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An Update on Patent Litigation, the Patent Marketplace, and New Cases
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Monday, April 7, 2025
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Patent Litigation Feature
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Two multijurisdictional standard essential patent (SEP) disputes have settled in the wake of significant developments in key venues. On April 3, Ericsson and Lenovo announced that they had agreed to a global end to litigation between them, and to have their remaining disputes on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing issues—pertaining to the companies’ respective cellular SEPs—be resolved through arbitration. The deal was announced soon after Ericsson filed a UK Supreme Court appeal challenging a UK Court of Appeal judgment that deemed the company an unwilling licensor for not offering an interim license to Lenovo. Days earlier, a separate dispute between Nokia and Amazon over video streaming technology also reached a global settlement following a series of developments related to injunctions in Germany and the US.
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Less than a week after sanctioning several Ramey LLP attorneys personally for, among other things, the unauthorized practice of law before the Northern District of California, Magistrate Judge Peter H. Kang has granted the motion filed by Renesas Electronics seeking a shift of attorney fees against KOJI IP LLC, the Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) plaintiff that those attorneys represent. William P. Ramey III, Jeffrey E. Kubiak, and Susan S.Q. Kalra are all three also sanctioned under the court’s inherent authority and 28 U.S.C. § 1927, each held jointly and severally liable for shifted fees and each required to complete four hours of continuing legal education, two as to federal court litigation, two as to patent litigation. The three attorneys are also responsible for distributing the sanctions order to presiding judges, professional governing bodies, and every attorney at Ramey LLP. Ramey and Kubiak have attested to compliance with the last mandate; it appears that Kalra no longer works at Ramey LLP.
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Patent Watch
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Late last month, Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) appears to have moved roughly 140 patents into position for divestment. The last assignment of patents leaving IV to appear in publicly recorded USPTO records saw about 60 patent assets transferred to Integral Wireless Technologies LLC, an entity formed by the founders of Texas monetization firm Empire IP LLC, suggesting that litigation over at least some of the assets now pegged to depart IV may be coming. However, a review of 2024 divestitures for IV suggests that the transfer of patents out of the firm does not always indicate additional patent risk, at least not immediately.
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New Patent Litigation
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Formed last year, Paygeo LLC has filed its first patent case, accusing Samsung (2:25-cv-00334) of infringing five patents broadly directed to conducting secure financial transactions. The inventor-controlled plaintiff targets in the Eastern District of Texas complaint the provision of its “mobile payment and authentication platform” and associated services (i.e., Samsung Knox, Samsung Pass, Samsung Pay, and Samsung Wallet), as well as incorporating devices (e.g., smartphones and smartwatches). At issue are a wide array of features, including biometric authentication and PIN codes, mobile payment authentication, and payment method registration and storage.
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The Eastern District of Texas case filed by EyesMatch, Ltd. against Samsung was stayed this past December to await the results of inter partes reviews (IPRs) of the two patents-in-suit. Now, Alphabet (Google) (3:25-cv-02964) has filed a complaint asking the Northern District of California for declaratory judgments of noninfringement of the same two patents, noting that while it was not named as a defendant in Texas, EyesMatch “identifie[d] functionality relating to the automatic framing of a user during a video call on the Google Duo and/or Google Meet application” as allegedly infringing the patents-in-suit.
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Last June, Cellular Link Innovations LLC, an Empire IP LLC plaintiff, filed a joint motion to stay its June 2023 case against Verizon (Verizon Wireless), together with a notice of settlement. It took three months for that suit to be dismissed; now, Cellular Link has sued Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (2:25-cv-00331), also in the Eastern District of Texas, over the same wireless networking patent. Targeted is the provision of 5G network services and related products through T-Mobile’s “wireless network architecture”, as well as “certain methods for base station utilization”.
