Vision Works IP automotive patent instituted

On August 25, 2023, less than two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding a substantial new question of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,437,935, owned and asserted by Vision Works IP Corp., an NPE. The ’935 patent generally relates to a vehicle monitoring system for turning off an idling engine. The ’935 patent is currently being asserted against Nissan and was previously asserted against Mercedes-Benz USA.

View district court litigations by Vision Works IP. Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj and David McCombs of Hayes Boone, and by in-house counsel, Kelly Hughes and Ashraf Fawzy.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90015258

Phelan Group automotive patent challenged

On August 31, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 10,259,470, owned and asserted by the Phelan Group, LLC, an NPE. The '470 patent generally relates to a vehicle control system for authenticating and monitoring a driver and their operation of a vehicle to improve safety. The patent is being asserted against Kia and Toyota.

View district court litigations by the Phelan Group. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, David Seastrunk and T.J. Murphy, in this proceeding.

$3,000 for Jeffrey M. Gross entity Context Directions detection patent prior art

A new PATROLL contest, with a $3,000 cash prize, was added seeking prior art on at least claim 3 of U.S. Patent 9,807,564, owned by Context Directions LLC, a Jeffrey M. Gross entity. The ‘564 patent generally relates to a method for detecting context of a mobile device, and to a mobile device having a context detection module, especially to detect that the mobile device is located in a moving vehicle. The patent had been asserted over 10 times but most recently against Fox Rent-A-Car, Avis, and Enterprise Rent-A-Center.

The contest will expire on October 31, 2023. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

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B.S.D Crown streaming video patent challenged

On September 1, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 6,389,473, owned and asserted by B.S.D Crown Ltd. (f/k/a Emblaze Ltd.), an NPE. The ‘473 patent relates to streaming video over the Internet. The patent is being asserted against Amazon.

View district court litigations by B.S.D. Crown (f/k/a Emblaze Ltd.). Unified is represented by Nick Apel and Eric Buresh of Erise IP, and by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Michelle Aspen.

$2,000 for Songbird Tech audio patent prior art

A new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, was added seeking prior art on at least claim 10 of U.S. Patent 8,825,787, owned by Songbird Tech, LLC, an NPE. The ‘787 patent relates to an audio message-driven customer interaction queuing system for any public web page to allow web page visitors to utter questions into a browser-resident recorder application. It has been asserted against Samsung.

The contest will expire on October 31, 2023. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

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