Sockeye Licensing TX LLC v. AAXA Technologies Inc. DC

So far in 2022, Sockeye Licensing TX LLC has brought the number of defendants in its media casting campaign close to 75, suing Airtame, C&A IP Holdings (C&A Martketing), Fujitsu, Lumitrix, Vantop (Shenzhen Vantop Technology & Innovation), StarTech.com, ViewSonic, Walmart, Yaber Technologies, and, most recently, in July, HP (6:22-cv-00791) and L3Harris (Titan Company) (6:22-cv-00762). Two patents—broadly related to controlling “display devices” with a mobile device to download or view a video—have been asserted across these latest complaints, with devices (e.g., Chromebooks for HP and certain TVs for Titan) targeted. Titan is new to this litigation campaign, but HP was one of the original defendants, sued as part of a large group in October 2015.

Sockeye Licensing TX LLC has added cases against Fujitsu (3:18-cv-07492) and VIZIO (8:18-cv-02148) to the suits naming Hisense, Panasonic, and Toshiba, separately filed in November. The same two patents, generally related to the use of a wireless communications device (e.g., a cell phone) to control and provide network connectivity to standard desktop peripherals (e.g., a monitor and keyboard), are asserted in Sockeye’s two newest complaints. Fujitsu is accused of infringement through the provision of a wireless HDMI dongle (branded by Fujitsu as the “FUJITSU Wireless Display for HDMI” and identified in the complaint as “Fujitsu HDMI”) that supports media casting from a smartphone, including content from Netflix; VIZIO, of VIZIO SmartCast, its smart TV platform that allows media casting using Chromecast.

The dismissal in late August 2018 of a case filed by Sockeye Licensing TX LLC against Lenovo ended that NPE’s last round of suits, filed in the Central District of California. Sockeye has now begun another round, this one comprising cases filed against Panasonic (1:18-cv-01750) and Toshiba (1:18-cv-01749) in the District of Delaware, over Blu-ray players that allow playback on a connected TV of video received on a smartphone, and against Hisense (1:18-cv-05129) in the Northern District of Georgia, over Hisense Smartcast, which facilitates similar functionality. At issue in the new complaints are two patents from a five-member family generally related to the use of a wireless communications device (e.g., a cell phone) to control and provide network connectivity to standard desktop peripherals (e.g., a monitor and keyboard).