Geographic Location Innovations LLC v. The Kroger Co., DC

Social Positioning Input Systems, LLC (SPIS), one of many NPEs controlled by prolific inventor Leigh M. Rothschild, has sued ClearPathGPS (2:21-cv-00519) in the Central District of California, Lytx (3:21-cv-00104) in the Southern District of California, and Particle Industries (3:21-cv-00464) in the Northern District of California. The sole patent-in-suit generally relates to transmitting the location information of a positional device, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of vehicle fleet tracking systems. Rothschild ended last year near the top of the list of frequent NPE plaintiffs, second only to Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC.

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.