Sonrai Memory Limited v. Kingston Technology Company, Inc. et al DC

A paring down of claims-at-issue has been underway in the months leading up to the June 6, 2022 evidentiary hearing, planned in response to the International Trade Commission (ITC) complaint that Sonraí Memory Limited filed against respondents Amazon, Dell (EMC), Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung last August. Some of that paring down has come through Sonraí’s motions to drop certain claims from the investigation, but a May 6, 2022 initial determination granting-in-part the respondents’ motion for summary determination dismissed one of the three original patents from the investigation entirely. Sonraí anticipated this result, having gone back in February of this year to one of the sources for its patents to cure the problem and having filed this past week a separate complaint before the ITC that will restart litigation against the same set of respondents there as to the dismissed patent (337-TA-3621).

Atlantic IP Services Limited has begun litigating the former Siemens patents that it received from a Fortress Investment Group LLC vehicle this past October. The Dublin-based monetization firm’s Ollnova Technologies Limited has filed suit against Alphabet (Google) (6:22-cv-00246) in the Western District of Texas, Carrier (9:22-cv-80388) in the Southern District of Florida, and ecobee (2:22-cv-00072) in the Eastern District of Texas, targeting the respective provision of various smart home products (primarily thermostats) with overlapping subsets of five such former Siemens patents. With these suits, Ollnova joins eight other Atlantic IP entities to litigate former operating company assets, including Arigna Technology Limited, which recently added a case against TCL (6:22-cv-00217) to one of its many such campaigns, and Sonraí Memory Limited, which just hit AMD (6:22-cv-00229) with a former Atmel patent following additional lawsuits filed against existing defendants Amazon (6:22-cv-00225), Dell (6:22-cv-00188), Kingston Technology (6:22-cv-00192), LG Electronics (LGE) (6:22-cv-00187), and Samsung (6:22-cv-00189).

Sonraí Memory Limited has expanded its first litigation campaign, launched in February 2021 over patents received from either Microchip Technology or HP Enterprise (HPE), with a suit against Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (6:22-cv-00029) in the Western District of Texas. The sole asserted patent generally relates to a system with a single-die, multiprocessor chip that runs multiple operating systems; Lenovo is targeted over the provision of smartphones “with Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs containing at least one Hexagon DSP”.

Sonraí Memory Limited has added a Western District of Texas case against TI (6:21-cv-01066) to its litigation over patents received from either Microchip Technology or HP Enterprise (HPE). Only one patent—of the eight already in suit across two formal campaigns—is asserted against TI, the patent generally related to a system with a single-die, multiprocessor chip that runs multiple operating systems and Sonraí’s infringement allegations targeting the provision of products that incorporate TI’s AM572x processors.

Since February of this year, Irish NPE Sonraí Memory Limited has been litigating patents received from either Microchip Technology, as part of a 50-asset transfer in February 2020, or HP Enterprise, as part of a 17-asset transfer in June of last year. Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Oracle are already in suit, as are Apple, Dell, Kingston Technology, Kioxia, LG Electronics (LGE), Samsung, and Western Digital. Now, Sonraí has hit three of those defendants again—Amazon (6:21-cv-00991), Google (6:21-cv-01024), and Oracle (6:21-cv-01023)—all in the Western District of Texas and all over previously asserted patents. Infringement allegations across Sonraí’s cases implicate devices supplied by several other companies not named as parties to the litigation.

Sonraí Memory Limited has sued Kingston Technology (8:21-cv-01039) and Western Digital (8:21-cv-01040) over the provision of devices that contain “SanDisk/Toshiba 64L 3D NAND flash chips”, as well as solid state drives (SSDs) that include Silicon Motion SSD controllers (Kingston) or Marvell SSD controllers (Western Digital). These new suits expand a campaign that started in February of this year with Western District of Texas cases against Alphabet (Google), LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung and that proceeded with separate additional suits filed against Apple, Dell, and Kioxia in April, also in West Texas. The new litigation, by contrast, has been filed in the Central District of California.

This year is off to an active start for a web of Irish NPEs litigating former operating company patents picked up from various sources. In February, Sonraí Memory Limited began two litigation campaigns, a first hitting Oracle over a former HP patent (development work having occurred before the split into HP Enterprise (HPE) and HP Inc.) and a second accusing Alphabet (Google), LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung of infringing one former Atmel patent and another patent originally developed at HP. Last week, the same Irish NPE added a suit against Dell (6:21-cv-00361) to the latter campaign, accusing it of infringing that Atmel patent, as well as two additional patents, also acquired through Microchip Technology. Meanwhile, Arigna Technology Limited amended its Texas complaint against a fleet of automakers to assert a second former Mitsubishi Electric patent, as well as to add GM as a defendant, and Solas OLED Limited has followed up its recent East Texas trial win against Samsung with a new suit asserting two former Casio patents against BOE Technology (2:21-cv-00121).

Last July, RPX flagged public records indicating that a growing web of Irish NPEs with ties to Magnetar Capital—a hedge fund with $12.3B in assets under management—were acquiring patents from major operating companies. This past month saw two of those NPEs—Arigna Technology Limited and Sonraí Memory Limited—launch their first campaigns, wielding former HP Enterprise (HPE), Mitsubishi, or Microchip (Atmel) patents in suits targeting automakers and device makers. Meanwhile, USPTO records indicate that yet more well-funded Irish NPEs are waiting in the wings—some with former operating company portfolios already in hand.