Rothschild Location Technologies LLC v. GoFleet Corporation DC CAFC

Last year, Leigh M. Rothschild created yet a third NPE, Geographic Location Innovations, LLC (GLI), to continue his navigation and location services campaign begun in 2014. So far this month, GLI has filed six new cases, all in the Eastern District of Texas, asserting a single patent (7,917,285) generally related to navigational or positional information systems. The new defendants—BB&T, Capital One, The Kroger Co., Choice Hotels, Gym-Mark, and Phillips 66—are accused of infringement through location services offered on their websites (e.g. Capital One’s Branch & ATM Locator). GLI’s latest filings bring the total campaign defendant count to over 65.

Over the past few weeks, inventor and frequent plaintiff Leigh M. Rothschild has filed new rounds of cases through three of his existing subsidiaries—Geographic Location Services, LLC (GLS); Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems, LLC (RBDS); and Symbology Innovations, LLC. On November 14, he also created two more entities in Texas (Location Based Services, LLC and Rothschild Biometric Systems, LLC), continuing a general trend over the last year of moving his litigation from elsewhere (principally Delaware and Florida) to the Eastern District of Texas.

Rothschild Location Technologies LLC (RLT Texas) added three more defendants to its location services campaign, asserting a single patent (8,606,503) against GoFleet (6:15-cv-00902), Imarda (6:15-cv-00901), and Smart Fleet (6:15-cv-00903). RLT Texas is controlled by individual inventor Leigh M. Rothschild. The ‘503 patent generally relates to transmitting location information to a positional device, and the complaints accuse the defendants of infringement through their use of GPS tracking. All of the over 15 Texas cases have either been quickly dismissed (the vast majority with prejudice, some after earlier court documents reference settlement) or remain open in pleadings.