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:

Bandspeed Bluetooth patent held invalid

On November 5, 2024, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate canceling all claims of U.S. Patent 7,903,608, owned and asserted by Bandspeed, LLC, an NPE. The ‘608 patent is generally directed to communication devices for adaptive frequency-hopping based on channel performance. The patent had been asserted in over 20 litigations since 2014 but most recently against Renesas, Itron, Espressif Systems, TCL, ASUStek, and others.

View district court litigations by Bandspeed. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, T.J. Murphy and Roshan Mansinghani.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on Unified's Portal, go to https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90015194.

Fractus LTE antenna patent challenge instituted

On November 7, 2024, two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,674,887, owned and asserted by Fractus S.A., an NPE. The ‘887 patent generally relates to an antenna design for mobile devices. The patent has been asserted against ADT.

View district court litigations by Fractus. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Michelle Aspen and T.J. Murphy.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019664

Jeffrey Gross entity, Hyperquery, application search patent challenged

On November 5, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 9,529,918, owned and asserted by Hyperquery LLC, an NPE and entity of Jeffrey M. Gross. The ‘918 patent relates to a system and method for searching for apps in a central repository based on the intent of the user. It has been asserted over ten times, with current cases against Sony, Nintendo, Roku, and Amazon.

View district court litigations by Hyperquery. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, T.J. Murphy and Jordan Rossen, in this proceeding.

AiPi entity, Gatekeeper Solutions, communications patent challenged

On November 4, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 9,032,038, owned and asserted by Gatekeeper Solutions, Inc., an NPE and entity of AiPi Solutions. The ‘038 patent relates to systems and methods for alerting a user of conflicting recipients when sending electronic communications. It has been asserted over ten times, but most recently against Darktrace, Forcepoint, and Trellix.

View district court litigations by Gatekeeper Solutions. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Michelle Aspen and Jessica L.A. Marks, in this proceeding.