Proxense, LLC

Western District of Texas Alan D. Albright has frequently tangled with the Federal Circuit over his handling of convenience transfers during his time on the bench, resulting in an ongoing series of mandamus reversals that peaked in 2021 but have since largely subsided. Despite those prior rebukes, Judge Albright has continued to follow a broadly similar approach to certain aspects of the transfer analysis—including his ongoing tendency to discount inconvenience to willing witnesses. A notable example came earlier this year, when Judge Albright—in a just-unsealed decision denying an Apple transfer motion in litigation from Proxense, LLC—held that inconvenience to a defendant’s witness traveling from outside the district is mitigated when the witness can perform their work duties from a local office.

Hyundai and Kia (6:25-cv-00016) are the latest defendants to be added to the sole litigation campaign of inventor-backed Proxense, LLC, launched in June 2019 with a case against Nordstrom. The four patents-in-suit, two of which are newly asserted in litigation, are broadly directed to the use of a “personal digital key” to generate access to a computing device and/or resources. The defendant is accused of infringement through the provision of automobiles that support digital key technologies (i.e., Digital Key 2).

In late May, Proxense, LLC filed a new Western District of Texas case against LG Electronics (LGE) in a campaign that has been active since 2019. The suit was randomly assigned—under that court’s new case assignment regime—to District Judge Kathleen Cardone. Two earlier, closed suits and four earlier, open suits had been filed in the district, all presided over by District Judge Alan D. Albright. Just a few days in, Judge Cardone transferred that case to Judge Albright with his consent, holding that “[t]o facilitate efficient docket management, all related cases are ordinarily allocated to the Judge that was randomly assigned the earliest-numbered related case” (as provided in a district-wide order issued in 2003 that concerns case assignments in multi-judge divisions).  

Proxense, LLC has added a Western District of Texas case against Intel (6:24-cv-00283) to a campaign with suits currently active against Alphabet (Google), Apple, and Microsoft there. District Judge Alan D. Albright has just handed down two claim construction orders, one in the case against Google and the other in the case against Microsoft. A single patent from the five now in suit against Intel appears in those orders, while the other four are new to the campaign. Targeted against Intel is the provision of devices, ranging from processors to wireless adapters, that support Wi-Fi 6 and later, as well as those that provide Trusted Platform Module (TPM) functionality as required by the Microsoft Windows 11 operating systems.

On the same day this past January, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright both denied a motion to transfer a May 2023 case that Proxense, LLC filed against Alphabet (Google) to the Northern District of California and docketed a claim construction order in the case. Google has filed a petition for mandamus review by the Federal Circuit of that decision. Meanwhile, Microsoft, also sued by Proxense last May, has moved Judge Albright for a stay pending the resolution of its own motion to transfer, to the Western District of Washington. Against this backdrop, inventor-controlled Proxense has now sued Apple (6:24-cv-00143), also in West Texas.

Earlier this year, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright canceled jury selection a few days before trial had been set to begin based on a complaint that Proxense, LLC filed against Samsung, originally over five biometric authentication patents but eventually concerning only two. The parties noticed a resolution that ended the case in a dismissal with prejudice. Now, Proxense has sued Alphabet (Google) (6:23-cv-00320) and Microsoft (6:23-cv-00319) in the same district, targeting with those two patents, as well as four others, the provision of “universal platform password-less architecture[s]”: respectively, “Google Identity (also known as Google Identity Services)” and “Microsoft Identity Platform (also known as Azure Active Directory)”.

As recently reported in RPX’s Q1 in Review, NPE litigation targeting the Financial Services sector jumped by 111% during the first quarter of 2021. That Q1 wave of Financial Services litigation was filed by a variety of NPE plaintiffs, including several inventor-controlled entities; an NPE associated with the monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP); and an affiliate of prolific filer IP Edge LLC.

Proxense, LLC has opened up a second litigation campaign, accusing Samsung (6:21-cv-00210) in a new Western District of Texas complaint of infringing five patents through the provision of Samsung Pay on myriad mobile devices. The patents generally relate to biometric authentication. Proxense’s complaint emphasizes the biography of its founder and CEO, and named inventor on many of its patents, John J. Giobbi, as well as the company’s technology development, the “foundational capabilities” of which are described as including “a secure element, biometrics captured and stored thereon, retrieval of biometrics and token passing to a trusted third party, and completion of a mobile payment transaction”.