Regents of the University of Minnesota v. LSI Corporation et al DC

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 Regents of the University of Minnesota have filed suit against Broadcom (Avago) and subsidiary LSI, alleging that the two companies have infringed a single patent (5,859,601) generally related to a method for encoding data for writing onto a magnetic disk in a hard disk drive (0:16-cv-02891). LSI is accused of infringement through its hard disk controller systems-on-a-chip (“SOCs”) and/or stand-alone read channel chips sold under the brand name TrueStore, including products that offer a technology called “Magnetic Transition Run” (MTR) that purportedly reduces error rates during data writing. Avago, meanwhile, is accused of infringement by handling the US sales and distribution of LSI products. The University pleads that the accused chips are incorporated into hard drives manufactured by Western Digital (HGST) and Seagate, neither of which is named as a defendant.