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An Update on Patent Litigation, the Patent Marketplace, and New Cases
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Monday, December 2, 2024
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Patent Litigation Feature
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The EU’s Unified Patent Court (UPC) has delivered its first judgment in a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) case. On November 22, the court’s Mannheim Local Division (Mannheim LD) issued an infringement ruling and imposed an injunction in litigation filed by standard essential patent (SEP) owner Panasonic against implementer Oppo. The decision confirms that the UPC has jurisdiction over FRAND counterclaims and takes a deep dive into the proper application of Huawei v. ZTE, the seminal 2015 decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that laid out guidelines for SEP licensing negotiations. On multiple key points, the Mannheim LD diverged from positions taken by the European Commission, which in April pushed for a more rigid application of Huawei in an amicus brief filed in an unrelated German national court appeal.
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Patent Watch
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In connection with the acquisition of a large portfolio of patent assets from Avaya earlier this year, Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC CEO David Pridham reportedly predicted, “We expect to have over 20,000 patents by the end of the year”, while also expressing that “[n]inety percent of [Dominion’s] deals are done without litigation”, litigating only “when we have to”. Apparently, the Texas monetization firm “had to”, filing a pair of September 2024 suits against Comcast over a subset of the former Avaya assets; meanwhile, Dominion more recently inched closer to its predicted year-end patent holdings mark, another of its Texas entities picking up roughly 100 wireless communications patents at the end of October.
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In early October, five entities recorded a security interest in the patents each respectively holds, naming as the secured party the same Delaware LLC, with a name suggestive of the involvement of third-party litigation funding. Two of the entities launched litigation later in October, one of them already had active litigation underway, the sole case of a fourth closed back in 2012, and the fifth one does not appear ever to have litigated a patent—yet.
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USPTO assignment records recently made public contain various other patent transfers worth noting, beyond the grant of security interests by five patent holders to the same secured party and the apparent construction of a new patent portfolio by Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC. Among them is a pair of transfers from an operating company to a recently formed Delaware entity suggestively located, the move of a single patent from a set of named inventors to an entity tied to a relatively new entrant to the monetization scene, and assignments from various sources, including a university, to an established monetization team.
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On November 21, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act (PREVAIL Act), a legislative effort that, if passed into law, could effect significant changes to Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings.
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New Patent Litigation
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Korea-based plaintiff International Semiconductor Group Co., Ltd. (ISG) has filed a complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC), naming as proposed respondents members Dell, HP, HP Enterprise (HPE), and Lenovo (337-TA-3785). The plaintiff targets with four wireless communications patents the provision of a wide array of wireless communication devices and components (e.g., computers, laptops, tablets, and wireless chipsets). It pleads that the domestic industry requirement is satisfied by the US activities of its licensee, Samsung.
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UMBRA Technologies (US) Inc., UMBRA Technologies Ltd., and UMBRA Technologies Limited (CN) have filed a District of Delaware complaint against Juniper Networks (1:24-cv-01288). The coplaintiffs target the provision of network virtualization products and services with three patents, one familiar to this campaign and two making their litigation debut. The familiar patent has survived reexamination, with the patentability of all claims confirmed, and has (thus far) survived inter partes review (IPR), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) having declined to institute trial in response to a prior defendant’s petition.
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Droplets, Inc. has filed a new round of cases, one against each of AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:24-cv-00967), Ford (2:24-cv-00968), Home Depot (2:24-cv-00969), and Walmart (2:24-cv-00970), all in the Eastern District of Texas. Asserted is a single patent, acknowledged to have expired in November 2021 and generally related to web-based app delivery. The complaints target the provision of “interactive functionalities” via the defendants’ respective mobile apps. This campaign, one of the oldest, began in 2006 and has seen two jury verdicts in favor of Droplets, most recently in a case filed against Yahoo! (together with others) back in September 2011.
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Having sued Brightcove in October, OptiMorphix, Inc. filed November suits against Intel (1:24-cv-01291), NVIDIA (1:24-cv-01282), and Salesforce (MuleSoft, Slack) (1:24-cv-01278), all in the District of Delaware and each over a subset of former Citrix patents received in April 2023. Intel is accused of infringing five such patents through the provision of chipsets (e.g., GPUs and processors), computing devices, and networking hardware (e.g., adapters and controllers). NVIDIA is accused of infringing 11 of those patents through the provision of a wide array of networking products, including encoders, GPUs, graphics cards, infrastructure computing platforms, laptops, and network adapters. Finally, Salesforce is accused of infringing seven such patents through the provision of the MuleSoft Anypoint, MuleSoft Cloudhub 2.0, Salesforce, and Slack platforms. At issue are features such as adaptive bitrate management, data packet scheduling and transmission, H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoding, and webpage rendering.
