Parus Holdings Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al DC

In September, a pair of inter partes reviews (IPRs) filed by Apple against patents held and asserted by Parus Holdings, Inc. left all challenged claims standing. However, this past week the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) nixed claims from the same two patents, this time challenged in petitions filed jointly by Alphabet (Google), LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung. Key to these final written decisions were Parus’s failures to adequately push certain invention dates back and to find support in earlier written descriptions for later claims, each failure expanding the universe of prior art available to the petitioners. Meanwhile, in district court a few days earlier, Parus sued Samsung (6:21-cv-01073) for a second time over patents from the same family.

Earlier this month, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) returned final written decisions in two inter partes reviews (IPRs) filed by Apple against patents held and asserted by Parus Holdings, Inc. No challenged claim was cancelled in either proceeding. Now, Parus has filed a second suit against Apple (6:21-cv-00968), again targeting devices that support the Siri virtual assistant, in particular its return of audio messages with results acquired from various websites in response to a verbal request. The first case against Apple was filed as part of a pack of summer 2019 suits, one filed against each of Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung, subsequently stayed to await the results of these two IPRs, as well as two others, which remain pending.

Among patent assignments recently made public by the USPTO is the transfer of more than two dozen assets generally related to speech recognition and/or processing from Nuance Communications to a Delaware LLC. The transaction, dated January 1, 2021, followed by two and a half months the execution of an assignment of two US patents, also broadly directed to speech recognition, to the same LLC from another player in the space. This collection of similar assets suggests that additional patent cases may be on the verge of joining a slew of speech recognition campaigns spread out across nearly all stages of the litigation life cycle.

Its 2019 suits stayed to await the outcome of several inter partes reviews (IPRs) of the patents there in suit, Parus Holdings, Inc. has sued prior defendant Alphabet (Google) (6:21-cv-00570) and new defendant Microsoft (6:21-cv-00571), asserting overlapping subsets of three patents from the same family. The plaintiff again targets the provision of products that feature virtual assistants: for Google, the incorporation of Google Assistant in its various Chromecast, Fitbit, Google Glass, Nest, Pixel, and Stadia products; and for Microsoft, the incorporation of Cortana in its Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Windows 10, and Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile products.

District Judge Alan D. Albright has just transferred a case out of the Western District of Texas for convenience. In July 2019, Parus Holdings, Inc. filed separate lawsuits against Alphabet (Google), Apple, LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung, adding a suit against Amazon the next month. Each of the July defendants moved to transfer the case against it to the Northern District of California. Last Thursday, in response to LGE’s contested motion, Judge Albright ruled that “[h]aving found that (1) access to proof, cost of attendance of witnesses, and local interests slightly or very slightly in favor of transfer; (2) court congestion weighs against transfer; and (3) all other factors being neutral”, LGE met its burden to show that the California forum is “clearly more convenient”.

Amazon (6:19-cv-00454) has been added as a defendant in the campaign that Parus Holdings, Inc. began in late July with suits against Alphabet (Google), Apple, LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung. The two asserted patents generally pertain to using voice recognition to browse the Internet on a device, with infringement allegations targeting the defendants over the provision of products that feature virtual assistants, now adding Alexa products to those outfitted with Bixby, Google Assistant, and Siri.

Parus Holdings, Inc. has launched its second litigation campaign, filing suit against Alphabet (Google) (6:19-cv-00433), Apple (6:19-cv-00432), LG Electronics (LGE) (6:19-cv-00437), and Samsung (6:19-cv-00438) over the provision of products that feature virtual assistants, including Bixby (as to Samsung), Google Assistant (as to Google, LGE, and Samsung) and Siri (as to Apple). The two asserted patents are homegrown and generally relate to using voice recognition to browse the Internet on a device. The first litigation campaign of Parus Holdings ran into an Alice buzz saw when District Judge Sue Robinson in the District of Delaware invalidated the patents asserted there, against banks, under Alice, a decision affirmed per curiam by the Federal Circuit in April 2017, roughly one year before the appellate court’s Berkheimer and Aatrix decisions raised questions about the propriety of early patent eligibility determinations.