Unified Patents
Unified Patents is a member-based organization whose goal is reducing the number of non-practicing entity (NPE) assertions in specific technology areas. Background Instances of NPE patent litigation have grown recently: NPEs (commonly referred to as patent trolls) accounted for the majority of patent infringement litigation in the U.S. in 2012, compared to less than a quarter in 2007. This is because NPEs can achieve a quick return on investment since most companies settle rather than fight, even if they believe the assertion to be invalid. Unified permits small and large companies alike to become members. Smaller members act as an early warning system by notifying Unified of NPE demand letters in exchange for notifying Unified if they ever plan to sell a Patent to an NPE. Unified defines discrete technology zones for members to join, including cloud storage, content delivery, or electronic payments to ensure Unified’s deterrence is focused. Unified also directly challenges ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Privately Held Company
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or Over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members. Related terms are closely-held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company. Though less visible than their public company, publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 list of largest private non-governmental companies by revenue, largest private companies in the United States accounted for ($1.8 trillion) in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to ''Forbes''. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 population of 1,013,240, it is the most populous city in both the Bay Area and the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area, which contain 7.7 million and 9.7 million people respectively, the List of largest California cities by population, third-most populous city in California (after Los Angeles and San Diego and ahead of San Francisco), and the List of United States cities by population, tenth-most populous in the United States. Located in the center of the Santa Clara Valley on the southern shore of San Francisco Bay, San Jose covers an area of . San Jose is the county seat of Santa Clara County, California, Santa Clara County and the main component of the San ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Legal Services
In its most general sense, the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professional services of a lawyer or attorney at law, barrister, solicitor, or civil law notary. However, there is a substantial amount of overlap between the practice of law and various other professions where clients are represented by agents. These professions include real estate, banking, accounting, and insurance. Moreover, a growing number of legal document assistants (LDAs) are offering services which have traditionally been offered only by lawyers and their employee paralegals. Many documents may now be created by computer-assisted drafting libraries, where the clients are asked a series of questions that are posed by the software in order to construct the legal documents. In addition, regulatory consulting firms also provide advisory ser ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Non-practicing Entity
In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art, often through hardball legal tactics (frivolous litigation, vexatious litigation, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), chilling effects, and the like). Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question. However, some entities which do not practice their asserted patent may not be considered "patent trolls" when they license their patented technologies on reasonable terms in advance. Other related concepts include patent holding company (PHC), patent assertion entity (PAE), and non-practicing entity (NPE), which may or may not be considered a "patent troll" depending on the position they are taking and the perception of that position by th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Patent Troll
In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art, often through hardball legal tactics (frivolous litigation, vexatious litigation, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), chilling effects, and the like). Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question. However, some entities which do not practice their asserted patent may not be considered "patent trolls" when they license their patented technologies on reasonable terms in advance. Other related concepts include patent holding company (PHC), patent assertion entity (PAE), and non-practicing entity (NPE), which may or may not be considered a "patent troll" depending on the position they are taking and the perception of that position by th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Patent Troll
In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art, often through hardball legal tactics (frivolous litigation, vexatious litigation, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), chilling effects, and the like). Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question. However, some entities which do not practice their asserted patent may not be considered "patent trolls" when they license their patented technologies on reasonable terms in advance. Other related concepts include patent holding company (PHC), patent assertion entity (PAE), and non-practicing entity (NPE), which may or may not be considered a "patent troll" depending on the position they are taking and the perception of that position by th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Demand Letter
A demand letter, letter of demand, (of payment), or letter before claim, is a letter stating a legal claim (usually drafted by a lawyer) which makes a demand for restitution or performance of some obligation, owing to the recipients' alleged breach of contract, or for a legal wrong. Although demand letters are not legally required they are frequently used, especially in contract law, tort law, and commercial law cases. In some cases, evidence of attempts to settle are required before a court case will be accepted by the court, and demand letters are commonly used to fulfill this requirement. For example, if one anticipates a breach, it is advantageous to send a demand letter asserting that the other side appears to be in breach and requesting assurances of performances. Demand letters that are not responded to may constitute admissions by silence. Also, a demand letter will often generate a denial letter stating the basis for rejecting your side's claim (such as when the incorrec ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inter Partes Review
An inter partes review (IPR) is a procedure for challenging the validity of a United States patent before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. History The inter partes review procedure was enacted on September 16, 2012 as part of the America Invents Act. It replaced a previous review procedure called ''inter partes'' reexamination, which in turn stemmed from ''ex parte'' reexamination proceedings. Under the ex parte system, any person at any time could challenge the validity of a patent on the basis that its claims were already obvious or unoriginal based on prior art. Under post-2012 inter partes review, petitioners must demonstrate a "reasonable likelihood that" the party challenging the patent at issue "would prevail" in the dispute, rather than requiring that it demonstrate a "substantial new question of patentability." Process An inter partes review is used to challenge the patentability of one or more claims in a U.S. patent only on a ground that could be raised u ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Intuit
Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint.com, Mint, the small business accounting program QuickBooks, the credit monitoring service Credit Karma, and email marketing platform Mailchimp. more than 95% of its revenues and earnings come from its activities within the United States. Intuit offers a free online service called TurboTax Free File as well as a similarly named service called TurboTax Free Edition which is not free for most users. In 2019, investigations by ProPublica found that Intuit deliberately steered taxpayers from the free TurboTax Free File to the paid TurboTax Free Edition using tactics including Search engine privacy#Delisting and reordering, search engine delisting and a deceptive discount targeted to members of the military. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inter Partes Reexamination
In United States patent law, a reexamination is a process whereby anyone—third party or inventor—can have a U.S. patent reexamined by a patent examiner to verify that the subject matter it claims is patentable. To have a patent reexamined, an interested party must submit prior art, in the form of patents or printed publications, that raises a "substantial new question of patentability". The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act makes substantial changes to the U.S. patent system, including new mechanisms for challenging patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. One of the new mechanisms is a post-grant review proceeding, which will provide patent challengers expanded bases on which to attack patents. Process A request for a reexamination can be filed by anyone at any time during the period of enforceability of a patent. To request a reexamination, one must submit a "request for reexamination" which includes (1) a statement pointing out each "substantial new question of p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Uniloc
Uniloc Corporation was a company founded in Australia in 1992. History The Uniloc technology is based on a patent granted to the inventor Ric Richardson who was also the founder of the Uniloc Company. The original patent application was dated late 1992 in Australia and granted in the US in 1996 and covers a technology popularly known as product activation, try and buy software and machine locking. In 1993 Uniloc distributed "Try and Buy" versions of software for multiple publishers via a marketing agreement with IBM. An initial success was the sale of thousands of copies of a software package (First Aid, developed by Cybermedia) distributed on the front cover of '' Windows Sources'' magazine in 1994. In 1997 a US subsidiary was set up called Uniloc PC Preload to produce preloaded unlockable editions of popular software products on new PCs. Distribution agreements were executed with eMachines and Toshiba. ''Family PC'' magazine also produced two months of magazines featuring ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |