Bonum Certa Men Certa

Unified Patents Says That RPX, Which Might Soon be Owned by Patent Trolls, Paid Patent Trolls Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

RPX (with Microsoft as its member) is a catalyst of trolls, not a solution to trolls

2017 Patent Dispute Report: Year in Review
Direct/source: [Unified Patents] 2017 Patent Dispute Report: Year in Review



Summary: Unified Patents, which helps crush software patents, takes note of RPX's financial statements, which reveal the great extent to which RPX actually helped trolls rather than stop them

THE USPTO is polluted with software patents. Many got granted well before Alice, whose lifetime (so far) is about a sixth of the lifetime of most patents.



What does that mean? It means that we depend on PTAB to 're-examine' (review/assess) lots of patents and invalidate them if they lack merit (as per Section 101).

The 'mainstream' approaches taken to tackle this software patents epidemic were fruitless. They were designed to fail -- often designed and led by the likes of IBM (with a pile of its own patents to protect from scrutiny). As Bruce Perens shrewdly put it last year, the Linux Foundation is a GPL infringers' club and the Open Invention Network (OIN) is supposed to protect patents from Linux rather than protect Linux from patents.

"As Bruce Perens shrewdly put it last year, the Linux Foundation is a GPL infringers' club and the Open Invention Network (OIN) is supposed to protect patents from Linux rather than protect Linux from patents."We have been consistently apprehensive if not critical of various groups like OIN and others who pool together patents in an effort to form a 'shield' (for those who can afford it), those who pay trolls to go away (crowdfunding in a sense), and Peer to Patent (now defunct on the face of it) which sought to crowdsource so as to gather evidence of prior art (OIN explored a similar method at one point). Those are not real solutions and many others have been attempts to simply co-exist with software patents (like Red Hat with its supposed patent promise, which would likely become meaningless if/when there's a takeover of Red Hat).

Unified Patents is a little different. It exploits PTAB to go after bad patents. It's similar to the EFF in that regard. It's another approach which is to actually invalidate the patents in question. The latest target? It looks like PTAB is about to throw away another bogus US patent, this time a patent of Iron Oak Technologies, which is a patent troll. 5 days ago Unified Patents wrote:

On January 15, 2018, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 5,966,658 owned and asserted by Iron Oak Technologies, LLC, a well-known NPE. The '658 patent, directed to a "system where a communication path can be automatically selected from a plurality of communication paths based on an attribute," has been asserted against mobile communication companies such as Dell, Huawei, ZTE, Acer and Samsung.


A day later Unified Patents published "Unified Patents: Quantum Stream patent determined to be likely invalid," revealing that patent troll Vringo is another target (with various 'masks' or renames):

On January 16, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,047,626, owned and asserted by Quantum Stream, Inc., a subsidiary of Form Holdings Corp. (f/k/a Vringo, Inc.) and well-known NPE. The '626 Patent, directed to systems for delivering content, such as a digital video program, to a user device, has been asserted in multiple district court cases against companies such as Cablevision, Directv, and Charter Communications.


In the latest update from Unified Patents (published yesterday) it says that RPX has literally paid patent trolls "hundreds of millions according to their financial statements" and it might soon be owned by a troll. To quote:

Unified has independently challenged every single prolific NPE at least once. (Unified filings). Studies have found, consistent with Unified's experience and research, that prolific plaintiffs are very often NPEs asserting lower quality patents. This creates a vicious cycle of litigation and settlements which depresses the value of truly innovative patents and unnecessarily saps the resources of all companies. That is why Unified never pays NPEs.

RPX, another 3rd party, has paid NPEs hundreds of millions according to their financial statements and independently filed against only 3 of them. (RPX filings).


We did not see the financial statements and this is definitely news. It's also rather alarming to learn that RPX actively funded or fueled these parasites; it's like paying scammers, merely emboldening them to scam yet more people. It's a big no-no.

We have long argued that RPX was itself acting like a bit of a troll and that it was profiting from the abundance of troll lawsuits (creating a toxic environment that helped it add members).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 02/06/2025: Political Leftovers, DRM, and Patents
Links for the day
Links 02/06/2025: Microsoft Spins Layoffs as "Slop", Frontier Settles Lawsuit
Links for the day
When You Publicly Boast About Wanting to Violently Attack People (Even Colleagues) Finding a Job Will Prove Difficult
there's a lesson to be learned here
The Web We Lost, the Information Lost Due to Microsoft's Attacks on Companies Like Yahoo! (Before the LLM Slop Frenzy)
When it comes to news sites, what can we say?
Covering Corruption in Poland, Including a War on Science (Due to Bad Politicians)
What we're about to show is that skilled and experienced scientists in Poland are besieged by bureaucrats
Gemini Links 02/06/2025: "Star Wars Day" and "Security Day"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 01, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 01, 2025
The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part II: Lying to the IRS is a Big Issue
The OSI of today pretends to be something that it is not
Bloodlust and Love of Blades (Fascination With Murder) Nothing New Among Microsofters
Violence is not a joke and no group is magically entitled to make such "jokes"
Links 01/06/2025: Bird Flu, Food Price Inflation, and Growing US-China Hostilities
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: "Vibe Coding" Turns Out to be a Fraud and Amazon Merits Boycott, Argue Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: "Stardust" and Ideal PC Setup
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: Windows TCO, Openwashing, "It's FOSS" Still Promoting Microsoft
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: Simplification and Networks Everywhere
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 31, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 31, 2025
Google Bribes EFF. EFF Promotes LLM Slop as 'Fair Use'. To GAFAM It's a Low-Cost Lobby Hedge.
So the bribes pay off ("slush fund") and the word spreads
Slopwatch: Fake Text and Images, Financial Bubbles, and Scams in "Intelligent" Clothing
Sometimes what they mean by "AI" is just cheap labour somewhere else, as we discussed in IRC a few hours ago
Why Microsoft is Collapsing (Similar to What's Happening at IBM), As Insiders See It
IBM seems like one heck of a mess
Reliable Computing Means Free (Libre) Computing
Sites that want to promote security ought to deal with the biggest issues
Links 31/05/2025: US Court Orders Sides With RFE/RL, War Updates From Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/05/2025: ARM Server and power_supply Subsystem
Links for the day
Links 31/05/2025: Slop Stigmatised as Disinformation, Catalyst/Driver of "Death of Communication"
Links for the day
Common Sense 101: Do Not Write Blog Posts Saying You Want to Murder Colleagues (or Yourself)
Only crazy people would think stabbings are a joke
Microsoft Bankruptcy
"Microsoft unit in Russia to file for bankruptcy, database shows"
Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Links 31/05/2025: Microsoft-Connected Builder.ai is a Fraud and US is Purging Students Based on Race/Nationality
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Limmat, Doomscrollers, and Arguments Parsing
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 30, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 30, 2025