Beck Branch Follows Last Dismissal in the First Wave of Networking Campaign with a New Wave of Complaints

Beck Branch, LLC has filed a second wave in its sole litigation campaign, filing suit against CenturyLink Communications (1:18-cv-01915), RingCentral (1:18-cv-01917), Verizon (Oath) (1:18-cv-01916), and Yandex (1:18-cv-01918) in the District of Delaware and against Huawei (6:18-cv-00633) and Juniper Networks (6:18-cv-00634) in the Eastern District of Texas. The NPE targets a range of products with a single patent generally related to network protocol conversion. For example, in roughly analogous fashion to a prior complaint filed against Cisco, Juniper is alleged to infringe through the provision of products that enable IP-based voice communications over multiple communications protocols. Meanwhile, the Huawei complaint focuses on the provision of wearables (smartwatches and “smart fitness bands” using Google’s Wear OS) that communicate with Internet-connected smartphones over Bluetooth, for purposes including the transmission of calls and messages. An earlier complaint, filed against Samsung, contained similar infringement allegations.