We’re thrilled to share the details of the inaugural contest in our Cloud Native Heroes Challenge program, a series of crowdsourced “prior art” contests in which cloud native developers can earn swag and prizes by helping us defeat patent trolls. See our earlier announcement about the program.
Swag and Prizes
All entrants who submit an entry that conforms to the contest rules will receive a free “Cloud Native Hero” t-shirt that can be picked up at any future KubeCon+CloudNativeCon. The entrant who submits the winning entry will also receive a $3,000 cash prize.
The Inaugural Contest Challenged Patent
In our inaugural contest, we are seeking information that can be used to invalidate Claim 1 from US Patent US-11695823-B1, which has been asserted by Edge Networking Systems LLC, a patent troll, against adopters of Kubernetes.
See the relevant language of the patent below:
| 1. A system comprising:a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications;a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications are in secure communication with each other to form distributed applications; andwherein the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud applications device form unified capabilities enabling a plurality of upper layer application programming interfaces (APIs) to program the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud applications independent of network device hardware and cloud device hardware. |
If you are aware of any publicly available materials (other than materials already listed in the “known references” tab of the contest information page) demonstrating that know-how regarding the invention described above already existed prior to June 13, 2013 (the priority date of the patent), please submit that evidence as “prior art” in this contest.
“Prior art” is a legal term that refers to technical know-how that predated the patent application. Prior art can be used to invalidate or weaken a troll’s patent by demonstrating that the patented invention already existed and wasn’t “new” when the application for a patent was filed.
Examples of materials that can be provided as prior art include:
- Open source documentation, including release notes
- Articles, books, and other publications
- Recordings of presentations at tech conferences
- Product manuals or descriptions
- Standards and specification documents
- Any other publicly available documentation (in English) that existed prior to June 13, 2013
- Other patents with a priority date earlier than June 13, 2013
However, please note that materials already listed in the “known references” tab of the contest information page do not qualify and cannot be submitted in this contest.
Instructions for Participating
Please see our Participation Instructions and the contest program page for more information and step-by-step instructions for entering the contest.
Additional information about this inaugural contest can be found at the Contest Listing for this contest on Unified Patents’s contest portal.
Questions? Need Help?
If you have questions or would like to request a 1:1 help session where a member of our contest team walks you through the process of preparing and submitting your contribution of prior art, please message us at the CNCF slack channel #heroes-challenge.
About Our Co-Host for the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge
CNCF is co-hosting this program with Unified Patents, the Linux Foundation’s partner in patent troll deterrence since 2019. Unified Patents is the only organization that uses offensive community-driven strategies to deter patent trolls.
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