RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG

RAH Color Technologies LLC has added an Eastern District of Texas suit against Microsoft (4:20-cv-00176) to its sole litigation campaign, begun in late 2010. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred the other open cases—against Adobe, Dalim Software, and Electronics for Imaging—to the Northern District of California where District Judge Susan Illston has imposed a stay to await the outcome of inter partes reviews (IPRs) of various patents-in-campaign. RAH Color pleads that it believes the new case to be a “tag-along action” appropriate for transfer to California as well. The plaintiff asserts five of its patents, targeting Microsoft over color management features included in certain Windows operating systems (e.g., Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10) and certain Surface devices over their inclusion of various features related to color management, media capture and management, and display backlight adjustment.

RAH Color Technologies LLC has opened up a third active case in its color reproduction campaign, filing a new suit against Xerox (1:17-cv-06813) in the Northern District of Illinois. Xerox is accused of infringing six of RAH Color’s patents through the provision of print servers with certain color calibration and reproduction features. RAH Color’s past practice had been to file cases serially in multiple districts, but the NPE filed a suit against Quad/Graphics this past June and a suit against Samsung in July, both of which remain open in the Northern District of Illinois. In a recent motion to join the Samsung case to the earlier Quad/Graphics one, RAH Color represented that at the time it anticipated “filing additional cases before the end of the year”, which it has now done.

RAH Color Technologies LLC has sued Samsung (1:17-cv-05430), accusing the company of infringing five patents (7,830,546; 8,279,236; 8,638,340; 9,404,802; 9,516,288) generally related to color reproduction. The accused products include mobile devices with Samsung’s Adaptive Display Technology, which adjusts a display’s color based on ambient light. RAH Color, controlled by named inventor Richard A. Holub, began this campaign back in December 2010; with the addition of the ‘340, ‘802, and ‘288 patents in this latest complaint, the number of asserted patents now stands at 19.

Inventor-controlled RAH Color Technologies LLC has filed another case in the campaign begun in December 2010, accusing Quad/Graphics (1:17-cv-04931) of infringing a subset (6,995,870; 7,312,897; 7,729,008; 7,830,546; 8,537,357; 8,760,704) of the 16 patents that have been asserted throughout. The patents generally relate to color reproduction, with various print and display products and services (e.g. digital cameras, print servers, etc.) at issue since the beginning of the campaign.