California Judge Takes an Alice Scythe to Seven Patents Asserted by “Serial Litigant”

Central District of California Judge Serena R. Murillo recently marched through seven unrelated former Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) patents asserted by Empire IP LLC plaintiff IoT Innovations LLC against Lutron Electronics, invalidating them one by one under Alice. Lutron quickly notified Southern District of Florida Judge Melissa Damian, who presides over the other case filed by IoT Innovations against Lutron, of the development, arguing that the ruling bolsters its arguments in a pending motion in that court for transfer to California. IoT Innovations counters that the invalidation order came “in a different case involving different patents, different claim language, different technological fields, and” different controlling law, the plaintiff urging Judge Damian therefore to “ignore it”.