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CommPlex Systems LLC has filed an Eastern District of Texas case against Acer (2:25-cv-00336), targeting the provision of its Predator Connect W6 Wi-Fi 6E Router. The New Mexico plaintiff asserts a single patent that issued to sole named inventor Abdullah A. Al-Eidan in January 2011. A transfer away from Al-Eidan has yet to appear in publicly available USPTO assignment records, but in the boilerplate Rabicoff Law LLC complaint, CommPlex pleads ownership of “all right, title[,] and interest”.
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BT Wearables LLC has filed an Eastern District of Texas suit against Zepp Health (2:25-cv-00318) over the provision of its smartwatches, targeting functionality that “calculates the calories burned by the user and transmits this data to a remote device; includes a user input device for selecting an exercise; includes an accelerometer and heart rate sensor; executes speech commands from the user; couples to a mobile telephone; and identifies the activity of the user”. Seven patents have been asserted, five of them already in suit against prior defendants Citizen Electronics (Citizen Watch) and Dillards.
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In its first case against TSMC, filed in August 2024, Advanced Integrated Circuit Process LLC (AICP) asserted seven of the more than 50 patents that it received from Winbond Electronics (Nuvoton Technology Corporation Japan). Last week, AICP hit TSMC again (2:25-cv-00324), targeting with four additional such assets the provision of semiconductor devices—including certain Apple, Broadcom, and Qualcomm chips—manufactured using various process nodes, including those that utilize FinFET technology. The second complaint drops three days after TSMC filed two petitions for inter partes review (IPR) of patents asserted in the first case.
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Encryptawave Technologies LLC has filed complaints against Doke Communication (HK) (4:25-cv-00329) and Nintendo (4:25-cv-00330), each in the Eastern District of Texas. The sole asserted patent—previously litigated by IP Edge LLC plaintiff Moxchange LLC—generally relates to “providing secure authentication between wireless communication network nodes”. Nintendo is accused of infringement through the provision of the Nintendo Switch gaming console; and for DOKE, over various smartphones. At issue is the support for “wireless connection with Wi-Fi networks using WPA2 security, which is based on the IEEE 802.11i standard”.
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Last month, Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. expanded its first litigation campaign, which has seen over 300 defendants hit since its start in May 2019, with complaints against Booking Holdings (7:25-cv-00148) and Choice Hotels International (7:25-cv-00147) in the Western District of Texas. The sole asserted patent, received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), generally relates to data retrieval and display. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of their respective “web-based hotel booking” services that support certain map-based search tools.
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Telsync Technologies LLC has filed an Eastern District of Texas suit against Caltta Technologies (2:25-cv-00326) and a Western District of Texas complaint against Siemens (7:25-cv-00150). The new suits bring the number of defendants in this campaign, begun back in August 2023, to 15. Asserted here is one of two patents-in-campaign, both generally directed to establishing communications between multiple devices over a physical distance. Telsync targets the provision of the Caltta 5G Core Network and Siemens Industrial 5G Network, respectively. At issue are the networks’ support for “multiple Session and Service Continuity (SSC) mode 3 for applications”.
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In Case You Missed It
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Late in February, Southern District of New York Judge J. Paul Oetken denied a motion filed by Ramey LLP-repped plaintiff LINFO IP LLC to dismiss its case against Aero Global without prejudice, as well as an alternative request, presented casually in a reply brief, to stay that case. LINFO IP made the request after Southern District of New York Judge Jesse M. Furman, in a suit in the same campaign, this one against Trustpilot, invalidated all claims of the sole asserted patent under Alice, as ineligibly directed to the abstract idea of “extracting and presenting information”. LINFO IP filed an appeal of that ruling and moved to dismiss its case against Aero Global “to save expenses”. Its own Alice motion pending and the possibility of a future attorney fees shift hanging over the case, Aero Global resisted, leading to Judge Oetken’s ruling. Aero Global is also seeking a shift of attorney fees from AML IP LLC in the same district; AML IP and LINFO IP are both tied to Texas monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP).
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