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CText IP LLC has filed a Southern District of New York complaint against Apple (1:24-cv-08821). Asserted are two patents generally directed to “correlating conversations in a messaging environment”, with infringement allegations targeting the provision of messaging features such as inline replies and tapbacks on iPhones and iPads. The plaintiff contends that the alleged infringement here has been willful, pleading that it sent Apple a letter in January 2023 offering it a license to the asserted patents.
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Earlier this year, Polaris Innovations Limited resolved separate cases that it had earlier filed against Nanya Technology and Xilinx (acquired by AMD in 2022). Now, the campaign has come back to life, with the filing of a Western District of Texas complaint against Qualcomm (7:24-cv-00296). The Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN) plaintiff asserts four memory technology patents, targeting the provision of various processors, including the Qualcomm Snapdragon 4, 6, 7, 8, and X Series, that include various types of LPDDR memory (LPDDR4/4X/5/5X) and/or that utilize certain semiconductor packaging technology.
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In a Northern District of Georgia complaint, Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC), “a 501(c)(3) company and an affiliated organization of the Georgia Institute of Technology”, has accused Murata Manufacturing (Murata Electronics North America) (1:24-cv-05268) of infringing a single patent generally related to a certain “multi-band RF device”. Targeted is the provision of “multi-band antenna modules utilizing multi-layer organic substrates”, including radio frequency devices and modules sold under Murata’s MetroCirc or “multi-layer LCP” brands.
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In November, Empire IP LLC plaintiff Fleet Connect Solutions LLC (FCS) expanded its sole litigation campaign with suits against Bose (2:24-cv-00941), Comcast (2:24-cv-00961), and Murata Manufacturing (Murata Electronics North America) (2:24-cv-00964) in the Eastern District of Texas and Cox Enterprises (Cox Communications) (1:24-cv-05269) in the Northern District of Georgia. The seven asserted patents, received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), are broadly directed to wireless communications. The defendants are accused over a wide array of products, ranging from Bluetooth/Wi-Fi modules to smart speakers, that support Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11ac/b/n.
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BridgeComm LLC is the latest plaintiff to assert a portfolio of patents generally related to a “variable-effect lighting system”. Variable Lighting LLC, a Quarterhill Inc. (f/k/a Wi-LAN Inc.) subsidiary, did so between 2015-2016; Launchip LLC, an entity tied to IP Edge LLC, between 2019-2022. The current round of defendants—targeted over the provision of LED lighting products, ranging from horticultural lighting systems to string lights—includes Honeywell (2:24-cv-00957), Samsung (2:24-cv-00960), Shenzhen Intellirocks Tech. (Govee Moments Trading) (2:24-cv-00962), Shenzhen Ustellar Technology Ltd. (Novostella) (2:24-cv-00955), and Shenzhen Yiwanjia Technology Co., Ltd. (Phopollo) (2:24-cv-00951), all sued in the Eastern District of Texas.
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Nearby Systems LLC, a plaintiff associated with Texas monetization firm Empire IP LLC, has added cases against Truist Financial (2:24-cv-00952) and Whataburger (2:24-cv-00954) to the litigation campaign that it launched in June 2022 with suits against CVS, Deli Management, and Rent-A-Center. In the new Eastern District of Texas complaints, the plaintiff asserts three patents generally related to “displaying location-based content on a digital map” on a mobile device. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of mobile apps that feature maps for allowing users to locate and navigate to store locations.
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In Case You Missed It
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On November 22, 2024, an Eastern District of Texas jury returned another verdict for Netlist, this one awarding the plaintiff a combined $118M for the infringement of three memory patents, this time by Samsung. The bulk of the award is associated with a single patent claim that was canceled in an April 17, 2024 final written decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Most ($425M worth) of a $445M verdict from earlier this year, against Micron Technology, stems from that same patent; the judgment based on that prior verdict, as well as the final written decision from the PTAB, are now on appeal.
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Since mid-October, a plaintiff calling itself “NetMomentum LLC” has fired off five lawsuits, one against each of ASUSTek, Panasonic, Samsung, VTech Holdings, and Yealink Network Technology. In its complaints, all filed in the Eastern District of Texas, the plaintiff characterizes itself as a Delaware entity located at a New York, New York address. However, an assignment record recently made public by the USPTO has raised questions about the accuracy of those representations, perhaps calling into question the standing of this plaintiff, as characterized, to sue.
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