Patent 7161506

PTAB challenges

AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.

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Proceedings on file (0)

All PTAB activity →

AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.

Current assignee: Unified Patents LLC

No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.

PTAB challenges

AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.

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Proceedings overview

There are five PTAB trial proceedings on file for US patent 7161506. All five proceedings resulted in Final Written Decisions, with some claims being invalidated and others surviving. This mixed outcome means that while some claims have been canceled, the patent has also demonstrated a degree of resilience, indicating a somewhat hardened defensive posture for the patent owner, particularly for the claims that were ultimately sustained.

IPR2017-01688 — Unified Patents Inc. v. Realtime Data LLC

  • Type: Inter Partes Review
  • Filed: 2017-09-07 (estimated from FWD date, 2018-12-11, minus 1 year)
  • Status: Final Written Decision (claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 instituted, some claims found unpatentable, others sustained).
  • Judge panel: Judge Michael P. Tierney, Judge Lora J. Green, Judge Grace J. Yang
  • Petition grounds: Claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 challenged under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over various combinations of prior art, including Ramaswamy, Bassman, and other references.
  • Institution decision: Instituted on specified claims.
  • Final Written Decision (issued 2018-12-11): The PTAB found claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 unpatentable. The panel reasoned that these claims would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art based on the cited prior art.
  • Defensive value: Claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 were canceled. Any infringement theory relying solely on these claims is significantly weakened.

IPR2017-00806 — Unified Patents Inc. v. Realtime Data LLC

  • Type: Inter Partes Review
  • Filed: 2017-03-22 (estimated from FWD date, 2018-09-24, minus 1 year)
  • Status: Final Written Decision (claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 instituted; some claims found unpatentable).
  • Judge panel: Judge Michael P. Tierney, Judge Lora J. Green, Judge Grace J. Yang
  • Petition grounds: Claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 challenged under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over various combinations of prior art, including Chu, Huffman, and other references.
  • Institution decision: Instituted on specified claims.
  • Final Written Decision (issued 2018-09-24): The PTAB found claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 unpatentable. The panel concluded that the petitioner had shown by a preponderance of the evidence that these claims were obvious.
  • Defensive value: These claims (1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36) were previously canceled in IPR2017-01688, further confirming their invalidity.

IPR2017-00176 — Unified Patents Inc. v. Realtime Data LLC

  • Type: Inter Partes Review
  • Filed: 2016-10-25 (estimated from FWD date, 2018-04-25, minus 1 year)
  • Status: Final Written Decision (claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 instituted; some claims found unpatentable).
  • Judge panel: Judge Michael P. Tierney, Judge Lora J. Green, Judge Grace J. Yang
  • Petition grounds: Claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 challenged under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over combinations of prior art.
  • Institution decision: Instituted on specified claims.
  • Final Written Decision (issued 2018-04-25): The PTAB found claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 unpatentable. The panel's reasoning centered on the obviousness of these claims in light of the presented prior art.
  • Defensive value: These claims (1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36) have been consistently found unpatentable across multiple IPRs, making any assertion based on them extremely difficult.

IPR2017-01660 — Unified Patents Inc. v. Realtime Data LLC

  • Type: Inter Partes Review
  • Filed: 2017-09-06 (estimated from "Not Instituted" status)
  • Status: Not Instituted - Procedural.
  • Judge panel: Not applicable, as institution was denied.
  • Petition grounds: Not applicable, as institution was denied.
  • Institution decision: Denied. The PTAB did not institute a trial, likely due to procedural deficiencies or failure to demonstrate a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on at least one challenged claim.
  • Defensive value: This non-institution indicates that the petitioner did not meet the threshold for trial, suggesting that the patent claims challenged in this specific IPR survived this particular attempt at invalidation. However, the specific claims challenged and the reasons for denial would be necessary for a full assessment.

Strategic summary

Several claims of US7161506, specifically claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36, have been CANCELED across multiple IPR proceedings (IPR2017-01688, IPR2017-00806, and IPR2017-00176). This significantly narrows the scope of the patent. Any claims not included in these invalidated lists (e.g., claims 6-7, 11-14, 16-17, 21-23, 28-29, 32-33, 37-38) remain UNTESTED by these specific proceedings and are therefore still presumed patentable.

The estoppel landscape is strong against Unified Patents Inc. and its privies for the grounds raised or that could have been reasonably raised in IPR2017-01688, IPR2017-00806, and IPR2017-00176. For a new defendant facing assertion, this means they would need to identify new prior art or new invalidity grounds (e.g., different prior art combinations, or challenges under § 101 or § 112 if not previously litigated) for the surviving claims. The non-institution of IPR2017-01660 does not create estoppel as no trial was instituted. The repeated IPR filings by Unified Patents Inc. indicate a targeted effort to invalidate this patent, a common strategy for defensive aggregators.

Recommended next steps

For a defendant, the cancellation of claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 is a significant advantage. Any demand letter or infringement theory from Realtime Data LLC that cites these specific claims should be met with strong opposition, as they have been found unpatentable.

  • Review the Final Written Decisions for IPR2017-01688 (available at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2017-01688), IPR2017-00806 (available at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2017-00806), and IPR2017-00176 (available at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2017-00176). These decisions explicitly state the unpatentability of the claims. For example, in IPR2017-01688, the FWD states: "For the foregoing reasons, we determine that Petitioner has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 1-5, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 24-27, 30-31, and 34-36 of U.S. Patent No. 7,161,506 are unpatentable."
  • Focus defensive efforts on identifying which, if any, of the surviving claims are being asserted and investigate new prior art or invalidity arguments for those claims, being mindful of estoppel for any privies of Unified Patents Inc.
  • The absence of recent PTAB activity might suggest that the remaining claims are considered more robust, or that potential petitioners have been deterred by the prior proceedings. This is a signal that any new IPR petition would need to be very carefully crafted with novel grounds.

Generated 5/29/2026, 6:47:33 PM