The earlier-announced divestiture of patents from Innolux to a well-established monetization operation has taken shape in assignment records recently made public. Those records also reflect the continued divestiture of patents, along established pathways, into hands that suggest that monetization may at some point be in the works. Meanwhile, another batch of US patent assets has moved in the other direction, from monetization operation to operating company.

Last week, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright posted a couple of orders resolving Apple motions to transfer to the Northern District of California. One, docketed but sealed, denied a transfer of a case filed by Theta IP, LLC, while the other transferred a suit brought by inventor-controlled S.M.R Innovations Ltd and Y.M.R Tech Ltd in July 2023. Reporting in this second opinion, filed publicly, has focused on the plaintiffs’ attempt to hinge the “local interest” factor of a convenience transfer analysis on local tax breaks for Apple, but language elsewhere in the order continues to suggest a dissatisfaction with how the Federal Circuit has mandated that “court congestion” should be weighed, at least in certain cases.

Per prior RPX reporting, a consolidation of patent assets to Cloud Controls LLC earlier this year suggested a new monetization strategy. Now, Cloud Controls has indeed filed suit, accusing Samsung (2:24-cv-00925) of infringing five patents received through the provision of a wide array of products, including the Samsung Cloud platform, Samsung Galaxy-series smartphones, and Samsung Sound Tower-series speakers. At issue are features ranging from predictive keyboard tools to the Quick Share service.

A new Eastern District of Texas complaint represents Encelion LLC’s first litigation, the New Mexico plaintiff accusing Samsung (2:24-cv-00942) of infringing two patents generally related to sensing the human pulse rate. Claim charts attached to the pleading highlight the provision of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch7, with a focus on its pulse rate monitoring features.

In October 2022, DivX, LLC filed two complaints against Amazon and VIZIO, one before the International Trade Commission (ITC) and the other in the Eastern District of Virginia. The latter was stayed in customary fashion to await the outcome of the ITC investigation, which resulted in a May 2024 finding in favor of Amazon (VIZIO having been terminated from the ITC investigation along the way), based on, among other things, noninfringement. Last week, DivX voluntarily dismissed that parallel stayed case, doing so on the same day that it filed a new complaint in the same district against Amazon (3:24-cv-00818), this one asserting six different patents.

Multijurisdictional patent disputes have increasingly featured litigation filed both in national courts and before Europe’s Unified Patent Court (UPC), where plaintiffs can seek damages and injunctive relief spanning 18 participating EU countries. Since the UPC allows similarly sweeping revocation claims, some patent owners have chosen to opt certain patents out of the court’s jurisdiction to protect key assets from invalidation. While UPC rules allow patent owners to withdraw opt-outs under certain circumstances, they cannot do so after filing national litigation over those assets. Early caselaw interpreted this prohibition more broadly, to include cases filed in national courts before the UPC’s June 2023 launch. However, the Court of Appeal has now held otherwise—ruling that UPC rules do not bar the withdrawal of an opt-out when the national litigation in question was filed before the court began its operations.

Attestwave LLC has added a new round of cases to the litigation campaign it began back in October 2022, suing BlackBerry (2:24-cv-00929), Cortado Mobile Solutions (2:24-cv-00928), Honeywell (2:24-cv-00926), Sophos (2:24-cv-00930), and SOTI (2:24-cv-00927). The plaintiff asserts a patent new to the litigation but related to the prior patent-in-suit, the patent broadly directed to “assuring proper execution of a software computer program” through tamper detection and validation. Targeted in the set of Eastern District of Texas complaints is the provision of application and/or device management software, including enterprise mobility management (EMM), mobile device management (MDM), and unified endpoint management (UEM) solutions. At issue is the use of device attestation for “verifying device and app integrity”.

Entropic Communications, LLC has filed separate Eastern District of Texas cases against Ubee Interactive (2:24-cv-00911) and Vantiva (f/k/a Technicolor) (2:24-cv-00912), targeting the provision of cable modems and gateways, with Vantiva further targeted over television set-top boxes, that “include or are based on the Broadcom BCM3390, BCM33843, or BCM3384 [systems-on-chip (SoCs)]”. The new cases have been assigned to District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III, but Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap presided over the earlier litigation in this district from Entropic, against Charter Communications. There, most recently, briefing has completed in an appeal that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed after the district court denial of its motion to intervene, following settlement, to seek the unsealing of the parties’ briefing (and evidence) regarding “a nationally important, precedent-setting case-dispositive defense”.

The RPX Weekly Newsletter will not be published next week, given the holiday in the US. It will return the following Monday. Happy Thanksgiving from your newsletter team (a/k/a the RPX Patent Litigation and Marketplace Intelligence group).

Inventor-controlled Transparence LLC has kicked off its first litigation campaign with an Eastern District of Texas complaint against Samsung (2:24-cv-00910). The plaintiff asserts three patents described as related to “methods, systems, and devices that allow users to navigate authentication, notifications, and updates across multiple applications through a single, persistent, and centralized application menu”. Samsung is accused of infringement through the provision of Galaxy-series smartphones and tablets, with features such as Dex mode, notification management, and Samsung Pass at issue.