Since May 2023, Patent Armory Inc. has filed more than 70 cases over various patents from multiple sources in federal district courts in both Delaware and Texas. As a formal matter, those suits comprise three litigation campaigns, one of which just began on August 31, 2023. Because it involves patents unrelated to those asserted in prior cases filed in Delaware, the suits that Patent Amory filed in that state—separately against 3Shape, Dental Imaging, and ScanTech—were subsequently assigned to Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly (instead of to District Judge Maryellen Noreika). Standing orders in force in his courtroom just triggered a most revealing corporate disclosure.

Deepwell IP LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded Quest Patent Research Corporation (QPRC), has filed suit against MediaTek (2:23-cv-00429), targeting the provision of systems-on-chip (SoCs) with ARM cores, including the MT8186 and Dimensity 1060 SoCs, as well as products incorporating them, including the Lenovo Chromebook and Motorola Edge smartphone. Deepwell IP’s is the second litigation campaign to arise from a January 2022 deal—the price tag for which was $1.06M—with Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV). QPRC has reported subsequent patent acquisitions, including portfolios picked up from Edward D. Ioli Trust (in July 2022), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) (also in July 2022), Tower Semiconductor (in March 2023), and an individual inventor (in August 2023), each of which has yet to spawn litigation.

In a new Eastern District of Texas complaint, Empire Technology Development LLC has accused Samsung (2:23-cv-00427) of infringing two wireless communications patents through the provision of certain Galaxy-series smartphones based on their alleged support for Qualcomm’s Smart Transmit technology and/or 5G compatibility. The accumulation of patent assets by IV acquisition, especially through the 2007-2010 timeframe, is well documented; less well understood has been the number of patent assets for which IV was granted an exclusive license. Empire Technology, a subsidiary of Allied Inventors Management, LLC (AIM), pleads that is now just such a licensee.

RavenWhite Licensing LLC has sued Home Depot (2:23-cv-00423) and Walmart (2:23-cv-00418) over the use of certain web tracking technologies (e.g., beacons, cookies, and pixels) and provision of their respective online advertising systems, Retail Media + and Walmart Connect. The plaintiff describes one of the two patents-in-suit as generally related to “an advanced machine-to-machine automation technique that stores encoded information at a client device on the basis of network resource requests determined by a server” and the other as broadly directed to “improved advertising systems that enable tiered bidding, cross-selling, and retargeting in online marketing systems”.

This past week, an Eastern District of Texas jury returned a verdict against TP-Link, awarding plaintiff Atlas Global Technologies LLC nearly $37.5M in lump sum damages. The verdict followed a relatively unusual runup to trial that included deeming sales data from an independent third-party source as established facts (which TP-Link argued is a clear error that might inappropriately hike any lump sum damages award by about $18.5M), removing multiple prior art references from the case as not predating certain provisional applications, and rejecting an eleventh-hour attempt to postpone the trial to December. Atlas Global, a subsidiary of publicly traded Acacia Research Corporation, sued TP-Link back in November 2021, alleging infringement of eight former NEWRACOM patents (five of which were tried to the recent jury) through the provision of certain Wi-Fi 6-compliant devices. Active defendants in this campaign include Acer, also sued in the Eastern District of Texas, and ASUSTek, Dell, D-Link, HP, OnePlus, Sercomm, and Unizyx (Zyxel), all sued in the Western District of Texas.

Once-prolific Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC appeared to end its months-long filing silence this past week when associated entity Communication Advances LLC filed suit against Roku (6:23-cv-00667) in the Western District of Texas. The plaintiff accuses Roku of infringing five former MediaTek patents through the provision of products that are compliant with the H.265 and HEVC video compression standards and HDR10+ technology. After multiple years of its various LLC plaintiffs, taken collectively, landing atop the list of NPE filers by volume, in 2022 IP Edge ran into a District of Delaware “Series of Extraordinary Events” that brought its pattern of heavy new case filing to an abrupt halt this past December.

Celerity IP, LLC, a subsidiary of litigation finance firm GLS Capital, has begun its second litigation effort (as “exclusive licensee”) since becoming the “exclusive agent for the licensing and enforcement of” two portfolios of standard essential patents originating with ASUSTek (ASUS) or Innovative Sonic Limited. Together with ASUS Technology Licensing Inc. (as patent owner)—formed to continue “ASUSTek’s long history of development in and contributions to the field of wireless communications”—the plaintiffs have sued Samsung (2:23-cv-00409) in the Eastern District of Texas over a single wireless communications patent, targeting the provision of devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and smart watches) that are compliant with 4G and/or 5G networking standards.

ImmerVision Inc. (f/k/a 6115187 Canada Inc.) has filed another Delaware case against Apple (1:23-cv-01012). This one alleges that the just-released suite of iPhone 15 models infringes a patent already in suit between these parties, since November 2021, by virtue of the purported inclusion of the same “ultra wide lens and camera assembly” targeted in the previously accused iPhone 11, 12, and 13 product suites (as well as in the “iPad 2021 tablet”). Dust on the pleadings in the prior case over the same patent has not settled, ImmerVision having moved to amend its complaint to allege willful infringement and Apple having moved to amend its answer to allege inequitable conduct. That case has been consolidated with two other Delaware cases that ImmerVision filed against Apple, one in October 2021 and the other in December 2021.

Inventor-controlled DH International Ltd. has filed separate Western District of Texas cases against Alphabet (Google) (1:23-cv-01116) and Apple (1:23-cv-01114) over the respective provision of the Apple Pay and Google Pay mobile payment platforms, as well as related hardware. The two patents-in-suit are generally related to a “portable electronic device” that, upon detection of an external cue, will initiate a data exchange, and if not, will communicate information to a user instead. Both were asserted—by a different but associated plaintiff—against Samsung in an Eastern District of Texas suit that ran from October 2020 through August 2021.

This past July, Staton Techiya, LLC filed a pair of Delaware cases against Samsung (Harman International Industries, Harman-Kardon) targeting the provision of automobile audio systems and earbuds (including those offered by AKG and JBL). In its accompanying corporate disclosure statement, the plaintiff indicated that “it does not have a parent corporation and there is no publicly held corporation owning ten percent or more ownership interest in Techiya”. Then, on August 2, the case was assigned to Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, in whose courtroom April 2022 standing orders impose heightened disclosure requirements on certain litigants. In response, Staton Techiya filed new statements on August 24—one supplementing that prior simple corporate disclosure (to list well over 100 "partners”) and the other identifying a single source of third-party litigation funding.