Altair Logix LLC v. ACER America Corporation DC

As part of the monetization firm’s end-of-November sprint, apparent IP Edge LLC plaintiff Jade Licensing LLC filed a Western District of Texas suit against Broadcom (Brocade Communications Systems) (6:21-cv-01239) over a single patent originally issuing to Huawei. Jade Licensing accuses Brocade of infringing the optical communications patent through the provision of optical transceiver modules. Its new case follows on the heels of a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation that suggests that another IP Edge plaintiff, well into a larger campaign over another patent acquired from the same source, is on its way to defeating an Alice challenge.

For several years running, IP Edge LLC has been responsible for the most defendants added to NPE litigation campaigns throughout each calendar year. 2019 was no different. Last year saw roughly 400 defendants added to campaigns launched by plaintiffs associated with the Texas monetization firm, the campaigns spanning a wide range of technologies and now involving suits filed (and typically litigated in file-and-settle fashion) in myriad districts. A quick glance at the NPE’s January filings suggests that 2020 will see more of the same, while a recent Alice ruling may have just ended one of IP Edge’s 2019 campaigns.

In late August 2019, while IP Edge LLC dropped four brand new litigation campaigns through litigating entities Aristors Licensing LLC (over a patent received from an inventor-controlled entity), Enchanted IP LLC (over a patent received from Huawei), Sonohm Licensing LLC  (over patents received from Siemens), and Zyrcuits IP LLC (over a patent received from Linex Technologies, Inc.), the Texas monetization firm also added cases across an even broader set of its many campaigns. Altair Logix LLC, Digi Portal LLC, EncodiTech LLC, Saros Licensing LLC, and Wave Linx LLC—each a Texas plaintiff associated with IP Edge—have all filed cases over the past week.

Altair Logix LLC recently filed suit against Acer (3:18-cv-07154), HTC (2:18-cv-01685), and Mattel (1:18-cv-01861), targeting devices with either a Qualcomm or MediaTek system-on-chip (SoC) that allegedly include multiple “media processing units” identified as the ARM quad-core Cortex-A53. The new defendants join ASUStek and TI as active in the campaign after dismissals have been entered in earlier suits filed against Microsoft, Samsung, and ZTE. Altair Logix is an affiliate of IP Edge LLC, a Texas monetization firm that has landed at the top of recent years’ lists of most frequent plaintiffs.

IP Edge LLC, which RPX data shows has cumulatively added more defendants to patent lawsuits than any other plaintiff since 2000, was relatively quiet during the first two quarters of 2018. Q3, however, saw an uptick in IP Edge activity, with various affiliates launching five new campaigns targeting a wide range of technologies.

Cases against Microsoft (2:18-cv-00325) and Samsung (2:18-cv-00326) have been added to the litigation campaign begun with a mid-July complaint against TI by Altair Logix LLC, an affiliate of monetization firm IP Edge LLC. A single patent, described as relating to “the field of runtime reconfigurable dynamic-adaptive digital circuits”, is asserted in each suit, with infringement allegations against Microsoft focused on convertible tablets (e.g., the Surface 2 equipped with the NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor) and those against Samsung focused on Chromebooks equipped with the Exynos 5 Dual processor. Both complaints identify the ARM Quad core Cortex A-15 as the “media processing units” working in conjunction with the products’ processor.

Altair Logix LLC, an affiliate of monetization firm IP Edge LLC, has launched a new litigation campaign, suing Texas Instruments (1:18-cv-01065) in Delaware. The new complaint asserts a single patent generally related to “the field of runtime reconfigurable dynamic-adaptive digital circuits which can implement a myriad of digital processing functions related to systems control, digital signal processing, communications, image processing, speech and voice recognition or synthesis, three-dimensional graphics rendering, and video processing”. TI is accused of infringement through the provision of certain ARM-based systems-on-chip with media-processing features, the complaint specifically identifying the Texas Instruments 66AK2Hxx Multicore DSP+ARM® KeyStone II System-on-Chip. This litigation is only the fourth new 2018 campaign filed by IP Edge, by far the most prolific NPE plaintiff over the past several years.