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Fees Shifted, Other Sanctions Avoided, Warning Issued
In Case You Missed It
The Federal Circuit has turned away appeals from the final judgment of Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright based on a June 2021 jury verdict of noninfringement and a subsequent bench trial finding no inequitable conduct. The plaintiffs here are Freshub Ltd. and its US subsidiary Freshub, Inc.; found not to have infringed is Amazon, as well as several subsidiaries, including Whole Foods Market. In the district court’s denial of Freshub’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial, Judge Albright ordered three attorneys from Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP and one from Naman Howell Smith & Lee PLLC to “complete thirty (30) hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) of legal ethics and shall certify his/her completion of the CLE hours to the Court within six months from the date of this Order”.
March 1, 2024
VIZIO Sued over Device Pairing Functionalities in Long-Running Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS), through Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC), has sued VIZIO (3:23-cv-00791) in the Northern District of Texas over the support of device pairing functionalities in its SmartCast mobile app. The two asserted patents generally relate to providing data to devices capable of displaying the data transmitted from a wireless device. Since launching this campaign in September 2008, OL Patents—through three controlled entities—has sued over 40 defendants and asserted a total of 23 patents.
April 22, 2023
Ortiz & Associates Consulting Sues Actiontec Electronics over Wireless Display Receivers
New Patent Litigation
Actiontec Electronics (6:23-cv-00139) is the latest defendant to be added to the over decade-long litigation campaign that Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS) has litigated through three controlled entities. In that new Western District of Texas complaint, Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC), the plaintiff and one of those three OL Patents entities, asserts two patents generally related to providing data to devices capable of displaying the data transmitted from a wireless device. Actiontec Electronics is accused of infringement through the provision of the ScreenBeam Mini 2 Wireless Display Receiver, with features related to device pairing and wireless casting at issue.
March 2, 2023
Ortiz & Associates Consulting Extends Already Long-Running Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC), an entity associated with Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS), has expanded its over decade-long litigation campaign with suits against Canon (6:21-cv-01177) and Ricoh (6:21-cv-01178) in the Western District of Texas. The sole patent-in-suit generally relates to transmitting data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”. The defendants are accused of infringement through the support of authentication features in the Canon uniFLOW Secure Mobile Printing platform and various Ricoh IM-series printers, respectively. Since launching this litigation campaign in 2008, OL PATENTS—through three controlled entities—has sued over 35 defendants and asserted a total of 16 patents.
November 22, 2021
NPEs Associated with OL Patents Keep Filing New Complaints in Pairs
COVID-19, New Patent Litigation
Two NPEs associated with Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS)—Mesa Digital LLC and Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC)—have continued their recent practice of filing suits in pairs, Mesa Digital suing Acer (3:20-cv-02337) in the Northern District of California and OAC hitting Hisense (1:20-cv-02193) in the Northern District of Illinois. A different patent from the same family is asserted in each new complaint, Mesa Digital’s generally related to a “multimedia” mobile device and OAC’s, to the transmission of video data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”. Acer joins recent defendants HTC (sued in October 2019) and Zebra Technologies (in December 2019) in the mobile devices wing of this campaign; Hisense joins Panasonic (also in October 2019) and Microsoft (also in December 2019) in the video transmission wing. Issues surrounding service of complaints continue to plague the more recent suits brought by Mesa Digital alone in this long-running campaign.
April 13, 2020
Mesa Digital and OAC Hit Zebra Technologies and Microsoft, Respectively, in Different Wings of the Same Campaign
New Patent Litigation
One of the longest running litigation campaigns continued its sprawl past the decade mark in December, with Mesa Digital LLC filing suit against Zebra Technologies (1:19-cv-08217) and sibling entity Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) hitting Microsoft (1:19-cv-08262), both in the Northern District of Illinois. The new Mesa Digital complaint accuses Zebra Technologies of infringing a single patent, generally related to a “multimedia” mobile device, through the provision of the TC8000, a mobile bar-code-scanning device, targeting its alleged support of cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth networking as well as its touchscreen user interface; Microsoft is accused of infringing a second patent from the same family through the provision of the Miracast Service, a wireless mirroring display standard, this asserted patent broadly concerning the transmission of video data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”.
