PTAB

Sound View patent determined to have substantial questions of patentability, reexamination request granted

On September 3, 2020, the Central Reexamination Unit of the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Unified Patents' request for ex parte reexamination of U.S. Patent 7,426,715, owned and asserted by Sound View Innovations, LLC, finding substantial new questions of patentability for all challenged claims. The request was filed in an effort to protect Open Source technologies from invalid NPE assertions. The ’715 patent generally relates to shutting down a plurality of software components in an ordered sequence. Sound View recently asserted this patent against Walmart, Vudu, and Delta Air Lines.

View district court litigations by Sound View. Read the order below. Unified is represented by Haynes and Boone and by in-house counsel, Michelle Aspen and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/014,558, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.

Velos Media patent held unpatentable; amendment denied

On September 4, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Velos Media, LLC holding all claims of US Patent 9,979,981 unpatentable. Velos also moved to amend the claims, but the Board denied the motion to amend. The ’981 patent is generally directed to techniques for image processing, including encoding efficiency for color difference signals and reduction in address calculations for memory access.

The ‘981 patent and its corresponding extended patent family is one of the largest families known to be owned by Velos. Velos claims to have and seeks to license patents allegedly essential to the HEVC / H.265 standard. The ’981 patent is part of a family of patents that were originally assigned to Sony Corporation and transferred to Velos Media in 2017. 

Visit Unified’s Public Portal for more information about its Video Codec landscape (OPAL) and standard submission repository (OPEN). To read the petition and review the case record, view IPR2019-00707 on the Portal. Unified was represented by David Cavanaugh from WilmerHale, Theodoros Konstantakopoulos from Desmarais LLP, and in-house counsel, Jung Hahm and Jonathan Stroud, in this proceeding.

Lighthouse cancels patent as the result of Unified's challenge

On September 2, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) granted Lighthouse Consulting Group’s request for adverse judgment and cancellation of all instituted claims in IPR2020-00194 filed by Unified. This request comes after the PTAB’s decision to institute trial for U.S. Patent 8,590,940, directed to image-based check depositing technology. Lighthouse asserted this patent over 30 times. The defendants in these cases were primarily banks and financial services companies such as Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Charles Schwab, AMEX, Bank of America, Capital One, Morgan Stanley, Ally Financial, JP Morgan, and BB&T. Wells Fargo also filed an IPR petition challenging claims of this patent in April 2020.

View Lighthouse's district court litigation. To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see Unified's Portal. Unified was represented by Raghav Bajaj at Haynes and Boone in this proceeding.

FireNet Technologies patent determined to be likely invalid

On September 1, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against  U.S. Patent 8,892,600, owned and asserted by FireNet Technologies, LLC, an IP Investments affiliate and well-known NPE.  The ’600 patent, generally directed to a proxy firewall system for protecting devices within a network. FireNet had previously sued Kemp Technologies, Fortinet, Citrix, A10 Networks, and Fujitsu (now terminated).

View FireNet’s district court litigation. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, David Seastrunk and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.