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The recent campaign begun by Dynamic Data Technologies, LLC has expanded to include additional lawsuits filed in the Eastern District of Texas against LG Electronics (LGE) (2:18-cv-00468), Microsoft (2:18-cv-00469), and Qualcomm (2:18-cv-00470), as well as a new case against Dell (1:18-cv-10454) in the Southern District of New York. The NPE asserts up to 14 patents against each defendant—including in earlier cases against Alphabet (Google), Amazon, AMD, Apple, HTC, NVIDIA, and Samsung—from a larger portfolio acquired from MaxLinear and described in each complaint as covering “foundational technology” in image and video processing developed by Philips. (An assertion grid for the campaign can be viewed on RPX Insight here.) Dynamic Data targets a wide variety of products engaged in image/video processing, encoding, and decoding, including those that support the H.265 and/or VP9 video codecs.

Quarterhill Inc. released its third quarter earnings on November 8, reporting $19.6M in revenue—with just $4.4M contributed by Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN), the company’s patent licensing business. In a call with investors, CFO Sean McEwan acknowledged the “quarterly variability” in WiLAN’s numbers, pointing to its “blockbuster” third quarter last year, during which it brought in $72.6M in revenue, and also touting WiLAN’s $145.1M trial win against Apple in August.

Inventor-controlled Mimzi, LLC has filed suit against Foursquare Labs (1:18-cv-01767) and Trip Advisor (1:18-cv-01768) in Delaware. The new complaints assert a single patent broadly related to returning location-based information from a “social network database” in response to a spoken request. At issue are the defendants’ mobile apps, which allegedly permit users (i.e., smartphone users) to view “location-dependent information” in response to questions asked (“Where is the nearest (best, most popular) Chinese restaurant?” given as an example).

Seven Networks LLC, an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC, has refreshed its sole active litigation campaign with a pair of new lawsuits against existing defendants Alphabet (Google) (2:18-cv-00477) and Samsung (2:18-cv-00474), asserting six patents not previously seen in litigation. The NPE accuses the companies of infringement through the provision of certain models of the Google Pixel smartphone and certain Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets. At issue are the devices’ features designed to maintain a network connection; manage apps and processes differently when a device is in use versus idle; enter a power save mode when the device has been idle for a period of time; disable certain network connections when the device is idle; and allow the user to manually enter a power save mode. These new complaints come on the heels of a recent, split Federal Circuit opinion that denied Google’s improper venue challenge in another Seven Networks lawsuit.

A jury in the Eastern District of Texas has returned an infringement verdict against Samsung in litigation brought by German patent licensing firm Papst Licensing GmbH & Company Kg. In that November 6 verdict, the jury found that Samsung had infringed a single patent through the provision of certain mobile devices and awarded $5.9M in damages; in a second verdict issued that same day, the company’s infringement was determined to be not willful. The patent at issue is one of five asserted in this case and throughout Papst Licensing’s sprawling, 12-year litigation campaign. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has cancelled claims from each of the other four patents—including all claims asserted against Samsung—in a series of inter partes reviews (IPRs) filed by Samsung and other campaign defendants.

On November 8, a jury in the District of Delaware handed down a verdict in favor of Japanese monetization firm IP Bridge, Inc., finding that certain TCL smartphones, sold under the Alcatel OneTouch brand, have infringed two patents developed by Panasonic. IP Bridge (as Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1) sued TCL in July 2015, opening up its first of three litigation campaigns in the US—each currently involving between one and 25 patents originating with Panasonic (with one campaign also asserting patents developed by NEC). Active defendants in IP Bridge’s US campaigns include Intel, OmniVision, Qualcomm, and Xilinx.

The dismissal in late August 2018 of a case filed by Sockeye Licensing TX LLC against Lenovo ended that NPE’s last round of suits, filed in the Central District of California. Sockeye has now begun another round, this one comprising cases filed against Panasonic (1:18-cv-01750) and Toshiba (1:18-cv-01749) in the District of Delaware, over Blu-ray players that allow playback on a connected TV of video received on a smartphone, and against Hisense (1:18-cv-05129) in the Northern District of Georgia, over Hisense Smartcast, which facilitates similar functionality. At issue in the new complaints are two patents from a five-member family generally related to the use of a wireless communications device (e.g., a cell phone) to control and provide network connectivity to standard desktop peripherals (e.g., a monitor and keyboard).

The file-and-settle ReCAPTCHA campaign of Confident Technologies, Inc. has snagged another defendant, Best Buy (3:18-cv-02552), on the heels of the dismissal of a prior suit, against Fandango. In its complaints, the NPE asserts a single patent generally related to automated tests for distinguishing humans from computers, targeting the use of ReCAPTCHA technology on the companies’ websites; in this most recent complaint, Confident accuses Best Buy of infringement through the use of Google’s ReCaptcha V2 verification check (without naming Google as a defendant). In each of the prior three cases, the defendant responded to the complaint with a Rule 12 motion, two of those attacking the patent-in-suit on Alice grounds.

In August 2017, Sisvel International S.A. (d/b/a Sisvel Group) launched a litigation campaign over a portfolio of former Panasonic patents allegedly essential to the practice of the ITU G.994.1 standard related to DSL technology, asserting nine of them first against CenturyLink and then Frontier Communications. At the end of this past September, the CenturyLink case ended in a dismissal with prejudice after multiple stays to permit the parties to finalize an agreement resolving their disputes, and a similar set of stays has been entered in the case against Frontier, suggesting that an end to that case is imminent. Against this backdrop, Sisvel has filed a new suit, against Verizon (1:18-cv-01742), asserting the same nine patents and accusing Verizon of infringement through the provision of “DSL technology, equipment and services” that comply with the same standard.

NetSoc, LLC has filed a second case in the litigation campaign that it began by suing IAC/Interactive (Match Group) this past May. Filed in the Southern District of New York, the new complaint targets Chegg (1:18-cv-10262) with the same social networking patent over the provision of an online tutoring website, the accused features allegedly allowing users to search for tutors by name and subject area and to communicate with those tutors. A false start, that May case was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, only to be dismissed without prejudice and refiled in Northern District of Texas.