Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Walmart Inc. DC

Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. has filed separate suits late in October against Adesso, Autel Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Brinc Drones, Imperx, Motorola Solutions, Ricoh, Security Camera Warehouse, STMicro, Teal Drones, Turning Video, Vantage Robotics, Video Network Security, Watts Innovations, and YI Technologies. That storm of complaints follows earlier October filings against BIO-KEY, iFlight Technology (DJI), Konica Minolta, Leica Camera, Luminator Technology Group, MediaTek, Parrot, PixArt Imaging, Qisda (BenQ), Renesas Electronics, Shuhair RaySharp Technology, Sigma, Socionext, Vantage Integrated Security Solutions, Wonwoo Engineering, Zicom Technology, and ZKTeco. The number of defendants in this “jumbo” litigation has now soared above 300—but it still has a hill to climb, despite this rage of new complaints, to move up, from third, on the list of largest NPE campaigns ever.

At its recent annual conference, RPX observed that a large portion of the peak NPE activity observed in 2010 through 2015 was due to “jumbo” litigation campaigns targeting dozens of defendants. For example, nearly one-fourth of all defendants added to NPE campaigns in 2011 were sued in a campaign that saw more than 30 defendants hit that year. Such campaigns are now rare—but not nonexistent. This past week, the only such “jumbo” campaign to launch since 2015 jumped into third place on the list of largest NPE campaigns ever, the seven companies sued (Aver Information, Dynacolor, Dynacom Communications, Fuho Technology, GeoVision, and Logipix) bringing the total number of campaign defendants just shy of 250.

Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. has filed another round of cases in its long-running litigation over former Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) patents, suing 3xLOGIC, Carrier Global, CBC America, Firstech, and VOXX in the District of Delaware; Infineon Technologies (Cypress Semiconductor), and NXP Semiconductors in the Western District of Texas; Logitech and Phytec America in the Western District of Washington; Navitar in the Western District of New York; ThorLabs in the District of New Jersey; and TI in the Eastern District of Texas. The plaintiff asserts four patents in overlapping sets, with the defendants accused of infringement through a wide variety of products including cameras, interface devices, multimedia processor units, and more. Since launching this, its first litigation campaign, in May 2019, Cedar Lane has sued over 200 defendants and asserted a total of 51 patents.

Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. has filed another round of cases in its long-running litigation over former Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) patents, suing HP (6:22-cv-00040), TI (6:22-cv-00047), Thorlabs (6:22-cv-00053), Qualcomm (6:22-cv-00046), and Verizon (6:22-cv-00043) in the Western District of Texas; Lenovo (1:22-cv-00051), Lionsgate (Epix) (1:22-cv-00050), Phytec (1:22-cv-00054), and Snap (1:22-cv-00058) in the District of Delaware; and L.S. Starrett (1:22-cv-00149) in the Northern District of Georgia. The 13 patents-in-suit are among over 50 assets (received either directly or indirectly from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV)) that the plaintiff has asserted against over 185 defendants since May 2019; the defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of a wide array of products, including cameras, smartphones, tablets, scanners, processors, and more.

Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. has hit 2022 ground running with five new suits filed in its longest running litigation campaign. So far this month, the NPE has sued Excelitas Technologies (1:22-cv-00011), Illunis (1:22-cv-00012), MGM (1:22-cv-00014), and Novantas (1:22-cv-00016) in the District of Delaware and Generac (Ecobee) (6:22-cv-00018) in the Western District of Texas. The plaintiff asserts three patents in overlapping sets, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of a wide variety of products, including barcode scanners and cameras. Since launching this, its first litigation campaign, in May 2019, Cedar Lane has sued over 175 defendants and asserted a total of 50 patents (each received either directly or indirectly from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV)).

Basler (2:21-cv-05160), Walmart (6:21-cv-01234), WideOpenWest (1:21-cv-03154), and Wyze Labs (1:21-cv-01704) are the latest defendants to be added to the first litigation campaign of Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., launched in May 2019 with a suit against Advert Tech. The plaintiff asserts six patents in overlapping sets, one of which is newly asserted in litigation, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of a wide variety of products, including cameras and streaming products. At issue are a variety of features, ranging from image processing to the support of the Google Assistant platform. Over 150 defendants have now been sued in this campaign, while the number of asserted patents (each received either directly or indirectly from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV)) nears 50.