The Automotive sector has seen a significant increase in litigation over the last several years.  Unified studied litigation against the largest Automotive OEMs and Suppliers from 2012 to 2015.  Almost all the growth can be attributed to NPEs. Tables 1 & 2: Although Patent Litigation Decreased in 2015, NPEs Remain Responsible for the Majority of New…

On May 24, 2016, Unified Patents filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) on claims 1, 2, 7, 27, 28, 29, 34, 54, 72, 73, 74, 92, 93 and 111 of U.S. Patent 8,542,815, a patent owned and asserted by VoIP-PAL.com, Inc., who has announced in a press release it is seeking over $7 billion in damages.…

On May 13, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit summarily affirmed the PTAB’s ruling that all challenged claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,738,799, are unpatentable under Rule 36, effectively ending the assertion of those claims against multiple parties.  The patent owner is a subsidiary of Marathon Patent Group, Inc. and has repeatedly…

On May 19, 2016, Unified Patents Inc. filed a petition for inter partes review, IPR2016-01060, against claims 1-4, 9, 10, and 21 of U.S. Patent 8,933,945, directed to a method for optimizing memory requests by dividing them. The patent is owned by an NPE called Advanced Silicon Technologies (AST) (http://adsiltech.com/), and is the second patent…

On May 2, 2016, in the case of Grecia v. DISH Network, LLC, 4-16-cv-00588 (CAND), a California court granted DISH Network, LLC (“DISH”) a stay of their district court litigation in light of an IPR filed by Unified Patents Inc. (“Unified”) on the sole asserted patent, U.S. Patent No. 8,887,308. The judge granted the stay…