Mobile Data Technologies LLC has filed its first litigation, suing Meta Platforms (7:22-cv-00244) in the Western District of Texas, asserting six patents generally related to managing content on mobile devices. Targeted is the Facebook platform, the complaint calling out features for photo sharing and/or tagging. The six patents-in-suit belong to a family of nine, three of which were previously litigated via two separate campaigns, one filed by Wireless Ink Corporation and the other by Publishing Technologies LLC. Facebook was a defendant in the Wireless Ink litigation.
The asserted patents (8,793,336; 8,825,801; 9,032,039; 9,619,578; 9,922,348; 10,839,427) belong to a family of nine with issue dates ranging from October 2009 through November 2020 and with an earliest estimated priority date in June 2002. The patents name David W. Harper, William H. Munch, and Jason J. Sabella as inventors, the earliest members of the family issuing directly to Wireless Ink. Wireless Ink filed suit in a March 2010 case in which the first patent in the family (7,599,983) was asserted against both Alphabet (Google) and Facebook. The plaintiff added a second case against those two defendants asserting a second patent (7,908,342) on the day that it issued (in March 2011).
Those suits ended when the Southern District of New York court granted the defendants’ motions for summary judgment of noninfringement, holding that Wireless Ink had failed to identify any website (or collection of websites) of Facebook that constituted the “content management web site” as required by claim 1 of either patent and that the putative such websites of Google (related to Google Plus and Google Docs) did not meet the limitations of that claim element. The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s disposition of the cases. Before that ruling, Wireless Ink had filed yet another suit against Facebook and Google, asserting the third patent (8,135,801) to issue in the same family. Facebook triggered an inter partes reexamination of the ‘801 patent, the district court case was stayed pending its outcome, the USPTO found all claims of the ‘801 patent unpatentable, the Federal Circuit affirmed, and the litigation ended.
Meanwhile, Wireless Ink had granted a security interest in its portfolio to Engagelogic Corporation, in October 2013. Harper appears to have controlled both entities, having written a letter as the president of Engagelogic providing notice to himself, as the principal of Wireless Ink, that the ‘983 and ‘342 patents, as well as others, were to be repossessed as collateral for $1M in outstanding debt under that prior security agreement. The litigation of this family then picks up again after Engagelogic moved the ‘983 and ‘342 patents to Publishing Technologies LLC, an NPE formed in 2017 and managed by Bradley D. Liddle (an attorney with connections to many litigating NPEs, who acted as the agent for Wireless Ink).
On October 25, 2017, Publishing Technologies filed one suit each in the Eastern District of Texas against Bank of America, Capital One, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade (d/b/a Scottrade, later acquired by Charles Schwab), targeting the defendants’ online trading platforms with the ‘342 patent. Each case ended in a dismissal with prejudice within roughly eight uneventful months. In February 2020, RPX then filed two petitions for inter partes review (IPR), which together led to cancellation of all of the claims of the ‘342 patent, through a pair of PTAB decisions that were summarily affirmed by the Federal Circuit.
On April 1, 2022, then, Engagelogic assigned the six remaining patents in the family to Mobile Data Technologies. Harper signed for Engagelogic again. Mobile Data Technologies was formed on July 15, 2019 in Delaware, with Harper signing for the company, as a member, on a security interest that Mobile Data Technologies granted to LIT-US Chisum 22-B, LLC on September 29, 2022.
LIT-US Chisum 22-B is a Delaware entity formed in July 2022. Since then, LIT-US Chisum 22-B has received September 2022 security interests in six portfolios through a batch all recorded October. Mobile Data Technologies is one among four of those September six to file suit since. For details concerning this web of funded entities, including a set of six granting security interests last year to LIT-US Chisum 21-A LLC, followed by a set of six more granted to LIT-US Chisum 22-A LLC this past March, see related RPX coverage from this week at “Batches of Similar Security Interests Link Growing Number of Patent Plaintiffs” (November 2022).
In the new complaint against Facebook, Mobile Data Technologies pleads that Meta has “been actively aware of the existence of the subject matter of the patents-in-suit. In and around 2010, a former entity brought an infringement suit against Facebook, Inc., the corporate predecessor of Defendants, asserting” the ‘983 patent, in apparent reference to the Wireless Ink litigation.
Spencer Fane LLP filed the new complaint against Meta on Mobile Data’s behalf. 11/23, Western District of Texas.