December 21, 2019
Third “Section 101 Day” in Delaware—This One Not Held by Judge Stark—Leads to Disparate Results
Top Insight
In a new District of Delaware suit, Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) has accused Panasonic (1:19-cv-01921) of infringing a single “multimedia” mobile device patent from a family of 30-plus members, targeting the mirroring features of the company’s Viera-series televisions. OAC asserted the same patent, together with others from the same family, in an August 2018 case in the same district against Roku, which responded with a quick motion to dismiss under Alice. Delaware District Judge Maryellen Noreika teed that motion up for argument on June 14, 2019—just five days short of the five-year anniversary of the Alice decision itself—in an omnibus hearing that addressed five Section 101 motions filed in cases before her, the others filed by OpenPrint LLC, Sandboxed Software, LLC (d/b/a Sandbox Software, LLC), TrackTime LLC, and EncodiTech LLC. Judge Noreika’s treatment of these motions on a “Section 101 Day” tracks the procedure already used in Delaware a couple of times this year by District Judge Leonard P. Stark. OAC is now suing Panasonic, begging the question: how did that Roku motion fare? More broadly, four months later, how did Judge Noreika’s “Alice day” affect the progress of those other NPE campaigns?
October 8, 2019
“Multimedia” Campaign Continues, Affirmatively in Delaware and by Declaratory Judgment Action in California
New Patent Litigation
Mesa Digital LLC has filed suit against T-Mobile (1:18-cv-01887) in the District of Delaware over two patents generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices. The complaint calls out T-Mobile’s Coolpad Defiant smartphone; original complaints filed in July against Huawei and ZTE, over the same two patents, make similar identifications (Huawei’s P10 and ZTE’s Axon Elite), but the NPE has since amended the ZTE complaint to swap in AT&T Primetime as the product actually accused of infringement in that case. The patents belong to a family of more than 30, other members of which are held, and have been concurrently asserted by, Mesa Digital affiliate Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC. In September, Alphabet (Google) (3:18-cv-05983) filed a Northern District of California complaint seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of two of those patents, after Ortiz & Associates voluntarily dismissed an earlier affirmative case in the Northern District of Illinois.
December 1, 2018
Following June Dismissals, Mesa Digital Adds Huawei and ZTE to Smartphone Campaign
New Patent Litigation
On the heels of three voluntary dismissals in cases brought in February of this year, Mesa Digital LLC has filed two new complaints, one each against Huawei (2:18-cv-00285) and ZTE (1:18-cv-04775). The suits assert the same two patents, generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices, seen in the recently dismissed complaints against Amazon (voluntarily dismissed without prejudice), BlackBerry (with prejudice), and Sony (without prejudice). At issue are smartphones, with Huawei’s P10 and ZTE’s Axon Elite called out in each complaint.
July 15, 2018
Two Patents from the Same Ortiz-Lopez Family at Issue Separately, Brought by an Affiliated Plaintiff
In new complaints filed against Alphabet (Google) (1:18-cv-00838) and HP (1:18-cv-00837), Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC has asserted two patents, generally related to the wireless exchange of data between devices, from the same family as those asserted a few days later by affiliated NPE Mesa Digital LLC. Both patents are at issue against Google, with only one of the two in suit against HP. Luis M. Ortiz is the sole inventor named on these patents-in-suit, without Kermit D. Lopez, Ortiz’s law partner and fellow named inventor on members of the same patent family. Ortiz & Associates accuses Google of infringement through Chromecast devices and HP through printers offering wireless printing via its ePrint app.
February 8, 2018