Coqui Technologies, LLC v. Best Buy Co., Inc. et al

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.

A year after its first wave of litigation ended, Coqui Technologies, LLC has revived its campaign targeting electronic gift certificate services. On October 24, the NPE filed one suit each against CashStar, Gyft, Givex, and Transaction Wireless, accusing the companies of infringing the sole patent-in-campaign (7,580,864), which generally relates to a method for circulating electronic gift certificates in an online and offline system. Since January 2015, Coqui has sued a total of nine companies over the ‘864 patent; the first five defendants hit by the NPE—Best Buy, Cabela’s, Kohl’s, Starbucks, and Target—are no longer active in the campaign.

Coqui Technologies, LLC recently sued Best Buy (2:15-cv-00090), Cabela’s (2:15-cv-00092), Kohl’s (2:15-cv-00093), Starbucks (2:15-cv-00089), and Target (2:15-cv-00091) in its first litigation campaign. The five suits assert a single patent that relates to managing electronic gift certificates (7,580,864). Defendants’ electronic gift certificate services are accused of infringing the patent-in-suit.