Inventor-backed Zugara, Inc. has launched a second litigation campaign, this one over a single patent generally related to a collaborative augmented reality (AR) system where multiple users can manipulate a shared 3D model. In a new Eastern District of Texas complaint, the plaintiff accuses Cisco (2:25-cv-00437) of infringement through the provision of the Webex Hologram system and related components—the Webex Hologram capture device, the Webex Cloud Services, and the Webex Hologram App. At issue are features for displaying realistic holograms of meeting participants in AR/virtual reality (VR) headsets and allowing users to interact with 3D models of product prototypes.

AccuSearch Technologies LLC has filed its first litigation, suing Alphabet (Google) (1:25-cv-00514) in the District of Delaware over “Google Search Engine Products and Services” such as the Google website, Chrome browser, and “current or legacy products and services” incorporating them. At issue are features characterized as “providing annotated Internet search results suitable for display to a user on a computing device, (e.g., PC, mobile phone, or tablet device)”. The four asserted patents are part of a larger portfolio that RPX recently reported that AccuSearch Technologies had received from the sole inventor Robert Osann, Jr. on February 24, 2024.

The deadline for compliance with several aspects of the recent sanctions orders from Northern District of California Magistrate Judge Peter H. Kang against KOJI IP LLC and its counsel Ramey LLP has passed. The docket indicates that William P. Ramey III has paid $45,264 and Jeffrey E. Kubiak has paid $10,496 for the unauthorized practice of law in California, while Susan S.Q. Kalra (a former Ramey LLP attorney) has paid $300 for aiding and abetting that unauthorized practice. The trio want a refund, the request made in a “fourth urgent plea” to the Federal Circuit where the appellants have pointed as evidence of irreparable harm from the parallel reporting requirements in Judge Kang’s sanctions orders that the District of Colorado now flags Ramey’s “Admission Status” there as “Not in Good Standing”.

Northern District of California Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim has ordered Correct Transmission LLC (CT) to produce to defendant Juniper Networks litigation funding agreements (and amendments thereto). The court ruled that the materials are relevant to the potential biases of witnesses Jeremy Pitcock, CT’s manager and sole owner, and Ishak Tamir, the CEO and cofounder of Orckit Communications (the original source of the patents-in-suit) as well as “the beneficiary of funds from licensing and enforcement” of those patents. Earlier, the parties here filed more than one “Joint Case Management Statement” in which they attested that “[e]ach party has filed the “Certification of Interested Entities or Persons” required by Civil Local Rule 3-15 and there is no such interest to report”. That attestation, signed for CT by former litigation counsel Reichmann Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg LLP, appears not to have been correct, given the revelations in Judge Kim’s order.  

VoiceAge EVS LLC has filed its latest lawsuit, against OnePlus (2:25-cv-00460), in the Eastern District of Texas, not in Delaware where it filed its prior suits in this campaign, against HMD Global, TCL, Lenovo, Apple, and Xiaomi (in that order). Only the case against HMD remains open. Filed in October 2019, that case has been set for trial in mid-March 2027 by District Judge Gregory B. Williams. Against OnePlus, VoiceAge EVS asserts the same five patents previously in suit, joined by one more, all described as “cover[ing] foundational audio coding technologies for the EVS codec” and as having been “declared essential to the EVS Standard by way of Intellectual Property Rights (‘IPR’) Declarations to one or more of 3GPP’s organizational partners”.

The UK Court of Appeal has issued a long-awaited judgment in a standard essential patent (SEP) case filed by three subsidiaries of PanOptis Holdings, LLC (collectively, “Optis”) against Apple. On May 1, the appellate court overturned a May 2023 decision from High Court Justice Marcus Smith that had set a global fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) rate of $56.43M, ruling that he had had erred by rejecting the parties’ expert evidence and rate-setting arguments in favor of a rate-setting approach not proposed by either party. The Court of Appeal instead ruled that the proper FRAND rate was $502M plus interest.

On the heels of a $278.8M jury verdict in an earlier case against Samsung, Headwater Research LLC has filed another round of suits against AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:25-cv-00464), Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) (2:25-cv-00462), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) (2:25-cv-00463), all in the Eastern District of Texas as well. These May cases follow a trio of April ones—AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:25-cv-00428), Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) (2:25-cv-00359), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) (2:25-cv-00391)—that themselves followed a trio of February suits against the same three defendants.

As recently reported by RPX, multiple IP-related bills were introduced by lawmakers in Q1, with several older pieces of legislation apparently in line to be revived amid shifts in leadership and policy. Indeed, this week saw two of those bills reintroduced: the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act (PREVAIL Act) and the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA).

BrowserKey, LLC has followed up its first complaints—filed separately last fall in the Eastern District of Texas against Bank of America, Charles Schwab, and Wells Fargo—with eight more in the same district, one against each of Ally Financial (2:25-cv-00442), Capital One (2:25-cv-00443), Comerica (2:25-cv-00444), First Citizens Bancshares (First Citizens Bank and Trust) (2:25-cv-00451), JP Morgan Chase (2:25-cv-00445), Morgan Stanley (2:25-cv-00446), Regions Financial (Regions Bank) (2:25-cv-00450), and UBS (UBS Financial Services) (2:25-cv-00452) over the provision of their respective “Web and Mobile Applications”. At issue is the support of “biometric, token-based, and/or passwordless authentication”, including Apple’s Touch and Face ID. BrowserKey dismissed its complaint against UBS without prejudice within a few days; UBS has filed a declaratory judgment action against BrowserKey in the District of New Jersey (2:25-cv-03796).

Bison Patent Licensing, LLC has sued Samsung (2:25-cv-00445) in the Eastern District of Texas over a wide variety of products, including smartphones, residential cellular network extenders, its SmartThings device tracking network, and smart TVs. The Georgia plaintiff received the eight asserted patents as part of portfolio of around 200 US patent assets transferred in 2022—a portfolio that has generated multiple previous litigation campaigns from other plaintiffs.