Telinit Technologies, LLC v. Yahoo! Inc.

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.

Telinit Technologies filed seven separate suits against defendants British Telecommunications, Genband, JaJah, Match.com, M5 Networks, Microsoft, Ribbit, ShoreTel, Skype, Telefonica Europe, Trulia, Twilio, and Yahoo, alleging that the defendants’ Internet telephony products infringe a patent related to initiating telephone calls using a data network.  These are the first patent infringement suits initiated by Telinet Technologies.  The patent-in-suit originated with National Tech Team and according to the USPTO is currently assigned to Allied Security Trust (AST) affiliate, Stature Ventures.  AST had acquired the patent-in-suit from Mount Hamilton Partners in January 2010 and RPX reviewed the patent-in-suit as part of an open market opportunity (Stature-AST) in August 2010.  10/12, Eastern District of Texas, no judge yet assigned, 2:2012cv00658; 2:2012cv00659; 2:2012cv00660; 2:2012cv00661; 2:2012cv00662; 2:2012cv00663; 2:2012cv00664.