$2,000 for Querytron Heggem search patent prior art

Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,849,707, asserted by Querytron Heggem LLC, an NPE and entity of Eric Zautner. The ‘707 patent relates generally to search engines and, more specifically, to methods for business-oriented search. It has been asserted against Alibaba, Fiverr, and Redfin Corp.

The contest will expire on December 31, 2024. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.

Wrinkl messaging patent challenged

On October 25, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 11,973,731, owned and asserted by Wrinkl, Inc. The ‘731 patent relates to a multi-pane group messaging interface. It has been asserted against Slack Technologies and Salesforce.

View district court litigations by Wrinkl. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen and Jessica L.A. Marks, in this proceeding.

VirtaMove's Kubernetes / open source patent challenge instituted

On October 24, 2024, one month after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on challenged claims 1 and 12 of U.S. Patent 7,784,058, owned and asserted by VirtaMove Corp (f/k/a Appzero Software Corp). an NPE. The ’058 patent relates to operating system libraries and instanced computing environments. It has been asserted against IBM, Google, HP, and Amazon. 

View district court litigations by VirtaMove Corp. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Matthew Beck, Michelle Aspen, and Roshan Mansinghani.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019676

Magnetar Capital entity Lionra cybersecurity patent found invalid

On October 23, 2024, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate canceling all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,264,441, owned by Lionra Technologies Ltd, a Magnetar Capital entity. The ‘441 patent relates to detecting vulnerability exploits of a network using a virtual machine and has been asserted against Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Crowdstrike, VMware, and Cisco.

View district court litigations by Lionra Technologies. Unified was represented by Michael Jones and James Pawlowski at Rothwell Figg, and by in-house counsel, Michelle Aspen and Roshan Mansinghani.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019384

Only lawyers benefit: Less than 4% of NPE gains reach inventors

The Perryman Group, in a recent economic study commissioned by Unified Edge, has found that less than 4% of the gains from patents sold to NPEs is realized by the original assignee. The findings reveal that selling a patent to an NPE is a highly inefficient mechanism for an original inventor to monetize its patents. The study suggests that other options, such as patent pools, are more likely to ensure that innovators reap the rewards for their contributions to new tech.

Download the economic study by click on the button below: