The long-running battle between Micron and Longhorn IP LLC has taken a new turn with the semiconductor company’s suit invoking a largely untested Idaho state law barring “bad faith assertion[s] of patent infringement”. That 2014 statute, in part, allows a court to require the patent owner making such an “assertion” to pay a bond that equals the accused infringer’s likely cost of litigation plus related damages for the patent owner’s violation of the statute. Micron has requested $15M for that bond, triggering a fight in the federal District of Idaho—where the case was moved from state court last month—over the underlying facts, timeliness, and the propriety of the law itself. The first ruling on the bond issue did not go in Longhorn IP’s favor: On August 8, the court declined its request to stay the bond proceedings pending the outcome of its related motion to dismiss.

Roughly nine months after its last case ended, inventor-controlled NextGen Innovations, LLC has sued AT&T (2:22-cv-00308), Fujitsu (2:22-cv-00307), Infinera (2:22-cv-00306), and Nokia (2:22-cv-00309), again over the provision or use of certain optical networking products, including fiber optic transceiver modules (AT&T, Fujitsu, Infinera, Nokia) and broadband gateways with SFP/SFP+ optic modules (AT&T). Up to four optical networking patents have been asserted, in overlapping subsets, across the new complaints, which have all been filed in the Eastern District of Texas.

This past week, Bell Semiconductor, LLC (Bell Semic) expanded both of its litigation campaigns. In a pair of Central District of California complaints, it sued Qualcomm, together with CommScope, HP Enterprise (HPE) (Aruba Networks), Linksys, NETGEAR, and TP-Link (8:22-cv-01519); and NVIDIA, together with Amazon, Best Buy, Dell, GIGA-BYTE, Micro-Star International (MSI), and Nintendo (2:22-cv-05747), with both complaints asserting packaging patents acquired from Broadcom. In its other campaign, which concerns a single patent from the same source and generally related to “inserting dummy metal into a circuit design”, Bell Semic upped the number of district court defendants to include ams-OSRAM (3:22-cv-11857), MACOM Technology Solutions (1:22-cv-11290), Maxlinear (3:22-cv-01178), OmniVision Technologies (8:22-cv-01512), Silicon Laboratories (1:22-cv-11292), and Skyworks Solutions (1:22-cv-11291). Each defendant is accused of infringement through the provision of various semiconductor devices that are manufactured using certain design tools provided by Cadence Design Systems, Siemens, and/or Synopsys. This burst of activity follows a late July initial determination to grant a motion to terminate an International Trade Commission (ITC) investigation that had been instituted based on an April 2022 complaint asserting the same “dummy metal” patent.

Acacia Research Corporation released its second quarter financial results this week, reporting over $8M in IP revenue and a repayment of $50M in notes to hedge fund Starboard Value (to which Acacia paid another $55M in notes subsequent to the end of Q2). Finalized in early 2020, Acacia’s partnership with Starboard—which was followed by a marked increase in Acacia’s acquisition and assertion of patents—will now be revisited and possibly expanded, according to CEO Clifford Press. Meanwhile, Acacia’s litigation campaign asserting former Yahoo patents saw a flurry of activity during the second quarter.

In early June, Jaspal Singh Hare filed a complaint in the Eastern District of Texas against Sanjay Pant, one of the three founders of prolific monetization firm IP Edge LLC, claiming breach of contract, fraud, intentional interference with an existing contract, wrongful interference with prospective contractual or business relationship, and conspiracy. Pant has responded to the complaint with a motion to dismiss, arguing that it repeatedly conflates Singh Hare with a former law firm and Pant with IP Edge and/or the patentholder that engaged its services, further noting that “[t]he adage that ‘a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client’ is the product of years of experience by seasoned litigators”.

Allied Telesis (1:22-cv-01010) is the latest defendant to be added to the sole litigation campaign of Vector Licensing LLC, an entity apparently associated with Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC. In the new complaint, filed in the District of Delaware, the NPE targets the provision of networking devices, including the TQ6602 access point, that support the 802.11ax wireless networking standard.

Omnitek Partners LLC has initiated a second litigation campaign, suing Samsung (6:22-cv-00844) over a single patent generally related to “a communication bus as a portion of a casing”. The accused products are Samsung’s Galaxy smartwatches, with the plaintiff alleging willful infringement based on purported notice given in April 2020. Omnitek’s prior campaign targeted automotive navigation technology, involving nine defendants, the majority of them automakers, in litigation between May 2020 and August 2021.

So far in 2022, Sockeye Licensing TX LLC has brought the number of defendants in its media casting campaign close to 75, suing Airtame, C&A IP Holdings (C&A Martketing), Fujitsu, Lumitrix, Vantop (Shenzhen Vantop Technology & Innovation), StarTech.com, ViewSonic, Walmart, Yaber Technologies, and, most recently, in July, HP (6:22-cv-00791) and L3Harris (Titan Company) (6:22-cv-00762). Two patents—broadly related to controlling “display devices” with a mobile device to download or view a video—have been asserted across these latest complaints, with devices (e.g., Chromebooks for HP and certain TVs for Titan) targeted. Titan is new to this litigation campaign, but HP was one of the original defendants, sued as part of a large group in October 2015.

Inventor-controlled Innovaport LLC (f/k/a PatentBank LLC) has expanded its sole litigation campaign, suing Target (3:22-cv-00425) in the Western District of Wisconsin. The plaintiff asserts four patents generally related to providing, through a mobile device, the location information of a product within a store. Since launching this campaign in June 2021, Innovaport has sued three defendants, targeting the provision of mobile apps and websites that support features for informing customers of both the availability and location of products within certain retail stores.

Heritage IP LLC and Mallard IP LLC, both plaintiffs apparently associated with Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC, filed suits at the end of July, continuing their joint campaign over former Cypress Semiconductor patents. Heritage IP sued Rand McNally (RM Acquisition) (1:22-cv-01019) and ZiLOG (1:22-cv-01020) over the provision of devices that incorporate certain ARM Cortex M0-based microcontrollers with dynamic power management capabilities, including logging devices and microcontrollers, respectively. Mallard IP hit Advantech (1:22-cv-03959) over the provision of the DS-082 Player and Fujitsu (2:22-cv-00289) over the provision of the PRIMERGY GX2460 server, each of which incorporates DDR4 SDRAM.