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The team at Unified used Pearl to successfully identify and chart prior art against U.S. Patent 9,961,097, owned by Portus Singapore Pte Ltd, an NPE. The ‘097 patent relates to a home security and control system that lets a user monitor and control devices in a home remotely over the Internet. The patent has been asserted against Samsung, ADI, Whirlpool, Trane, LG, Lennox, Tonal Systems, Peloton, BSH Home Appliances, and others.
Identified Prior Art
On May 20, 2026, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate cancelling all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,224,678, owned and asserted by Stingray IP Solutions, an NPE and entity of Acacia Research Corporation. The Examiner maintained the rejections of all challenged claims of the ‘678 patent. The ‘678 patent relates to detecting an intrusion in a network system. It was asserted against Leedarson IoT, Schlage Lock, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Vivint, and Allegion.
View district court litigations by Stingray IP. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.
To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019718
Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $3,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,379,538, owned and asserted by Valtrus Innovations Ltd., an NPE and a New PP Licensing LLC entity. The '538 patent relates to using a machine-readable monitoring model to store and maintain the configuration of a monitoring environment. A monitoring element reads that model and automatically adjusts how it operates based on the defined configuration. It has been asserted against Kubernetes implementations within applications owned or created by SAP America. Both Starbucks and Google have filed declaratory judgment actions against the ‘538 patent.
The contest will expire on July 10, 2026. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for the contest. PATROLL researchers are required to use Pearl to generate claim charts. Submitted invalidity charts must address every limitation of the challenged claim. This may require using more than one prior art reference. Each PATROLL researcher can generate up to 30 invalidity claim charts per month using Pearl. These charts can be downloaded then submitted to PATROLL.
This PATROLL contest is co-sponsored by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and is a part of a continuing series of contests in their Cloud Native Heroes Challenge program. Cloud native developers can earn swag and prizes by helping us defeat patent trolls. Find more information on CNCF and the challenges within the links below:
Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 17 of U.S. Patent 7,238,550, owned and asserted by Helix Microinnovations LLC, an NPE and entity of Jeffrey M. Gross. The '550 patent relates to the fabrication of chip-on-board memory modules using unpackaged semiconductor die mounted directly on a circuit board. It is currently asserted against Realtek Semiconductor, Lumileds, Luminus, and Infineon.
The contest will expire on July 10, 2026. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for the contest. PATROLL researchers are required to use Pearl to generate claim charts. Submitted invalidity charts must address every limitation of the challenged claim. This may require using more than one prior art reference. Each PATROLL researcher can generate up to 30 invalidity claim charts per month using Pearl. These charts can be downloaded then submitted to PATROLL.
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 8,732,085, owned by Paypulz LLC, an NPE. The '085 patent relates to a proxy payment card usable like a normal credit or debit card at ATMs and merchant point-of-sale terminals, including legacy systems.
The contest will expire on July 10, 2026. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for the contest. PATROLL researchers are required to use Pearl to generate claim charts. Submitted invalidity charts must address every limitation of the challenged claim. This may require using more than one prior art reference. Each PATROLL researcher can generate up to 30 invalidity claim charts per month using Pearl. These charts can be downloaded then submitted to PATROLL.
