What it means
Every granted U.S. patent has a number, and that number opens the whole document for free: the drawings, the description, the numbered claims at the back, and the entire written record of the argument that got it allowed.
What it means for you
If a number has been asserted against your company, you can read the patent tonight without anyone's permission and without spending anything. Go to the claims first. They are the only part that can be infringed.
Authentication is the machinery that decides whether you are who you say you are. Notification is the machinery that reaches you once it has decided. Both of them lean on the telephone number in your pocket.
Where
Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
The patent
U.S. Patent 7,945,034.
What the Board decided
Obviousness assertions against a fraud detection process based on a user's telephone number were rejected.
Where
Central District of California, with three inter partes reviews defended at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
The patents
U.S. Patents 7,945,034; 8,462,920; 8,687,038; 9,300,792.
Where
District of Delaware.
The patents
U.S. Patents 7,870,599; 8,484,698; 8,713,701, on out of band authentication.
Where
Eastern District of Texas.
The patents
U.S. Patents 7,035,914; 6,021,433.
Jesse was the partner at SHB who managed a fairly complex and lengthy IP litigation matter for me when I was the CFO of TeleSign.
Encryption turns readable information into unreadable information. Encoding turns information into a shape a machine can carry. Patents in this area sit close to the mathematics, which is where the technical reading gets slow.
Where
District of Delaware.
The patent
U.S. Patent 4,813,056.
Where
Eastern District of Texas.
The patents
The Addison Fischer patents, U.S. Patents 5,346,972; 6,141,423; 6,216,229.
Where
Eastern District of Texas.
The patent
U.S. Patent 6,272,533.
Getting a message from one place to another, and getting a picture small enough to send. Two of the oldest problems in the field.
Where
Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The patent
U.S. Patent 5,991,271.
Where
Eastern District of Texas.
The patent
U.S. Patent 6,018,761.
Where
Eastern District of Texas.
The patent
U.S. Patent 5,347,579.
Where
Eastern District of Virginia.
The patent
U.S. Patent 7,551,172.
Chemical patents are often claimed in ranges and conditions rather than in parts, so the argument tends to settle onto a number, and then onto how that number was measured.
Where
Western District of Tennessee, and argued on appeal at the Federal Circuit.
The patents
U.S. Patents 8,841,469; 8,962,059.
Where
Northern District of Illinois.
The patents
U.S. Patents 7,949,432; 8,012,758; 7,981,679.
A trademark is not a patent. It protects the name and the mark a customer uses to know who made a thing, and it is fought over in a different forum with a different vocabulary.
Where
Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
What they were
Defended a fashion company against a cancellation proceeding, which is an attempt to strike a registered mark from the register. Pursued an opposition on behalf of a non-profit, which is the objection filed before a mark registers in the first place.
These are matters reported publicly and listed by the firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and nothing here describes what would happen in any other case.