As PTAB Unseals Google IPR Win against ITRI Spin-Off, NPE Raises Time-Bar Issue
CyWee Group Ltd., a spin-off of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), hit a roadblock in its ongoing smartphone motion-sensing campaign in early January, when the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) invalidated claims from both patents-in-suit in an inter partes review (IPR) filed by Google. Now, shortly after the PTAB released redacted, public versions of those two decisions, CyWee has filed a second lawsuit against Google (6:20-cv-00128), alleging that the company should have listed another campaign defendant, LG Electronics (LGE), as a real party in interest (RPI) in its IPRs—in which case the petitions would have been time-barred. The NPE’s complaint follows an earlier attempt to raise a similar RPI argument before the PTAB, which rejected that defense in its January final decisions.