Sovereign Peak Ventures, LLC v. Lifi Labs, Inc.

Sovereign Peak Ventures, LLC (SPV) has added a second defendant to the litigation campaign that it began in December, suing Lifi Labs (3:19-cv-00025) in the Northern District of California. The two LED lighting patents asserted in the new complaint, received as part of a large portfolio reportedly acquired from Panasonic, are also at issue, together with a third family, in the first complaint, filed against Feit Electric in the Central District of California. At issue in the campaign is the defendants’ provision of LED light bulbs capable of adjusting their output to produce different colors and/or different temperatures of white light. SPV is an affiliate of Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC, which also acquired sizeable portfolios of patents from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) in 2018.

Two new campaigns have arisen out of the recent large-portfolio acquisitions of Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC. In an Eastern District of Texas complaint, Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) has tagged HMD Global (2:18-cv-00521) with three of its former Kodak patents over the provision of smartphones with dual rear cameras, as used to capture depth information and provide features like dynamic depth of field, as well as smartphones that disable certain camera features (e.g., the flash) when power is low. Meanwhile, Sovereign Peak Ventures, LLC (SPV) has filed its first litigation over patents originating with Panasonic, hitting Feit Electric (2:18-cv-10069). The accused products include LED light bulbs capable of adjusting their output to produce different colors and/or different temperatures of white light. MPV’s and SPV’s campaigns join prior litigation over former NEC patents by Dominion affiliate Vista Peak Ventures, LLC (VPV); Liberty Peak Ventures, LLC (LPV), the Dominion affiliate taking ownership of a former American Express portfolio, has yet to launch litigation.