An Update on Patent Litigation, the Patent Marketplace, and New Cases	Monday, September 8, 2025

Patent Litigation Feature

IPR Estoppel in the Spotlight after Federal Circuit’s Ingenico Decision

Patent litigation defendants seeking to leverage the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) face a key tradeoff: By filing an inter partes review (IPR), they forgo the ability to later assert in district court an invalidity “ground” that they “raised or reasonably could have raised” in that IPR, a statutory restriction known as IPR estoppel (as provided in 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2)). In May 2025, the Federal Circuit’s Ingenico v. IOENGINE decision resolved a longstanding district court split over whether IPR estoppel applies for certain grounds based on system prior art, where a product is used to show that the claimed technology was in public use before a patent’s priority date. The court held that grounds based on system art are not subject to estoppel, even where the prior art references used as evidence of the system’s public use were cited for other prior art invalidity grounds in an IPR (anticipation or obviousness), because public use is not an available invalidity theory in an IPR. An en banc review petition challenging that decision is now before the court, as a broader debate over the proper bounds of the IPR estoppel standard plays out.

Delaware Jury Invalidates All Six Tried CogniPower Patent Claims

A Delaware jury has returned a verdict against plaintiff CogniPower, LLC in a case filed against Fantasia Trading (d/b/a Anker), in which Power Integrations (PI) intervened. The jury found none of the six tried claims (from two patents) infringed and all of them invalid. Anker and PI have urged District Judge Jennifer L. Hall to enter judgment “as soon as practicable” in part because “CogniPower is resisting preclusion in Texas”. There, CogniPower sued Samsung over the same two patents (now dropped) as well as three others, with trial scheduled to proceed in a September 22, 2025 setting; this past week, District Judge Rodney Gilstrap denied a Samsung motion for a continuance but ordered the parties to brief the court on the effects of the Delaware result on the Texas case.

Patent Watch

Of Drones and Phones

Assignments recently made public by the USPTO have been all over the place, some dated years ago, but among the more recent activity is the transfer of a family of peer-to-peer mobile communications patents assigned to an entity with ties suggesting that a litigation campaign over them is coming; the transfer of vehicle control patents to an entity with analogous ties; and the transfer of ten US patents from a defendant to a plaintiff whose case against the assignor just ended.

New Patent Litigation

Three of Six Patentholders with the Same Secured Party Have Now Filed Suit

Inventor-backed OnePass Data Technology LLC has filed its first litigation, suing AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (1:25-cv-01111) and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) (1:25-cv-01112) in separate District of Delaware complaints. The Ohio plaintiff describes the patents as directed to “cleaning data records, which provide significant improvements and advantages over conventional data cleansing technology”. Targeted in the new cases are systems and methods “for processing customer mailing address records pursuant to the [US Postal Service] Cycle N or Cycle O CASS requirements”.

Vision Sphere Expands QoS Campaign, This Time in the Northern District of Texas

Vision Sphere Labs LLC has filed separate Northern District of Texas lawsuits against ADTRAN (3:25-cv-02278), Resideo Technologies (Snap One) (3:25-cv-02293), and Teltonika (3:25-cv-02304). Two patents—generally related to a method for network quality of service (QoS) that assigns a priority value to different data types and controls access to the network based on current network conditions—have been asserted in this campaign, Vision Sphere targeting the provision of routers, switches, and/or platforms that support certain QoS features.

Trial Prep Against Samsung Continuing in East Texas, Cerence Sues Apple in West Texas

Cerence Operating Company has filed a Western District of Texas case against Apple (7:25-cv-00400), on the heels of having hit Sony and TCL both in the Eastern District of Texas and before the International Trade Commission (ITC). The Cerence Inc. subsidiary targets the provision of various products—including iPhones and iPads that support iOS5+, Apple Watches with watchOS5+, Apple HomePods (released on or after February 2018), and/or iPhones and iPads with iOS13+—that support pointing device tracking, slide-to-type keyboards, and voice command/recognition features.

