$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

$2,000 awarded for Avant Technologies wireless patent prior art

Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners, Priti Dubey and Ekta Aswal, who split a cash prize of $2,000 for their prior art submissions on U.S. Patent 10,009,720, owned and asserted by Avant Location Technologies LLC, an NPE and entity of Anjay Venture Partners LLC. The ‘720 patent focuses on areas where mobile operators face competition from short-range wireless communication technologies like Bluetooth, DECT, and WIFI. The patent has been asserted against Apple, Fibar Group, Nice Group, and Samsung.

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

$2,000 awarded for AutoConnect vehicle patent prior art

Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Tanya Chauhan, who was awarded $2,000 for her prior art submission on U.S. Patent 8,793,034, owned by AutoConnect Holdings LLC, an NPE. The ‘034 patent focuses on methods for automatically determining the presence of a person within the vehicle, identifying them, and storing personal settings. It has been asserted against Toyota.

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

VDPP video stitching patent challenge instituted

On January 24, 2025, six weeks 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 10,021,380, owned and asserted by VDPP LLC, an NPE. The specification of ‘380 patent discloses video methods for creating the optical illusion of perpetual motion, which the applicant deemed “Eternalism,” and to special glasses (called “3Deeps”) that can be used for creating three-dimensional effects from two-dimensional videos. The claims, however, are broadly drafted and have been asserted against various video zooming, image enhancement, and image combination technologies. The patent has been asserted over 55 times but most recently against Ford, Kyocera, Amazon, MediaTek, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Mercedes-Benz, Razer, and others.

View district court litigations by VDPP. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and David Seastrunk.

To view the reexamination request, visit Unified’s Portal: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90019781

$10,000 for Dominion Harbor entity, Arlington Technologies, networking patents prior art

Unified Patents added five new PATROLL contests, each with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on the list below. The patents are owned by Arlington Technologies LLC, an NPE and entity of Dominion Harbor Group. The patents relate to various technologies and two of the patents have been asserted against Comcast.

The contests will expire on February 28, 2025. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for these contests.

US 11,381,626 Video Codec for High Resolution and High Frame Rate Video

US 10,735,258 Self-allocating Resources

US 9,507,015 Device Proximity Detection

US 7,324,491 Over-the-air Bandwidth Reservations in Wireless Networks

US 7,193,986 Wireless Network MAC Protocol