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XMTT, Inc. has filed suit against Intel (1:18-cv-01810) in the District of Delaware. The complaint asserts a family of two patents issuing to Uzi Y. Vishkin, a professor specializing in “parallel computing and computer architecture” at the University of Maryland at College Park. XMTT identifies the accused products as those containing Intel Graphics Technology; the patents generally relate to an architecture for a system with parallel core processors.

In May 2018, Australian NPE Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited (Uniloc) assigned more than 600 US patent assets, as well as a number of foreign counterparts—seemingly the bulk of its portfolio—to Fortress Investment Group LLC subsidiary Uniloc 2017 LLC, leading to an avalanche of new litigation. This deal represented the deepening of an existing relationship between the two parties, as a December 2014 security agreement between Uniloc and Fortress indicates that the latter has been funding the former’s litigation for years. That security agreement has now become the focus of a standing dispute in litigation filed by Uniloc prior to its May deal with Fortress. In an October motion to dismiss, defendant Apple has argued that by relinquishing certain licensing rights under the security agreement, and other related agreements, Uniloc’s former patent-holding subsidiary Uniloc Luxembourg S.à r.l. (f/k/a Uniloc Luxembourg S.A.) and its purported successor-in-interest, Uniloc 2017, were deprived of constitutional standing. Uniloc has just fired back, arguing in a November 12 opposition that the rights transferred in the security agreement did not deprive Uniloc Luxembourg of standing under Federal Circuit law. Meanwhile, Fortress has apparently reconsidered the posture of the cases that it has been filing since the May deal with Uniloc, refiling late last week over 40 of those suits with only Uniloc 2017 as the named plaintiff against defendants that include Alphabet (Google), Apple, AT&T, Barnes & Noble, BlackBerry, Cardo Systems, Cisco, Disney (ABC, ESPN), Hulu, Huawei, LG Electronics, Samsung, Terrano, Verizon, and ZTE.

In October 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) continued to see petitions for inter partes review (IPR) filed against Native American tribes following the Federal Circuit’s July ruling that the tribes’ sovereign immunity does not apply in the context of IPR, including a petition brought against the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe over patents at issue in the campaign waged by SRC Labs, LLC. That petition was filed shortly before the Federal Circuit declined to revisit its sovereign immunity opinion in late October. Also in October, the PTAB instituted trial in four IPRs against a subsidiary of Quarterhill Inc., which just reported a significant drop in quarterly patent licensing revenue over the previous year. Meanwhile, October saw a number of notable final decisions, including one issued in an IPR against a subsidiary of General Patent Corporation.

RPX completed a number of acquisitions in October 2018 on behalf of its patent risk management network. The acquisitions occurred within the following market sectors: E-Commerce and Software; Mobile Communications and Devices; and Networking.

In one of its three litigation campaigns to date, Rondevoo Technologies, LLC asserts a single patent generally related to “clustering” keys on an input device, such as a telephone keypad or computer keyboard, to facilitate selection entry. The NPE has targeted the ability to enter alternate (i.e., accented) characters through the keypads of certain Android smartphones in complaints filed earlier against LG Electronics (LGE), Sony, and ZTE and now in a new complaint filed against HTC (2:18-cv-01625), calling out the HTC Desire 300. The deadlines to answer or otherwise respond have been extended into December for LGE and Sony; ZTE has answered.

Akoloutheo, LLC has added a case against Commvault Systems (4:18-cv-00806) to the first of two litigation campaigns that the Texas NPE has begun this year. This campaign targets network management products with a single patent generally related to “controlling any type of transaction between providers and consumers of information services”. Specifically, in this newest complaint, Akoloutheo accuses Commvault of infringement through the provision of “software systems, cloud-based software, and/or software as a service (SaaS) for network monitoring, interrogation, and management”, including Commvault’s Complete Backup & Recovery, Hyperscale, Orchestrate, and Activate products, and “devices and systems for network monitoring, interrogation, and management”, including Commvault HyperScale and Remote Office Appliance.

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.