Cisco Is Next for OptimNet

OptimNet LLC has followed up its June case against Verizon (Verizon Wireless and several other subsidiaries) with a second one, this one naming Cisco (2:25-cv-00935) as the defendant, both filed in the Eastern District of Texas. With the same five networking patents, for which OptimNet pleads that it is exclusive licensee, the plaintiff targets the provision of the Cisco Meraki auto VPN software and Meraki virtual devices; its IOS software platforms which support ITU-T G.8032; its Optical Transport Platforms; its products that implement “time-base policies that control traffic, including through Cisco’s Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Catalyst Center platforms; and Cisco products and software that implement Cisco ACT multi-site functionalities.

Ricoh Sues Zoom

Ricoh Company Limited has filed a Delaware against Zoom Communications (1:25-cv-01095), asserting seven patents broadly directed to various aspects of videoconferencing technology. The plaintiff targets the provision of its “cloud-based communication and collaboration products and services”, including “Zoom Meetings, Zoom Rooms, Zoom Sessions, Zoom Webinars, Zoom Whiteboard, and Zoom Cloud Recording”, pleading that the alleged infringement has been willful. Ricoh points to a notice letter to Zoom as early as April 2024, as well as Zoom’s alleged citation to Ricoh’s patents in its own prosecution activity.

Texas Plaintiff Sues Motorola Mobility, Discloses No Funder

Following its mid-August case against Samsung in the Eastern District of Texas, Competitive Access Systems, Inc. (CAS) has filed suit against Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (4:25-cv-00948), this time in the Northern District of Texas. The inventor-controlled plaintiff targets, with five networking patents, the provision of “consumer electronic products”, including certain Motorola-branded smartphones, that “implement 3GPP standards in conjunction with Motorola’s device’s simultaneous use of 4G LTE and 5G connections”.

Wyoming Plaintiff Sues over Former Coretronic Patent

Control Sync Systems LLC (CSS) has filed its first lawsuit, accusing Sony (2:25-cv-00896) in an Eastern District of Texas complaint of infringing a single patent generally related to controlling the “video and audio parameters of a display device and a play device”. The Wyoming plaintiff—linked to a familiar patent monetization operation—targets the provision of the BRAVIA XR 75” Class Z9K television and related products that support the BRAVIA Sync feature, support for the HDMI-CEC standard at issue.

MR Licensing’s Campaign, Taken Over from Monterey Research, Hits TI

MR Licensing LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded Quest Patent Research Corporation (QPRC), has added Texas Instruments (2:25-cv-00899) to the litigation campaign that it took over from Monterey Research, LLC in April 2025. In the newly filed Eastern District of Texas complaint, TI is accused of infringing ten patents through a wide array of products, categorized by MR Licensing as: battery chargers, microcontrollers, TI AM65x and DRA80xM processors, TI Boost converters, TI Synchronous Buck Converters, USB redrivers, and USB 3.0 to SATA Bridge products.

Geofencing Campaign Hits Delivery and Rideshare Service Providers

DoorDash (7:25-cv-00385), HEB (Neighborfavor) (7:25-cv-00389), Neutron Holdings (7:25-cv-00386), and Wonder Group (GrubHub) (7:25-cv-00388) are the latest defendants to be added to the sole litigation campaign of Yopima LLC. In the new Western District of Texas complaints, the plaintiff asserts a single patent generally related to tracking device locations with "overlapping geofences", with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of their respective delivery and/or rideshare mobile apps and platforms. At issue are features related to device location tracking.

In Case You Missed It

Fifth Time Not the Charm

The Federal Circuit has construed the “fifth urgent plea” by the principal of Ramey LLP (and others, including plaintiff KOJI IP LLC), as a motion to lift the stay on their appeal from sanctions imposed by Northern District of California Magistrate Judge Peter H. Kang. In that light, the court denied the motion. These sanctioned parties will have to wait for Judge Kang to complete his work on several motions, including whether to shift to Renesas Electronics the full $107K requested. Ramey LLP had decried the inability to represent patent plaintiffs in various jurisdictions, given that the reporting requirements here have blocked pro hac vice admittance. In response, Renesas noted that Ramey LLP still filed 29 patent cases in June and July—with August’s numbers confirming the same filing pace.