PATROLL

$5,000 awarded in first-ever Cloud-Native Heroes Challenge on PATROLL

Unified Patents and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) are pleased to announce the winning prior art submissions in the first ever Cloud Native Heroes Challenge, a patent troll bounty program, in which prizes exceeding $5,000 were awarded to winners from 3 different continents. The results of this contest demonstrate the benefits of engaging open source developers and technologists with domain expertise in the fight against patent trolls.

This first challenge sought prior art that can be used to challenge U.S. Patent 11,695,823, owned and asserted by Edge Networking Systems LLC, an NPE and entity affiliated with Blue Wave IP, Inc. The challenged patent relates to a network architecture that facilitates secure and flexible programmability between a user device and across a network with full lifecycle management of services and infrastructure applications. The patent has been asserted against Microsoft and Amazon.

The 1st place winning prior art is U.S. Patent 9,489,647, which describes a system and method for a cloud computing abstraction, filed just a few months before the challenged patent. Like the challenged patent, it allows for the use of APIs.

Emídio de Paiva Neto and Chris Buccella tied for 2nd place for describing technology developed within OpenStack, an open-source cloud operating system that allows users to manage and build cloud computing platforms.

We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent. 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.

WINNING PATENT SUBMISSION

WINNING OPENSTACK DOCS

CNCF launches Cloud-Native Heroes Challenge with Unified Patents

On November 13, 2024, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) announced the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge at their KubeCon+CloudNativeCon North America 2024 conference. This challenge will be a series of crowdsourced prior art contests utilizing Unified Patents’ PATROLL website. To learn more, visit www.cncf.io/heroes and read about the inaugural contest here.

PATROLL is the world’s first crowd-sourced prior art contest forum where Unified Patents puts a monetary bounty on PAE- and NPE-owned patents. We engage the general public to submit prior art to improve overall patent quality. All submissions are reviewed by Unified's legal team to identify winning prior art, and we provide the invalidity claim chart to the world on the PATROLL portal.

CNCF is co-hosting this program with Unified Patents, the Linux Foundation’s partner in patent troll deterrence since 2019. Unified Patents is the only organization that uses offensive community-driven strategies to deter patent trolls.

Find more information on CNCF and the inaugural challenge within the links below:

$2,000 awarded for Digimedia Tech TV programming patent prior art

Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Nitish Jaswal, who was awarded $2,000 for his prior art submissions on U.S. Patent 7,065,778, owned and asserted by Digimedia Tech LLC, an NPE. The ‘778 patent relates to utilizing personalized video recorders and other similar types of devices to distribute television programming. It was asserted against WideOpenWest Finance and Midcontinent Communications.

We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent. The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include 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.

WINNING SUBMISSIONS

TG--2006 Holdings info tracking patent prior art found

Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on U.S. Patent 9,454,741, owned by TG--2006 Holdings, LLC, an NPE. The ‘741 patent relates generally to information tracking, and in particular, to a system and method of tracking information in a business environment. The patent had been asserted against Carbonite, Wrike, Box, Acronis, pCloud AG, Microsoft, and Siber Systems.

We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent. The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include 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.

WINNING SUBMISSION

PATROLL’s Crowd-Sourced Submissions Available For Download

Now Zone Members can download any PATROLL contest submissions anytime they want

PATROLL is the world’s first crowd-sourced prior art contest forum where Unified Patents puts a monetary bounty on PAE- and NPE-owned patents. We engage the general public to submit prior art to improve overall patent quality. All submissions are reviewed by Unified's legal team to identify winning prior art, and we provide the invalidity claim chart to the world on the PATROLL portal.

Over the last decade, PATROLL has evolved into a massive platform with hundreds of contests and nearly 5,000 submissions, establishing itself as the world’s largest repository of crowdsourced prior art. 

*Projected 2024

Previously, Zone Members would have to wait for results since Unified would review and identify a winner before an invalidity chart was published. Now, Zone Members can view and download unfiltered user submissions at any time before Unified declares a winner. This provides our Zone Members with the capability to view thousands of submissions as they arrive rather than wait till we publish the results.

To view unfiltered user submissions, simply log in to PATROLL and select ‘Download All Submissions’ from any contest. This allows Zone Members to use the crowd faster and to independently create their own charts.   

PATROLL is just one of many tools that Unified provides to help improve patent quality. Click on the links below to find out about a few more: