With New Suit Against Acer, DataQuill Takes a Run at Two Decades of Litigation over the Same Patent
The sole litigation campaign of DataQuill Limited threatens to push past the 20-year mark with a new case filed against Acer (6:20-cv-00017) in the Western District of Texas, joining suits filed last year against first TCL (TCT Mobile) in the Central District of California and then separately against ASUSTek and Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies) in the Eastern District of Texas. Several related patents have been at issue over the campaign’s life, but the original, May 2000 patent has been asserted in every case throughout, from the first complaint, filed against Palm predecessor Handspring in 2001, and now against Acer. The accused products, in line with previous accusations, are Acer “smartphones that enable users to browse and download items such as apps, games, ringtones, music, videos, books, and magazines” having “a touch-sensitive screen and the Android operating system”.