of the assumptions surrounding the portfolio and the deal’s value.

Click HERE to read the entire article posted on IPWatchdog.com. In Part II of this two-part series, we will examine some of the data around quality and essentiality of the Blackberry portfolio.

K. Mizra patent likely invalid

On May 18, 2022, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 7,394,423, owned and asserted by K. Mizra LLC. The ‘423 patent generally relates to a device for initiating and handling an emergency IP request using an IP enabled device having GPS capability and had been asserted against General Motors.

View district court litigations by K. Mizra. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by Lori Gordon at Perkins Coie and by in-house counsel, Roshan Mansinghani and Alyssa Holtslander.

Unified Succeeds in RPI Decisions

For the past decade, across more than 300 proceedings, Unified Patents has won every real party-in-interest (RPI) challenge—whether at institution, on final written decision, or before the Federal Circuit.  

Unified’s status as the sole RPI was challenged in its first filed IPR, where the Board held that Unified was the sole RPI. Unified Patents Inc. v. Clouding IP, LLC, IPR2013-00586, Paper 9 (Mar. 21, 2014) (members were not found to be RPIs, where there was no evidence of funding or control of the particular IPR; challenged claims were later cancelled in a Final Written Decision issued April 26, 2015). Unified overcame every such challenge in the proceeding years. Today, RPI designations are rarely challenged and largely settled law.

Read more about Unified’s RPI decisions on our website HERE.