A hearing on two Alice-based motions to dismiss is set for December 1, 2015 in the longest-running case in the encryption campaign initiated by MAZ Encryption Technologies LLC in February 2013. BlackBerry filed the first motion in April 2015 attacking the only one (6,185,681) of four related patents-in-campaign asserted against it, arguing that its claims are directed to the abstract idea of “storing and accessing keys used to encrypt and decrypt data”. Toshiba and Lenovo jointly filed the second motion to dismiss one week later, also in April, arguing that the claims of the patent asserted against it (8,359,476) are directed to the abstract idea of “verifying a person’s identity using biometric information (e.g. fingerprints, facial features, or handwriting) in order to give her access to secret information”.  The pending motions have not deterred MAZ Encryption, however, as the NPE this week filed four new cases, one each against Seagate and La Cie (6:15-cv-00982), Apricorn (6:15-cv-00979), Nxt-Id (6:15-cv-00981), and CDW (6:15-cv-00980). The new complaints assert two patents (the ‘476 patent and 8,762,713) against the defendants’ methods of encryption, including biometric authentication.