Powerline Innovations filed suit against Alpha Networks alleging that the defendants’ digital home products, including the WD Livewire Powerline AV Network, infringe a patent related to control relationships between networked devices (5,471,190).  The suit further alleges breach of a settlement agreement that was allegedly entered into between the parties in January of 2012. The patent-in-suit is one of two patents that Powerline has asserted in eight prior suits between July 2011 and August 2012 against more than 50 defendants, mostly makers and suppliers of powerline switches and chipsets for home automation applications. Targeted defendants have included ASUS, Belkin, D-Link, Broadcom, Panasonic, Sharp, TrendNet, and ZyXEL.  A previous suit against Alpha Networks in June 2012 was dismissed without prejudice in August 2012. The ‘190 patent was assigned to Powerline by Cyberlynx in July 2011. RPX acquired sub-license rights to the patent-in-suit in December 2012. 2/8, Eastern District of Texas, 6:2013cv00135.