Multiplayer Network Innovations, LLC v. Google Inc.

Newly formed NPE Multiplayer Network Innovations, LLC (MNI) launched its first campaign with a slew of suits against Acer, Amazon, Apple, ASUS, Barnes & Noble, Cantor Fitzgerald, HP, HTC, Huawei, LG, Microsoft, Nintendo, NVIDIA, OL2, Pantech, Samsung, and Toshiba. The 19 complaints accuse defendants’ gaming systems, smartphones, tablets, and media players of infringing a patent related to a multiple player gaming system (5,618,045). The patent originated with two individual inventors and was assigned to Peer-to-Peer Systems in 2002. Peer-to-Peer litigated the ‘045 patent against Cybiko in 2002 and against Palm in 2003; both cases were dismissed following one to two years of litigation.