VoiceAge EVS LLC v. Lenovo Holding Company, Inc. et al

Its previous cases stayed to permit defendants Apple, HMD Global, and Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) to conduct jurisdictional discovery to determine whether VoiceAge EVS LLC has standing to sue over infringement of the patents that it has asserted, the Fortress Investment Group LLC plaintiff has filed another Delaware complaint, this one against Xiaomi (1:21-cv-00457). The same five patents are at issue, with infringement allegations again targeting over the provision of devices that allegedly use the Enhanced Voice Services (“EVS”) voice and audio codec for voice calls or conferencing, explicitly calling out the Xiaomi Mi 9T smartphone.

VoiceAge EVS LLC, a plaintiff associated with Fortress Investment Group LLC, has added a District of Delaware case against Apple (1:20-cv-01061) to its litigation campaign, begun last fall, over patents purportedly essential to the Enhanced Voice Services (“EVS”) standard. VoiceAge EVS targets various iPhone and iPads (identified in an appendix attached to the complaint) that allegedly use the EVS voice and audio codec for voice calls or conferencing, with the complaint calling out the iPhone 11 explicitly. The plaintiff pleads compliance with its FRAND (fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory) licensing obligations by virtue of offers made to Apple starting in March 2020. Apple joins HMD Global, Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), and TCL as defendants in this campaign.

VoiceAge EVS LLC, a Fortress Investment Group LLC plaintiff, has sued Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (1:20-cv-00810) over the provision of smartphones and tablets supporting the Enhanced Voice Services (“EVS”) voice and audio codec, including the Motorola Moto G7 Power (highlighted in the complaint) and 62 other devices listed in an attached appendix. VoiceAge EVS alleges that the asserted patents are essential to the EVS standard and that it complied with its obligation to license them on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms through offers made to Lenovo starting in February 2020, offers purportedly met with “substantive” silence. The first two cases in this campaign, filed separately against HMD Global and TCL (and multiple subsidiaries), became mired in service issues, and—for the HMD case—a challenge to VoiceAge EVS’s standing to sue.