Sound View Innovations, LLC v. Hulu, LLC DC CAFC

The Federal Circuit has vacated Central District of California Judge John A. Kronstadt’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement that ended district court litigation between plaintiff Sound View Innovations, LLC and defendant Hulu. While the lower court’s construction of a key disputed limitation was affirmed, the Federal Circuit took issue with the failure to provide an affirmative construction for the term “buffer”, as used in the asserted claims, and therefore with the lower court’s grant of summary judgment on the basis that certain “caches” could not be the required “buffer”. The dispute between Sound View and Hulu will now resume, after remand, Judge Kronstadt having set a scheduling conference for mid-June.

Sound View Innovations, LLC has added more cases to the campaign that it began back in 2016, suing Delta Air Lines (1:19-cv-00659) and Wal-Mart (1:19-cv-00660) over subsets of four and five patents, respectively, from the NPE’s large portfolio, most of which originated with Alcatel-Lucent. These new suits join early-stage cases filed against AMC Networks, CBS (CBS Interactive), HSN, Liberty Interactive (QVC), and The CW Network in January of this year. The Central District of California—in a 2017 case filed against Hulu—has been considering a storm of motions for several months, including multiple dispositive motions on various issues, among them noninfringement, failure to prove invalidity, and alleged willful infringement; motions to permit both fact and expert discovery after the deadline for completion; and motions attacking the proposed testimony of each party’s expert witnesses.

In July 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw the first new petition for inter partes review (IPR) filed against a Native American tribe since the Board’s March ruling that IPRs against tribes are not barred by sovereign immunity, a decision that was upheld by the Federal Circuit on July 20. Institution decisions were also issued by the Board in July for IPRs against Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited and Sound View Innovations, LLC, among other notable plaintiffs. In addition, the PTAB issued final decisions throughout July for IPRs against a variety of other NPEs, from Intellectual Ventures LLC (which has continued to pursue its existing campaigns but has seemingly stopped filing new US litigation) to smaller entities like Andrea Electronics Corporation and XPRT Ventures LLC as well as individual inventor Daniel L. Flamm.

In October 2017, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw the filing of petitions for inter partes review (IPR) against a variety of frequent litigants, including publicly traded NPEs Acacia Research Corporation and Xperi Corporation, as well as privately held Monument Patent Holdings, LLC and Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited. The Board also instituted trial in October for IPRs against multiple Acacia subsidiaries, Uniloc, and Papst Licensing GmbH & Company Kg. In addition, the PTAB issued an IPR final decision cancelling multiple claims from a data compression patent held by prolific plaintiff Realtime Data LLC, including the single claim that Riverbed Technology (one of the petitioners for the IPR) was found to infringe in a $4.3M verdict in May, with other final decisions issued in campaigns waged by TQ Delta LLC and publicly traded Quarterhill Inc. IPRs against IP Bridge, Inc. and Mobile Telecommunications Technologies, LLC also ended in termination in October after the patent owners requested adverse judgments.

In September 2017, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw more than ten petitions filed in NPE campaigns involving networking and related technologies such as cybersecurity, including those waged by publicly traded Finjan Holdings, Inc.; prolific private litigant Realtime Data LLC; and Oyster Optics, LLC. Trial was instituted in September for an inter partes review (IPR) against Finjan and in IPRs against other frequent plaintiffs, including MyMail, Ltd. and Sound View Innovations, LLC. The Board issued final decisions in two covered business method (CBM) reviews against Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited, the first AIA reviews against the NPE to reach final decisions since March 2016, and only the fourth to date. The PTAB also issued final decisions in IPRs against publicly traded Document Security Systems, Inc. as well as Acceleration Bay, LLC; Mobile Telecommunications Technologies, LLC; and Personalized Media Communications, LLC; among other NPEs.

Sound View Innovations, LLC has added Hulu (2:17-cv-04146) to its web infrastructure campaign, along with a second lawsuit against Facebook (2:17-cv-04275). At issue in the new complaints are a total of six former Alcatel-Lucent patents. The defendants are alleged to infringe the 5,806,062 patent through their use of the Document Object Model API, and the 6,708,213 and 9,462,074 patents through their use of content delivery networks (CDNs) that utilize the MPEG-DASH and/or HLS streaming protocols. In addition, Hulu is alleged to infringe another patent (6,757,796) through its own use of similar CDNs; the 6,125,371 patent through its use of the Apache Cassandra distributed database platform; and the 6,502,133 patent through its use of the Apache Storm distributed stream processing framework.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) continued to see the filing of petitions for inter partes review (IPR) against publicly traded NPEs in March 2017, including Acacia Research Corporation; Finjan Holdings, Inc.; Pendrell Corporation; TiVo Corporation (formerly known as Rovi Corporation); and Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN). A variety of prolific, privately held NPEs were also targeted for IPR throughout March, including Blackbird Tech LLC, General Patent Corporation, IP Edge LLC, Realtime Data LLC, and Papst Licensing GmbH & Company Kg, along with several inventors and inventor-controlled NPEs and an assortment of other plaintiffs.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board saw the filing of petitions against a host of publicly traded NPEs in February, including Acacia Research Corporation, Pendrell Corporation, Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN), and Xperi Corporation (f/k/a Tessera Holding Corporation), with challenges also filed in campaigns waged by Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV); IP Bridge, Inc.; Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited; and Monument Patent Holdings, LLC.