TLI Communications LLC v. Smugmug Inc.

In April, Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. passed 100 defendants sued in its first litigation campaign, which it launched in May 2019, after filing new suits against Avision (6:21-cv-00415), Bang & Olufsen (6:21-cv-00429), Broadlink (6:21-cv-00433), Hisense (6:21-cv-00436), Gosund (6:21-cv-00443), Hitachi (Hitachi Kokusai Electric) (6:21-cv-00423), HTC (6:21-cv-00420), Pantum (6:21-cv-00424), Skyworth Group (6:21-cv-00437), SONOFF (6:21-cv-00449), TCL (6:21-cv-00408), and Trip.com (6:21-cv-00426) in the Western District of Texas and Haier (1:21-cv-00528) and Whirlpool (1:21-cv-00529) in the District of Delaware. The plaintiff asserts 13 patents in overlapping sets, one of which is new to litigation; the defendants are accused of infringement through a wide variety of products and services: devices and systems that support the Amazon Echo and Google Assistant platforms, web platforms that feature interactive graphical maps, and various other devices (e.g., camera systems, multi-function peripherals (MFPs), smartphones, TVs, VR headsets, wireless printers and scanners, etc.). Roughly 120 defendants have now been sued in this campaign, while the number of asserted patents (each received either directly or indirectly from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV)) is approaching 50.

The last time that Hanger Solutions, LLC—a Georgia NPE associated with monetization firm IPInvestments Group LLC (d/b/a IPinvestments Group)—assigned a set of the thousands of former Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) patents that it picked up late last year, the recipient, 21ST CENTURY GARAGE LLC (21st Century Garage), filed suit within weeks. Earlier this month, the transfer of two patents from Hanger Solutions to Kioba Processing, LLC, also associated with IPinvestments Group, was both executed and recorded, suggesting that another new campaign is imminent. The transferred patents generally relate to fraud prevention in “network based transactions” and name David P. Cook, the founder of Blockbuster Video, as their sole inventor.

RPX took note, among the USPTO assignment records made available during the first half of March, of the transfer of one set of patents to Fortress Investment Group LLC, after the NPE assignor’s default on a prior financing agreement. Fortress intervened in the campaign asserting some of those patents, bringing the litigation to a relatively rapid close. RPX also took notice of the transfer of patents from multiple assignors to another entity, Knapp Investment Company Limited, a British Virgin Islands entity that has never filed suit. The records made available in early March also contain transfers to frequent plaintiffs, including affiliates of patent monetization firms IP Valuation Partners LLC and Monument Patent Holdings, LLC, as well as Blackbird Tech LLC and Empire IP LLC.

This week, TLI Communications GmbH, a subsidiary of the publicly traded NPE Marathon Patent Group, Inc., launched new attacks on Yahoo and Pinterest, this time in French and Italian courts. TLI’s latest filings come four months after a court in Munich, Germany ruled that Yahoo, its European subsidiary Yahoo! EMEA Limited, and Pinterest have infringed European patent EP 0 814 611.

TLI Communications made its litigation debut this week filing 16 suits against Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, IAC, Imgur, Photobucket, Pinterest, Shutterfly, SmugMug, Snapchat, TripAdvisor, Tumblr, Twitter, WHI, Yahoo, and Yelp. Defendants all provide online photo sharing services and TLI alleges those services infringe its patent (6,038,295). The patent-in-suit relates to a communication system for recording and distributing digital images and originated with Siemens. It was transferred to Infineon in July 2009 and to German semiconductor manufacturer Lantiq several months later. Lantiq transferred the patent to LFT Technologies in July 2013 and from there it was assigned to plaintiff entity TLI in October. LFT appears to be related to Lantiq as the correspondent on the assignment to LFT is a director of patents at Lantiq. 11/18, District of Delaware, 1:13cv01921, 1:13cv01922, 1:13cv01923, 1:13cv01924, 1:13cv01925, 1:13cv01926, 1:13cv01927, 1:13cv01928, 1:13cv01929, 1:13cv01930, 1:13cv01931, 1:13cv01932, 1:13cv01933, 1:13cv01934, 1:13cv01935, 1:13cv01936