Longhorn HD LLC. v. Lanner Electronics Inc. DC

In February 2020, Longhorn HD LLC voluntarily dismissed its case against Juniper Networks, one of two suits added to the NPE’s network security campaign in November 2019. The dismissal was without prejudice, and Longhorn HD has now refiled a complaint against Juniper Networks (2:19-cv-00099), asserting the same five patents, again in the Eastern District of Texas. A single petition for inter partes review (IPR), of just one of those five patents, has been filed over the life of this campaign, in which Check Point Software, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, Sophos, and Trend Micro have come and gone as defendants while suits against Lanner Electronics, Mitel Networks, and NetScout Systems persist.

Longhorn HD LLC has launched a third litigation campaign, suing Samsung (2:20-cv-00350) in the Eastern District of Texas over a single patent, acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) and generally related to an “information backup system”. The NPE targets Samsung over the provision of smartphones that support Smart Switch, a technology for “seamlessly” upgrading from one model to another. Concurrently, Longhorn HD has added three new defendants to its existing network security campaign, hitting Mitel Networks (Mitel Software Technologies) (2:20-cv-00350), NetScout Systems (2:20-cv-00349), and Trend Micro (2:20-cv-00348), also in East Texas, over a variety of networking hardware and software products.

Longhorn HD LLC has added cases against Lanner Electronics (2:20-cv-00260), Palo Alto Networks (2:20-cv-00259), and Sophos (2:20-cv-00261) to the more recent of its two litigation campaigns. The NPE accuses each defendant of infringing the same three network security patents, acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), through the provision of “security gateways, routers, control system security appliance, clouds, and components and software that provide firewall, VPN, IPSec, DNS, IDS/IPS, and selective network address-based communication, mobile security, and threat protection”, targeting a wide variety of products.

Earlier this year, Longhorn HD LLC added Eastern District of Texas cases against Compal Electronics, Hon Hai, Inspur Group, and Micro-Star to its computer hardware campaign, this past week also suing NEC (2:20-cv-00148) and Panasonic (2:20-cv-00150) in the same district. The NPE alleges infringement, of overlapping subsets of patents acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), through the provision of various computing devices, targeting features related to hard drive monitoring, mechanical actuators, and damage protection as well as server mounting hardware.