On September 16, 2020, 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 7,885,981. The patent is owned by Michael Philip Kaufman, an NPE. The '981 patent generally relates to generating a user interface (UI) for a relational database, where the UI display includes various display modes.

The ‘981 patent has been asserted in district court against companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce.

In addition, the '981 patent has been subject two prior IPR proceedings. IPR2017-01141 was denied because the combination did not appear to disclose the "scanning" limitation or storing/using the scanned data. IPR2017-01142 was denied because the Petitioner tried to break the priority chain, but the PTAB did not agree, so they did not reach the merits of those references.

The contest will expire on October 31, 2020. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for this contest.