The article aims to devise a strategy to prove Infringement on Accused Black Box Products/Services for Asserted SEP Patents/Claims. This case generally occurs when a Non-Practicing Entity (NPE) or Patent Assertion entity (PAE) does not produce any products covered by the patented technology and instead earns their revenues only by licensing patents acquired from others. Hence, it becomes difficult for such entities to prove Infringement since they are not in the product line of asserted SEP patents.
Based on the above issues, Ingenuous e-brain proposes the below methodology to execute such projects.

Step 1

Identify valid SEP patents to be asserted for a product line: The SEP patents should be categorized directly to platform/network element (Network OS, NIC, etc.), end-products (User Equipment), or both. This will enable us to target the correct products for the SEP patents that are to be asserted.

Step 2

Focus on target products based on market size: We initially focus on who to target along the supply chain & at various levels of implementation (service provider/user). This is important to understand the broadness of the market on which a specific set of SEP patents are to be asserted on such products.

Step 3

Evidence of use chart (EoU): Ingenious believes in Conformance testing to gather evidence for products if direct evidence is not disclosed by the product manufacturer or service provider for asserted patents or claims.

Light Conformance Testing: Conformance testing, also known as compliance testing, is a methodology used in engineering to ensure that a product, process, computer program, or system meets a defined set of standards. These standards are commonly defined by large, independent entities such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) or the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

Based on our expertise, Ingenious will be able to perform Light Conformance Testing (Not for all cases it may differ from case to case and the availability of suitable resources) using the below methods:

• Source Code Analysis: The product’s source code analysis is adopted to locate evidence for preparing claim charts.

• Tear-Down Reports: If the client provides a tear-down report of a product, Ingenious can locate evidence for asserted patents/claims.

• Product Videos: If evidence is not located in product documents, companies sometimes provide such hidden evidence on videos available on websites or YouTube.

• Packet Snipping for Network Packet: Sometimes some service provider uses a particular format, let’s say MPEG-LA, which is the proprietary of XYZ company. In such cases, packet snipping can be used for such service providers to locate if they use such compression techniques in streaming.