$3,000 awarded for Cloud-Native Heroes Challenge - prior art found on Lower48

Unified Patents and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) are pleased to announce the winning prior art submissions in the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge, a patent troll bounty program. The results of this contest demonstrate the benefits of engaging open source developers and technologists with domain expertise in the fight against patent trolls.

We would like to thank the dozens of high-quality submissions that were made on these patents. The ongoing contests are open to anyone and offer 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.

Contests & Winning Submissions

U.S. Patent 7,681,177 is owned and asserted by Lower48 IP, LLC, an NPE. The ‘177 patent relates to a method and system for transforming data between hierarchical structures, notably trees and symbol strings, aiming to simplify manipulation of complex hierarchical data. The patent has been asserted against Shopify.

WINNING PATENT SUBMISSIONS - DOWNLOAD WINNING CHART

U.S. Patent 11,100,070 is owned and asserted by Lower48 IP, LLC, an NPE. The ‘070 patent focuses on methods and systems for manipulating and analyzing hierarchical data, particularly through transformations into tree structures. The patent has been asserted against Shopify. Ketan Sachdeva was awarded $3,000 for his prior art submission against the ‘070 patent.

WINNING PATENT SUBMISSION - DOWNLOAD WINNING CHART

Another Dialect natural language patent challenged

On June 23, 2025, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,015,006, owned and asserted by Dialect, LLC, an NPE. The ‘006 patent relates to the use of "context-specific domain agents" for generating a response to a user's spoken query. It is currently asserted against several parties, including Meta, Microsoft, and Google, and was previously asserted against Amazon.

View district court litigations by Dialect. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Andrea Shoffstall and Jessica L.A. Marks, in this proceeding.

Intellectual Ventures cloud load balancing patent challenged

On June 19, 2025, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 7,257,582, owned by Intellectual Ventures I LLC. The ‘582 patent relates to load balancing using multiple computer processors. It has been asserted against American Airlines and Southwest Airlines.

View district court litigations by Intellectual Ventures. Unified is represented by James Stein of Lee & Hayes, and by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen and Alyssa Holtslander, in this proceeding.

FRAND lessons from the latest UPC decisions

Craig Thompson, General Manager of Unified Consulting, presented recent developments over the Unified Patent Court and its handling of large FRAND cases during a CLE dinner in Austin, TX in April. 

The Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued its first two substantive decisions on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) matters, and these recent developments show that the UPC is open to handling large FRAND cases, rule on them quickly, and deal with related aspects (for example, production orders, and confidentiality) in a practical manner.

Watch the presentation below:

Another Malikie Wi-Fi patent challenged

On June 16, 2025, Unified filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 7,315,747, another patent owned and asserted by Malikie Innovations Limited, an NPE and entity of New PP Licensing LLC. The ‘747 patent, formerly assigned to Blackberry Ltd., is generally directed to providing availability data in a messaging environment. It has been asserted against technology that sends availability data over Wi-Fi and also cellular networks developed by Match Group, Inc. Malikie Innovations has filed several other litigations funded by Key Patent Innovations Limited against networking communications, apps, and Wi-Fi devices.

View district court litigations by Malikie. Unified is represented by Ellyar Barazesh with Baker Botts, and by in-house counsel, Kelly Hughes and T.J. Murphy, in this proceeding.