Catharon Intellectual Property, LLC v. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.

In 2010, inventor Fred DuFresne formed two US intellectual property monetization firms—Cerinet USA Inc. and ipCapital Licensing Company—one or both of which has been doing business as Cerinet IP Licensing since January 2015. Over the past couple of years, multiple NPEs affiliated with DuFresne and/or Cerinet IP have launched litigation campaigns in disparate fields of technology, including three in just the past couple of weeks. On October 16, 2015, Cerinet IP formed Texas subsidiary Embedded Systems Products Intellectual Property, LLC (ESP IP), and on October 27, 2015, DuFresne/Cerinet IP appears to have formed Alert Signal Intellectual Property, LLC  (Alert Signal IP) and Catharon Products Intellectual Property, LLC (Catharon Products IP), both in Pennsylvania. ESP IP, Alert Signal IP, and Catharon Products IP have all filed litigations in the weeks since their formation, following a familiar pattern for DuFresne and Cerinet IP.

Catharon Intellectual Property, LLC filed a new round of suits, asserting a patent related to Rich Internet applications (6,065,046) against seven website operators: Bed Bath & Beyond (6:14-cv-00062), Capital One (6:14-cv-00067), FedEx (6:14-cv-00061), Flixster (6:14-cv-00063), Home Depot (6:14-cv-00064), Photobucket.com (6:14-cv-00065), and UPS (6:14-cv-00066). Catharon launched the campaign in September 2013 against AddThis, Adobe, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. In December 2013, RPX acquired sublicense rights for all members, including several that supply e-commerce platform technology. 2/3, Eastern District of Texas.