Zavala Licensing LLC v. ZTE (USA) INC.

Zavala Licensing LLC, an apparent affiliate of monetization firm IP Edge LLC, has revived its litigation campaign, which saw a short burst of initial activity in late 2017. The NPE has asserted the same patent, broadly pertaining to radio communications, against BaiCells Technologies (2:18-cv-00543), Ericsson (2:18-cv-00544), and Samsung (2:18-cv-00545) in the Eastern District of Texas, and ZTE (3:18-cv-03390) in the Northern District of that state. At issue are the defendants’ LTE base stations that allegedly comply with the LTE Release 8 standard. In October 2017, Zavala sued Airspan Networks, General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS), Nextivity, Thales, and Wilson Electronics (d/b/a Weboost), each of which cases was dismissed by mid-December 2017, all but the suit against GDMS without prejudice.

Zavala Licensing LLC has begun a litigation campaign, filing complaints that assert a single patent against Airspan Networks (1:17-cv-01436), General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) (1:17-cv-01437), Nextivity (1:17-cv-01438), Thales (1:17-cv-01439), and Weboost Electronics (1:17-cv-01440). The patent generally relates to devices and methods for radio communication. The NPE, an apparent affiliate of monetization firm IP Edge LLC, has accused the defendants of infringement through the provision of LTE base stations, naming Airspan’s Air4G Macro MAXe, GDMS’s Cell on Wheels LTE Deployable Solution, Nextivity’s Cel-Fi QUATRA, the NEXIUM Wireless LTE network solution, and the Weboost Connect 4GX system, respectively.