This summer, an Eastern District of Texas jury returned an $847M verdict in favor of General Access Solutions, Ltd. (f/k/a Access Solutions, Ltd.) (GAS). Despite “great respect for a jury’s considered verdict”, Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap, last week, concluded “that the jury’s verdict is against the great weight of the evidence to such a material degree that a new trial is necessary”. The court did so in ruling on a motion filed by Verizon (Verizon Wireless and multiple other subsidiaries) for a new trial, also pointing to multiple arguments that the defendants made in their parallel motion for judgment as a matter of law. Jury selection is now set for December 6, 2024.

The June jury completed a form finding infringement of both patents (7,230,931; 9,426,794) and a failure to prove invalidity of claims 28-29 of the ‘931 patent or claims 1-2 and 5 of the ‘794 patent due to lack of written description or enablement, as well as assigning the damages figures to each patent: $583M in damages for the infringement of the ‘931 patent; $264M, of the ‘794 patent.

The ‘931 patent generally relates to beamformed downlink time-division duplex (TDD) communications. Infringement allegations in the Verizon Wireless case focus on 5G base station equipment. Ericsson intervened in light of these allegations. In posttrial briefing, Verizon argued that “no reasonable jury could have found the multisector broadcast beam signal limitation [“a broadcast beam signal to wireless access devices within more than one of said sectors”] to be met” because “the unrebutted trial evidence establishes that the accused signals (SSBs) are never transmitted to wireless access devices within more than one sector”. Verizon also argued that “no reasonable jury could have found the limitation requiring one ‘TDD frame’ to be transmitted to multiple sectors to be met”. The court points to Verizon’s contention that GAS shifted its infringement theories in order to circumvent that evidence.

The ‘794 patent generally relates to a wireless communication device that receives signals from a “wide area wireless communication protocol” (i.e., over a cellular network) and re-transmits it to other devices over a “local area wireless communication protocol” (i.e., over a WLAN such as a Wi-Fi network). GAS has asserted the ‘794 patent (which appears to have expired) against the provision of devices that can use a cellular signal to provide local Wi-Fi access. Here, the court highlights Verizon’s arguments that “no reasonable jury could have found that the accused Verizon hotspots monitored any downlink signal” (court’s emphasis), given that the plaintiff’s technical expert relied only on testimony that “concerned uplink signals from the mobile client devices, not downlink signals” (court’s emphases). It also points to Verizon’s argument that “no reasonable jury could have found that the second transceiver ‘routes information to the first mobile station and the second mobile station’” because “the accused Verizon devices do not perform routing but rather perform omnidirectional transmission in all directions at once”.

Without specifically adopting any of these attacks on the jury’s verdict, against their backdrop, Judge Gilstrap indicated that he became “persuaded that the issues raised by Verizon are both substantial and fairly warrant a new trial on the entire case, including the issues of infringement, invalidity, and damages”: “While this Court has great respect for a jury’s considered verdict, the Court also recognizes its obligation to act where the verdict is against the great weight of the evidence, as is the case here”.

GAS’s campaign has been active since May 2016, when it sued Sprint (now part of Deutsche Telekom) over the ‘931 patent, as well as two others from the same family. An April 2023 case against Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile remains active before Judge Gilstrap. The parties there are in claim construction. Sprint responded to the May 2016 complaint against it, in part, by filing petitions for inter partes review (IPR) of the three patents-in-suit, which led to the cancelation of all claims from the other two, as well as all but claims 28-29 of the ‘931 patent (after a remand from the Federal Circuit reversing in part an interim final written decision). (Unified Patents also filed a petition for IPR of the ‘931 patent; it was unsuccessful.)

Michael S. Hynek is identified as a manager of General Access, LLC, a Texas company that controls GAS through two similarly named Texas entities. Hynek appears to be involved in a range of business ventures unrelated to patent monetization. Paul F. Struhsaker is a named inventor on the patents-in-campaign, alone with respect to the ‘931 patent. He currently identifies himself on social media as an “Author – Entrepreneur – Innovator” having been the “Executive Director/CEO” with Wireless Power Consortium (described “an International Technology Standards Organization (ISTO) responsible for developing wireless power/charging standards used in billions of consumer devices”) since April 2022 and the executive director with Arrasar Partners LLC (a related consultancy) since January 2012.

Struhsaker lists a long history of engineering positions with wireless, cable, and other tech companies. The current iteration of his social media profile is a rework of a prior version (further details about which can be found here). In the past, he indicated that, for GAS, he provided “[e]xpert and fact witness for a major 4G/5G infringement of Mr. Struhsaker’s US 7,230,931 [patent] by Sprint. Sprint settled the case after 5 years of court action resulting in major damage awards”. That description has changed to remove mention of the role as expert witness in that suit.

In an order granting Sprint’s motion to cut off presuit willfulness, presiding Judge Robert W. Schroeder III recounts that “[i]n September 2011, [GAS] executed a Patent Brokerage Agreement with RSL Holdings. Inc. in an attempt to sell [GAS’s] patent portfolio. Francis Rushford executed the Agreement on behalf of RSL as RSL’s then-Managing Director. Rushford testified that as part of RSL’s brokerage services, it prepared ‘teaser’ materials that it sent to potential buyers of [GAS’s] patent portfolio, including Sprint”. The court ruled, however, that those “teaser” materials were not specific enough to place recipients on notice of alleged infringement. The Sprint suit settled on the eve of trial in November 2021.

A round of additional cases filed by GAS in (late) 2016—one against each of LG Electronics, Novatel, Pantech, and Xiaomi—appears to have fizzled, with each suit ending in a 2017 dismissal without prejudice after little to no substantive litigation. The campaign picked back up after the apparent acquisition of litigation funding from an unnamed backer, in August 2022, with new representation (by Bartlit Beck LLP) and the suit against Verizon and then against T-Mobile, in which three patents have been asserted (the 6,947,477; 7,099,383; and ‘931 patents). Both Ericsson and Nokia have successfully intervened (via unopposed motions) in the latter case, each citing the provision of cellular base stations to defendant T-Mobile.