Bandspeed LLC v. Cypress Semiconductor Corporation DC

Bandspeed, LLC has filed a new lawsuit, against Broadcom Integrated Circuit (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. (d/b/a Beken Corporation) (1:21-cv-00430), in its campaign targeting the provision of a variety of products that support certain Bluetooth specifications, including Bluetooth Core Specification Version 2.0+EDR (or higher) and Bluetooth Low Energy (4.0 or higher). The Western District of Texas case comes on the heels of dismissals (with prejudice) of earlier suits, filed in 2019 against Cypress Semiconductor and in 2020 against Delta Electronics and Intel.

Bandspeed, LLC has accused Intel (1:20-cv-01222) of infringing ten wireless communications patents in a complaint that joins two others filed in the Western District of Texas in 2020, one against Realtek Semiconductor in July and another filed against Delta Electronics in August. Throughout, the plaintiff targets the defendants over their provision of various products incorporating the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 2.0+EDR or higher and/or the Bluetooth Low Energy (4.0 or higher) specification, including certain wireless modules offering Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support. The new suit follows a recent ruling in the other active case in the campaign that the defendant there, Cypress Semiconductor, having purchased the IoT business of Broadcom, nevertheless cannot benefit from a prior settlement between Bandspeed and Broadcom.

Bandspeed, LLC has kept alive its litigation over a long-asserted portfolio of patents, suing Cypress Semiconductor (1:19-cv-00936) in a new case filed on the heels of notices of settlement in the last two open suits in the campaign, one against each of Curtis International and NXP Semiconductors. The portfolio generally relates to managing communication channels through frequency hopping and transmission power control, with Bandspeed identifying representative Cypress products (the CYW20819 Bluetooth (BT) microcontroller and the PSoC MCU, respectively) that allegedly infringe through the practice of certain Bluetooth standards. Litigation over this portfolio reaches back over a decade, when the prior owner Bandspeed, Inc. (BSI), the operating assets of which were later purchased by Broadcom, launched a campaign that had hit over three dozen defendants by its late 2017 end.