Invensas Corporation v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al

Invensas Corporation and Tessera Advanced Technologies, Inc. (TATI), both subsidiaries of publicly traded Xperi Corporation, have together filed suit in the District of Delaware against NVIDIA (1:19-cv-00861), alleging infringement of five patents generally related to semiconductor fabrication and packaging. The new complaint targets the provision of a large number of semiconductor products, including 40nm Fermi GPUs, 28nm Kepler GPUs, 28nm Maxwell GPUs, 16nm Pascal GPUs, 28nm Tegra K1 systems-on-chips (SoCs) (which allegedly incorporate 28nm Kepler GPUs), 20nm Tegra X1 SoCs (which allegedly incorporate 20nm Maxwell GPUs), and Tesla GPUs. Xperi’s last forays into litigation were global efforts, with a worldwide set of disputes against Broadcom ending in 2017 and a worldwide set of disputes against Samsung ending this past December.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw the number of petitions for AIA review in November hold fairly steady at 111 (compared to October’s 128) as the US Supreme Court continued its review of the constitutionality of inter partes review (IPR) in Oil States v. Greene’s Energy Services, for which oral arguments were held on November 27. Among the NPEs targeted by petitions brought in November were publicly traded Quarterhill Inc. and Xperi Corporation, prolific litigant Brian Yates, and several privately held NPEs waging networking campaigns, including Alacritech, Inc.; Iridescent Networks, Inc.; Monument Patent Holdings, LLC; MyMail Ltd.; and Oyster Optics LLC. The PTAB also instituted trial in November for other IPRs against Alacritech and Quarterhill and for an IPR against Plectrum LLC. Final decisions issued by the Board in November include one in the automotive campaign waged by Paice LLC and in IPRs against InfoGation Corporation and VoIP-Pal.com, Inc., both of which saw their patents survive review.

Publicly traded Xperi Corporation disclosed on October 11 that a German court has issued a tentative invalidity ruling against a semiconductor patent that the NPE has asserted against Broadcom and Avago. On October 5, the Federal Patent Court held that the patent at issue “may be invalid for various reasons” in a nullity, or invalidity, action filed by Avago (2 Ni 43/16), leading Xperi to delay the enforcement of an infringement ruling for that patent issued against Broadcom and Avago in March, with that litigation brought by several plaintiff entities under Xperi’s Tessera and Invensas brands. The same patent is also at issue in another Invensas lawsuit filed against Samsung on September 28. Meanwhile, available litigation records also indicate that nullity actions filed by Haier and ZTE are proceeding in a campaign waged by patent licensing firm Sisvel International S.A. over a portfolio of allegedly standard essential wireless patents, following a recent setback for the NPE in its parallel infringement suit against ZTE.

On September 28, five subsidiaries of publicly traded Xperi Corporation filed suit against Samsung across multiple US and international jurisdictions, including complaints brought in the Eastern District of Texas and the Districts of Delaware and New Jersey as well as with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and in courts in Germany and the Netherlands. The complaints target Samsung’s Galaxy S6, S7, S8, and Note 8 smartphones and various semiconductor products, including the company’s Exynos mobile processors; power management integrated circuits (PMICs); memory; image sensors; camera modules with zoom and/or autofocus features; and accelerometers.