Bell Northern Research, LLC v. Huawei Device Co., Ltd. et al DC

Bell Northern Research, LLC, a Hilco Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global) company, has added a lawsuit against LG Electronics (LGE) (3:18-cv-02864) to its sole litigation campaign, begun this past August with cases targeting devices provided by Huawei, Kyocera, Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies), and ZTE. With the new complaint, ten patents from a portfolio of thousands received in December 2017 from Broadcom have been asserted across the campaign. LGE is accused of infringing eight of those patents through the provision of a wide array of products: cell phones compatible with certain 3GPP cellular standards and/or 802.11n or 802.11ac Wi-Fi; tablets supporting those Wi-Fi standards, some of which also offer 3GPP compatibility; various other “home or office electronics products” supporting those Wi-Fi standards, including “laptop computers, televisions, home theater equipment, and Blu-Ray or DVD players”; and “home appliance products” supporting those Wi-Fi standards, including “refrigerators, washers, and dryers”.

Bell Northern Research, LLC, a Hilco Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global) company, has launched its first litigation campaign, asserting a subset of patents from a portfolio of thousands received from Broadcom. Last week, it sued Huawei (3:18-cv-01784), Kyocera (3:18-cv-01785), Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies) (3:18-cv-01783), and ZTE (3:18-cv-01786), accusing each defendant of infringing up to six former Broadcom patents through the provision of smartphones with proximity sensors and that support 802.11n and/or 802.11ac Wi-Fi as well as multiple UMTS cellular data standards. Also at issue are the accused devices’ ability to maintain multiple types of network connections at once (e.g., holding a voice call while switching between cellular and Wi-Fi data).