In 2023, XR Communications, LLC (d/b/a Vivato Technologies) filed pairs of separate cases against AT&T (AT&T Mobility), Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) in the Eastern District of Texas. Ericsson and Nokia intervened, and all six cases were consolidated for pretrial purposes before District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. A total of six wireless communications patents are in suit there, with preparations for September trial underway. Now, Vivato Technologies has filed another trio of cases against the wireless carriers—AT&T Mobility (2:25-cv-00696), T-Mobile (2:25-cv-00697), and Verizon Wireless (2:25-cv-00698)—targeting with three more patents the provision of the defendants’ respective 5G NR mobile networks, each of which is alleged to include “Ericsson and/or Nokia cellular base stations[,] 5G NR RAN solutions that support 3GPP 5G NR beamforming[,] and/or and 5G NR network elements”.

DataCloud Technologies, LLC, a plaintiff associated with Georgia monetization firm IP Investments Group LLC, has expanded its sole litigation campaign with a suit against Murata Manufacturing (2:25-cv-00684) in the Eastern District of Texas. The six asserted patents—each received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV)—are broadly directed to either file management or network communications. Murata Manufacturing is accused of infringement through a wide array of products, including sensor notes, website infrastructure, and wireless connectivity modules.

NXP Semiconductors (7:25-cv-00304) is the second defendant to be sued in K.Mizra LLC’s seventh litigation campaign, launched with a February 2024 suit against Silicon Motion. In the new Western District of Texas complaint, the plaintiff asserts six memory circuitry patents—each originating with Rambus—two of which are asserted for the first time in litigation. The defendant is accused of infringement through the provision of various processors and processing platforms. At issue is the support for DDR3/4/5 and/or LPDDR3/4 functionalities, as well as the incorporation of PCIe 3.0 (or later) interfaces.

Acting USPTO Director Coke Morgan Stewart has steadily expanded the use of discretionary denials at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) since assuming her role in January. After withdrawing guidance from her predecessor, Kathi Vidal, that limited such denials based on parallel litigation under the NHK-Fintiv rule, Stewart has imposed a broader set of factors upon which a PTAB petition can be denied and has taken over the discretionary denial process herself as part of a new two-stage institution procedure. Since then, the acting director has applied these new factors extensively, even applying them to pending inter partes review (IPR) petitions filed before the withdrawal of the Vidal guidance—prompting two recent mandamus petitions from impacted petitioners, and a subsequent series of amicus briefs from industry stakeholders. Meanwhile, Stewart has issued a series of decisions that could further increase the use of discretionary denials, including one that could curtail IPRs against patents that have been in force longer due to “settled expectations”.

Patent assignments recently made public include some former FotoNation patents boomeranging back to a former owner, some lighting patents inching toward monetization, and a bigger “some” of an individual inventor’s patents moving into the hands of his one-time Delaware plaintiff.

Pantech Corporation has filed separate Eastern District of Texas complaints against HMD Global (5:25-cv-00092), Lenovo (5:25-cv-00093), OnePlus (5:25-cv-00089), Shenzhen Tinno Mobile Technology (5:25-cv-00090), and TCL (5:25-cv-00091), as well as a complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC) proposing the same companies as respondents (337-TA-3835). The Ideahub, Inc. plaintiff targets the provision of smartphones and other equipment “compliant with LTE, LTE-A, and/or 5G cellular network standards” within the “past six years”. The plaintiff also seeks claims for breach of FRAND obligations and unjust enrichment against each defendant except OnePlus, which is already a defendant in this campaign.

There are currently over 280 issued US patents in the family that Headwater Research LLC began asserting in litigation back in October 2022, with the prosecution of myriad pending applications continuing before the USPTO. This past week, Headwater Research filed another round of Eastern District of Texas complaints against the big three US wireless carriers—AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:25-cv-00685), Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) (2:25-cv-00686), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) (2:25-cv-00687)—asserting an additional five patents from the same large family against each. Other defendants in the US leg of this campaign include Samsung, Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), Alphabet (Google), and Amazon, sued in that rough order (with the European leg including litigation against Apple, Lenovo, and Samsung). Two Eastern District of Texas juries have returned verdicts in this campaign—one for and one against Headwater, both in cases filed against Samsung—with trials in the first cases filed against the US wireless carriers slated for the next available trial setting of District Judge Rodney Gilstrap.

LockFOB, LLC, a company that touts its efforts to commercialize battery- and power-free smart lock products and related USB keys, has filed its first litigation—suing iLOQ (2:25-cv-00672) over the provision of various battery-free smart locks and rechargeable digital keys. The now-plaintiff seeks a permanent injunction, arguing that it has suffered irreparable harm because it is “difficult to fully quantify” the loss of control over its patented technology (also citing “lost market opportunities, lost access to markets, lost and delayed business relationships, [and] lost and delayed distribution”). This language echoes that of the US Department of Justice/USPTO brief endorsing injunctive relief for NPEs in its statement of interest (SOI) in the Radian Memory Systems LLC (RMS) litigation.

The second quarter saw a string of notable developments on the US IP policy front, including the reintroduction of legislation aimed at reforming patent eligibility and America Invents Acts (AIA) reviews—and a retirement announcement by those bills’ primary co-sponsor; an attempt at changing the tax treatment of third-party litigation funding; and a Senate confirmation hearing for Donald Trump’s nominee for the next USPTO director. Meanwhile, amid calls for commitment to “quality over quantity”, an all-time high pipeline of pending patent applications, and a DOGE-driven workforce reduction, the USPTO has arrived at a critical juncture.

Array Cache Technologies LLC has filed suit over one patent from the portfolio that it received from Eta Scale AB this past April. The defendant is MediaTek (2:25-cv-00669), accused of infringement through the provision of “ARM-based SoCs comprising multi-core GPUs and/or processors”, including certain Dimensity, Kompanio, and Pentonic-series chipsets that incorporate the Mali G-77 GPUs and later. Eastern District of Texas Judge Rodney Gilstrap has been assigned to preside.