Acacia sub, Targeted Radio, patent claims found invalid

On September 22, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Targeted Radio LLC holding claims 1 and 3-9 of U.S. Patent 8,948,684 invalid. Targeted Radio LLC is an affiliate of well-known NPE Acacia Research Corporation. The ’684 patent is generally directed to the insertion of advertising or other content into an Internet radio stream based on the user's location. This patent was asserted against Pandora Media, but the case was terminated in 2020.

Unified is represented by in-house counsel, Jessica Marks and Jung Hahm, in this proceeding. View Targeted Radio’s district court litigation. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.

PTAB Uses Discretion, Fintiv to Deny Petitions 38% in 2021 to Date

2021 is current through September 8, 2021

Institution decisions are generally down in 2021 to date, compared to previous years. Nonetheless, the USPTO’s use of procedural denials rivals last year’s. In 2020, nearly 19% of all institution decisions were denied procedurally, whereas this year, over 16% are denied—over 144 of the 377 denials to date have been denied under the Board’s discretion. In other words, almost 40% of all denials this year have been non-substantive.

A total of 105 decisions were made on the basis 314(a) and 31 decisions were made on the basis of 325(a). The 105 314(a) denials accounts for 73% of all denials. That is, compared to 2019 in total, no change—in 2019, 314(a) denials accounted for roughly 73% as well.

Over 94% of all procedural denials this year stem from either 314(a) or 325(d). In 2020, 88.5% of denials stemmed from these from 314(a) or 325(d). This year has seen a 5.5% increase from last year.

Section 314(a) denials are now used by the Board roughly 12.4% of the time, an 0.2% increase from last quarter.

Meanwhile, 325(d) denials have slightly increased to 5.7% from the year-over-year average of 5%.

NHK Spring/Fintiv continues to be the dominant framework of 314(a) denials. This year has seen 77, nearly reaching the previous-year high of 85. NHK Spring/Fitniv accounts for 73% of all 314(a), whereas in 2020 only 51% were based on the Fintiv framework. This is a 23% increase from last year.

Ideahub patent held unpatentable

On September 16, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Ideahub Inc. holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,641,849 invalid and denied the motion to amend. The IPR was filed as part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The '849 patent relates to a video compression technique known as intra prediction.

The '849 patent is a part of the Access Advance patent pool. Access Advance claims that certain claims of the '849 patent are essential to the HEVC standard.

Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj, David McCombs, and Jon Bowser 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 IPR2020-00702 on Unified’s Portal.

PacSec3 '564 reexamination request granted

On September 7, 2021, four weeks after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the USPTO granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,047,564, owned by PacSec3, an NPE. PacSec3 was formed in 2020 with NACAR IP LLC as its managing member. NACAR IP was also formed in early 2020 with Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP), a patent monetization company, identified as its managing member. The ‘564 patent has been asserted against F5 Networks, NetScout Systems, Palo Alto Networks, McAfee, Cisco, Juniper Networks, and Watchguard Technologies.

View district court litigation by PacSec3. Unified is represented by Jon Bowser, Raghav Bajaj, and Angela Oliver of Haynes and Boone, LLP, and by in-house counsel, Roshan Mansinghani and Jordan Rossen.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on Unified's Portal, go to https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90014818.

DivX, LLC patent challenged

On September 3, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against US Patent 10,326,987, owned by DivX, LLC, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., as part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone. The '987 patent is being asserted against Hulu and is directed to encoding alternative streams of video for use in adaptive bitrate streaming.

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 IPR2021-01476 on Unified’s Portal. Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj, David McCombs, and Jon Bowser of Haynes and Boone and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.