$1,000 awarded for NTECH multimedia patent prior art

Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Ekta Aswal, who was awarded $1,000 for her prior art submission on U.S. Patent 9,317,597, owned by NTECH Properties, LLC, an NPE. The ‘597 patent relates to efficient and entertaining information delivery. It has been asserted against ByteDance.

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

Fourth CellSpinsoft data transfer patent challenge instituted

On August 2, 2024, three months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 11,659,381, owned and asserted by CellSpinsoft, Inc., an NPE. The ‘381 patent, similar to CellSpinsoft’s U.S. Patent 8,904,030, is directed to uploading data to a remote server using a mobile device as an intermediary, where the data comes from a device that does not have network connectivity. It has been asserted against ByteDance.

View district court litigations by Cellspinsoft. Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj of Haynes Boone, and by in-house counsel, Alyssa Holtslander, Roshan Mansinghani, and Jessica L.A. Marks, in this proceeding.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019507

DynaIP entity, Cloud Systems HoldCo IP, IoT patent challenge instituted

On July 12, 2024, four weeks after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,533,326, owned and asserted by Cloud Systems HoldCo IP, LLC, an NPE and DynaIP entity.  The ’326 patent focuses on a system and method for efficiently managing and routing data among multiple devices within a given environment. It was asserted against Philips North America.

View district court litigations by Cloud Systems HoldCo IP. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen and David Seastrunk, in this proceeding.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019532

Voice Tech open source patent affirmed invalid by Federal Circuit

On August 1, 2024, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Office's final decision confirming that all claims (1-8) of U.S. Patent 10,491,679 were unpatentable. Owned and asserted by Voice Tech Corp, the ’679 patent relates to voice-activated computing. The patent was asserted against Linux-based technology from Mycroft AI for using open source, voice-related features. This invalid patent has been blamed for the closure of Mycroft AI.

View district court litigation by Voice Tech Corp. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen, Roshan Mansinghani, and Michelle Aspen, in this proceeding. Adam Erickson from Haynes and Boone handled the argument on appeal.

Comments submitted to the USPTO over AI impacts on prior art

Through policy advocacy work with Unified Edge, Unified Patents has submitted comments to the USPTO's request for comments regarding the impact of the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) on prior art, the knowledge of a person having ordinary skill in the art, and determinations of patentability made in view of the foregoing.

Unified has suggested that the USPTO may need to be wary of unscrupulous actors creating AI data dumps, including using bulk patent applications at the USPTO itself to create patent thickets.

Read through Unified’s comments by clicking on the button below: