On December 16, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,885,782, owned by NavBlazer LLC, an NPE. NavBlazer is associated with patent attorney and prolific inventor, Raymond Anthony Joao. Along with Caselas, GreatGigz Solutions, Joao Control and Monitoring Systems, and Joao Bock Transaction Systems, his companies have launched dozens of lawsuits against technologies ranging from streaming video to financial transactions. The ’782 patent is directed to vehicle navigation systems that provide information about a route and has been asserted against TomTom, Apple, Samsung, LG, Motorola Mobility, and Hyundai for their devices that provide vehicle navigation.
View NavBlazer’s district court litigation. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jessica L.A. Marks and Ashraf Fawzy, and James Stein from Lee & Hayes in this proceeding.
Voice Tech Corp patent determined to be likely invalid
On December 14, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 10,491,679, owned by Voice Tech Corp, an NPE. The ’679 patent relates to voice-activated computing. The patent is currently asserted against Mycroft AI Inc. for using open source, voice-related technologies.
View Voice Tech Corp’s district court litigation. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen, Roshan Mansinghani, and Michelle Aspen, in this proceeding.
Former Intellectual Discovery patent challenged as likely invalid
On December 11, 2020, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 10,237,577 as part of its ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. Formerly owned by Intellectual Discovery Co. Ltd., the ‘577 patent is currently owned by Dolby Laboratories. The patent is a part of the HEVC Advance patent pool and HEVC Advance claims that certain claims of the '577 patent are essential to the HEVC standard.
Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj from Haynes and Boone and by in-house counsel, Roshan Mansinghani and Ashraf Fawzy, in this proceeding. Visit Unified’s 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 IPR2021-00275 on Unified’s Portal.
Endpoint IP entity, Eighth Street Solutions, patent challenged
On December 9, 2020, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 7,664,924, owned and asserted by Eighth Street Solutions, LLC, an NPE and Endpoint IP entity. The ’924 patent is related to securing a computer system by selectively controlling write access to a data storage medium. The '924 patent has been asserted against Sophos, Trend Micro, and McAfee.
View district court litigations by Eighth Street Solutions. Unified is represented by Larissa Bifano and Jin Lee from DLA Piper and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and Jordan Rossen, in this proceeding.
To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on PAIR, go to https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair, enter 90/014,625, and click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab.
Fortress entity, Uniloc, patent held unpatentable
On December 8, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Uniloc 2017 LLC holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 6,519,005 unpatentable. The ‘005 patent, owned and asserted by Uniloc 2017 LLC, a Fortress Investment Group affiliate and owned by SoftBank Group, relates to a method for motion estimation for a digital video encoder. The ‘005 patent has been asserted against numerous streaming and multimedia companies, including Amazon, American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Bitmovin, Google, Hulu, Netflix, Roku, Sling TV, and Vudu. The cases against Google, Sling, Verizon, AT&T, and Netflix are still open.
Unified is represented by Scott McKeown and Victor Cheung at Ropes and Gray, and by in-house counsel, Jordan Rossen and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding. View Uniloc's district court litigation. To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, see Unified's Portal.