Another Ideahub SEP video encoding patent challenged

On June 9, 2022, Unified filed a petition for post grant review (PGR) against U.S. Patent 11,122,274, owned by Ideahub Inc., an NPE.  The '274 patent generally relates to a video compression method for improving compression efficiency in directional intra-prediction. This filing is part of Unified’s continued efforts in the SEP Video Codec Zone.

Over the last 8 years, Unified is one of the top petitioners for inter partes review proceedings with over 240 petitions filed against bad NPE-controlled patents. This filing marks the second occasion that Unified has filed an early, post-grant review petition challenging a patent’s validity.

View district court litigation by Ideahub. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal.  Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj and David McCombs of Hayes Boone, and by in-house counsel Roshan Mansinghani and Michelle Aspen.

IP Edge entity Noblewood IP patent challenged

On June 13, 2022, Unified Patents filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 7,941,553, owned and asserted by Noblewood IP LLC, an IP Edge entity. The ’553 Patent relates to responding to user requests for multimedia content with a metafile. This patent has been asserted twelve times this year, including against Wolters Kluwer, Viacom, and Everyday Health.

View district court litigations by Noblewood IP. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified's Portal. Unified is represented by Raghav Bajaj and David McCombs of Hayes Boone, and by in-house counsel Michelle Aspen and Roshan Mansinghani.

CommWorks '664 patent challenged

On June 10, 2022, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 7,760,664, owned by CommWorks Solutions, LLC. The patent relates to determining and provisioning paths in a network and has been asserted against eight companies, including RCN Telecom Services, LLC and Charter Communications.

View district court litigations by CommWorks. Unified is represented by Matthew Beck, Raghav Bajaj, and David McCombs of Hayes Boone, and by in-house counsel Michelle Aspen and Roshan Mansinghani.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on Unified's Portal, go to https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90015057.

IP Valuation entity Lupercal patent challenged

On June 3, 2022, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 9,386,094, owned and asserted by Lupercal, LLC, an NPE and IP Valuation Partners entity. The '094 patent is generally directed to an image submission tool that can pre-process images prior to image upload based on pre-processing parameters received from a separate device and is currently being asserted against Ally Financial and BancorpSouth Bank.

View district court litigations by Lupercal. Unified is represented by in-house counsel David Seastrunk and Roshan Mansinghani.

To view any documents for the reexamination proceedings on Unified's Portal, go to https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/exparte/90015043.

Another former Velos EP patent successfully challenged at the EPO

On May 19, 2022, all of the original claims of EP 2 347 592 B1, formerly owned by Velos Media, LLC and now owned by Qualcomm, were found unpatentable based on a challenge filed by Unified. Only after several failed attempts to amend the claims was Qualcomm able to gain allowance by adding significant narrowing limitations to the claims. However, the narrowing amendments forced into the claims means that these are no longer standard essential. This filing is a part of Unified's ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.

Only after several failed attempts to amend was Qualcomm able to gain allowance of significantly narrowed claims. These amendments affect the essentiality of claims. For example, the claims now require “selecting the combination of encoding modes and partitioning with the best rate-distortion cost for the video block.” But the H.264 standard does not specify a particular encoding mode for macroblocks, much less require selection via rate-distortion cost.

Unified was represented at the opposition hearing by Dr. Susan Keston and Dr. Andrew McGettrick of HGF. In-house support was provided by Jessica L.A. Marks and Roshan Mansinghani.