Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC v. HP Inc.

Mesa Digital LLC, an entity associated with Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS), has expanded a litigation campaign that has already stretched past the decade mark, with suits against Caterpillar (1:20-cv-07693) and Microsoft (1:20-cv-07691) in the Northern District of Illinois. The sole patent-in-suit generally relates to a “multimedia” mobile device, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of smartphones that support “bi-directional data communications”, including “video and text”, over cellular, Wi-Fi, and/or Bluetooth connections, as well as through the inclusion of core smartphone features such as a touchscreen display and a processor. Mesa Digital’s latest complaints are a departure from its recent practice of filing suits in pairs with campaign coplaintiff Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC).

Two NPEs associated with Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS)—Mesa Digital LLC and Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC)—have continued their recent practice of filing suits in pairs, Mesa Digital suing Acer (3:20-cv-02337) in the Northern District of California and OAC hitting Hisense (1:20-cv-02193) in the Northern District of Illinois. A different patent from the same family is asserted in each new complaint, Mesa Digital’s generally related to a “multimedia” mobile device and OAC’s, to the transmission of video data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”. Acer joins recent defendants HTC (sued in October 2019) and Zebra Technologies (in December 2019) in the mobile devices wing of this campaign; Hisense joins Panasonic (also in October 2019) and Microsoft (also in December 2019) in the video transmission wing. Issues surrounding service of complaints continue to plague the more recent suits brought by Mesa Digital alone in this long-running campaign.

One of the longest running litigation campaigns continued its sprawl past the decade mark in December, with Mesa Digital LLC filing suit against Zebra Technologies (1:19-cv-08217) and sibling entity Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) hitting Microsoft (1:19-cv-08262), both in the Northern District of Illinois. The new Mesa Digital complaint accuses Zebra Technologies of infringing a single patent, generally related to a “multimedia” mobile device, through the provision of the TC8000, a mobile bar-code-scanning device, targeting its alleged support of cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth networking as well as its touchscreen user interface; Microsoft is accused of infringing a second patent from the same family through the provision of the Miracast Service, a wireless mirroring display standard, this asserted patent broadly concerning the transmission of video data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”.

In a new District of Delaware suit, Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) has accused Panasonic (1:19-cv-01921) of infringing a single “multimedia” mobile device patent from a family of 30-plus members, targeting the mirroring features of the company’s Viera-series televisions. OAC asserted the same patent, together with others from the same family, in an August 2018 case in the same district against Roku, which responded with a quick motion to dismiss under Alice. Delaware District Judge Maryellen Noreika teed that motion up for argument on June 14, 2019—just five days short of the five-year anniversary of the Alice decision itself—in an omnibus hearing that addressed five Section 101 motions filed in cases before her, the others filed by OpenPrint LLC, Sandboxed Software, LLC (d/b/a Sandbox Software, LLC), TrackTime LLC, and EncodiTech LLC. Judge Noreika’s treatment of these motions on a “Section 101 Day” tracks the procedure already used in Delaware a couple of times this year by District Judge Leonard P. Stark. OAC is now suing Panasonic, begging the question: how did that Roku motion fare? More broadly, four months later, how did Judge Noreika’s “Alice day” affect the progress of those other NPE campaigns?

Mesa Digital LLC has expanded its long-running campaign, litigated by three different, affiliated plaintiffs, suing Apple (3:19-cv-02403) in the Northern District of California, LG Electronics (LGE) (3:19-cv-00823) in the Southern District of California, and Samsung (1:19-cv-03957) in the Eastern District of Texas. The complaints all assert three patents generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices; they belong to a large and growing family, other members of which have been concurrently asserted by Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC). The new suits have been filed as prior cases—against Alphabet (Google), HP Inc., and Huawei—have ended and as the District of Delaware considers an Alice challenge to the patents that the plaintiff has asserted, there against Roku, as patent-ineligibly drawn to the abstract idea of “transmitting data over a network to a display device”.

Mesa Digital LLC has filed suit against T-Mobile (1:18-cv-01887) in the District of Delaware over two patents generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices. The complaint calls out T-Mobile’s Coolpad Defiant smartphone; original complaints filed in July against Huawei and ZTE, over the same two patents, make similar identifications (Huawei’s P10 and ZTE’s Axon Elite), but the NPE has since amended the ZTE complaint to swap in AT&T Primetime as the product actually accused of infringement in that case. The patents belong to a family of more than 30, other members of which are held, and have been concurrently asserted by, Mesa Digital affiliate Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC. In September, Alphabet (Google) (3:18-cv-05983) filed a Northern District of California complaint seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of two of those patents, after Ortiz & Associates voluntarily dismissed an earlier affirmative case in the Northern District of Illinois.

On the heels of three voluntary dismissals in cases brought in February of this year, Mesa Digital LLC has filed two new complaints, one each against Huawei (2:18-cv-00285) and ZTE (1:18-cv-04775). The suits assert the same two patents, generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices, seen in the recently dismissed complaints against Amazon (voluntarily dismissed without prejudice), BlackBerry (with prejudice), and Sony (without prejudice). At issue are smartphones, with Huawei’s P10 and ZTE’s Axon Elite called out in each complaint.

Named inventors from a large family of patents, generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices, have filed a second wave of cases, this time through plaintiff Mesa Digital LLC. The new complaints accuse Amazon (1:18-cv-00919), BlackBerry (1:18-cv-00921), Lenovo (1:18-cv-00922), and Sony (1:18-cv-00924) of infringement through the manufacture and sale of certain smartphones. Kermit D. Lopez and Luis M. Ortiz, patent lawyers and named partners at Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS), asserted eight patents from the same family in a campaign brought by Front Row Technologies LLC, which ended after the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court decision invalidating those eight patents as directed to patent-ineligible subject matter under Alice.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) continued to see the filing of petitions for inter partes review (IPR) against publicly traded NPEs in March 2017, including Acacia Research Corporation; Finjan Holdings, Inc.; Pendrell Corporation; TiVo Corporation (formerly known as Rovi Corporation); and Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN). A variety of prolific, privately held NPEs were also targeted for IPR throughout March, including Blackbird Tech LLC, General Patent Corporation, IP Edge LLC, Realtime Data LLC, and Papst Licensing GmbH & Company Kg, along with several inventors and inventor-controlled NPEs and an assortment of other plaintiffs.