March 15, 2012 – Trans Video Electronics (TVE) [NPE] filed three separate suits on March 13th against Apple, Google, Nintendo, and YouTube, alleging that the defendants’ video distribution products and services infringe two patents related to downloading, storing, and streaming digital video.  One of the patents-in-suit, the ’801 patent, was also asserted in TVE’s July 2009 suit against Sony.  That case was stayed in-part pending reexamination of the ’801 patent.  In April 2011, the ’801 patent received a reexamination certificate confirming claims 2-17 and 24-29 and cancelling claims 20-23 (claims 1, 18, and 19 were not reexamined).  In November 2011, however, after resuming the case, the District Court for the Northern District of California determined the ’801 patent to be invalid for lack of written description of claim 3 (the only claim at issue in the case) and granted Sony’s motion for summary judgment.  TVE moved to amend its complaint to allege infringement of claim 4 of the ’801 patent by Sony, but the court denied this motion on the grounds that TVE “indicated that the only reason why it did not include claim 4 [in the original complaint] was that it would have had to argue a claim construction position on claim 4 that was inconsistent with its claim construction position on claim 3.”