IXI IP, LLC et al v. ZTE Corporation et al

In September 2017, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw more than ten petitions filed in NPE campaigns involving networking and related technologies such as cybersecurity, including those waged by publicly traded Finjan Holdings, Inc.; prolific private litigant Realtime Data LLC; and Oyster Optics, LLC. Trial was instituted in September for an inter partes review (IPR) against Finjan and in IPRs against other frequent plaintiffs, including MyMail, Ltd. and Sound View Innovations, LLC. The Board issued final decisions in two covered business method (CBM) reviews against Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited, the first AIA reviews against the NPE to reach final decisions since March 2016, and only the fourth to date. The PTAB also issued final decisions in IPRs against publicly traded Document Security Systems, Inc. as well as Acceleration Bay, LLC; Mobile Telecommunications Technologies, LLC; and Personalized Media Communications, LLC; among other NPEs.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has cancelled multiple claims from three wireless hotspot patents (7,016,648; 7,039,033; 7,295,532) asserted by IXI Mobile Inc. (IXI) against Apple and Samsung. In four December 21 final decisions, issued in response to inter partes reviews (IPR) jointly filed by the two companies, the Board ruled that all but one of the claims litigated by IXI are invalid in light of prior art. The PTAB held that nearly all challenged claims from the ‘532 patent—apart from claim 10, which the Board declined to review—are obvious over prior art (IPR2015-01443). In addition, it found that all challenged claims from the ‘033 are obvious over other references (IPR2015-01444) and that all challenged claims from the ‘648 patent were either anticipated by (IPR2015-01445) or obvious over (IPR2015-01446) prior art.

Google has filed a declaratory judgment action against IXI IP, LLC and IXI Mobile (R&D) Ltd., seeking a judgment that neither Google nor its customers infringe a single patent (7,552,124) generally related to parsing natural language into executable code (3:16-cv-04173). This lawsuit comes after the two NPEs, both subsidiaries of IXI Mobile Inc. (collectively “IXI”), asserted the same patent against BlackBerry (2:15-cv-01883), HTC (2:15-cv-01884), Samsung (2:15-cv-01885), and ZTE (2:15-cv-01886) in November 2015 for offering mobile devices with various Google voice search apps, as well as servers designed to enable these features. Samsung was further targeted for manufacturing Google’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Google’s complaint includes a detailed rebuttal of IXI’s infringement contentions, arguing step by step how the accused products purportedly do not fall within the language of the asserted claims of the ‘124 patent.

IXI Mobile (R&D) Ltd. (as exclusive licensee) and IXI IP, LLC (as patent owner) have launched a second mobile devices campaign, this time in the Eastern District of Texas. The two NPEs together have asserted a single patent (7,552,124) generally related to parsing natural language code to produce related executable code, accusing BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, and ZTE of infringement through the sale of their smartphones and tablet computers.