Finjan Holdings, Inc. has hit another stumbling block in its infringement suit against Juniper Networks, just over six months after District Judge William Alsup ruled that the NPE’s litigation conduct had rendered the case “exceptional” under Octane. On July 26, Judge Alsup adopted the recommendation of a special master and awarded Juniper $5.9M in attorney fees, nearly all of what the defendant had originally sought. Judge Alsup also declined to impose sanctions against the plaintiff, though he emphasized that there had still been “improper conduct by Finjan and its counsel”—adding that his ruling “[i]n no way . . . vindicate[s]” the conduct of the NPE’s attorneys.

HCL Technologies, together with subsidiary HCL America (2:21-cv-00259), has asked the Eastern District of Texas for declaratory judgments of noninfringement, through provision of its HCL WebSphere Commerce e-commerce platform, and invalidity of three patents held by CXT Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of publicly traded Quest Patent Research Corporation (QPRC). Those three patents have been at issue throughout CXT’s litigation campaign, begun in April 2018, including in complaints filed separately against Advance Auto Parts, Costco, IKEA, Sherwin-Williams, and V.F. Corporation in the same district.

M4siz Limited has initiated litigation over a single patent generally related to a search engine that “triggers parsing” of a “request string” when an error is detected before returning results, suing Costco (6:21-cv-00760), Home Depot (6:21-cv-00763), Kohl’s (6:21-cv-00764), and Walgreen (6:21-cv-00747) in the Western District of Texas. The complaints accuses each defendant of infringement through the provision of features within the search option on its e-commerce website for identifying and correcting misspelled search terms before returning results.

u-blox has filed a declaratory judgment action in the Southern District of California against Koninklijke KPN N.V. (3:21-cv-01220), a telecommunications provider based in the Netherlands, asserting various claims related to KPN’s alleged failure to license its standard essential patents related to 2G, 3G, and 4G cellular technology on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. In January of this year, KPN fired off a round of new suits—against u-blox, as well as against Acer, BLU Products, Bullitt Group, Xiaomi, and Yulong Computer Telecommunications Scientific Company (Coolpad Technologies)—in the District of Delaware, where recent dismissals have left only a case between KPN and HTC still headed toward trial there.

Earlier this month, IPValue Management, Inc. (d/b/a IPValue) announced that it had acquired over 1,200 patent assets from the display business unit of Mitsubishi Electric. While that transaction is not yet reflected in currently available USPTO records, the recordation of another recent Mitsubishi Electric divestment to an NPE has just cropped up among assignment data. Meanwhile, Arigna Technology Limited, a hedge fund-backed NPE under the Atlantic IP Services Limited umbrella, has taken one of its multiple campaigns asserting former Mitsubishi Electric patents to the International Trade Commission (ITC).

Jury selection for the earliest cases filed by telecommunications equipment manufacturer Estech Systems, Inc., in April 2020, is slated for August 2 in the courtroom of District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. The defendants in that consolidated action—BBVA, BOKF, Hilltop Holdings (PlainsCapital Bank), Target, and Wells Fargo—have filed a second motion for summary judgment of noninfringement, arguing “license and release” under an apparent agreement between Estech and Microsoft. Meanwhile, Cisco (together with subsidiary Cisco Technology) has sued Estech, also in the Eastern District of Texas, asserting affirmative patent infringement claims, as well as seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of four VoIP patents held by Estech.

ACQIS LLC has filed expanded its sole litigation campaign, begun in 2009, with a new case against Acer (2:21-cv-00275) in the Eastern District of Texas. Cases from a round filed last fall—against ASUSTek, Inventec, Lenovo, MiTAC, Samsung, and Wistron—remain in early stages, while a prior suit, filed against Dell (EMC) in the Eastern District of Texas but transferred to the District of Massachusetts, was just dismissed, District Judge Allison D. Burroughs granting EMC’s motion for summary judgment of noninfringement of all claims from eight asserted patents. The court did so principally because the accused products do not comply with the PCI Local Bus Specification, as Judge Burroughs ruled is required under the court’s construction of a key claim term.

AlmondNet, Inc., together with its subsidiary Intent IQ, LLC, have sued Roku (6:21-cv-00731) over the provision of its OneView advertisement platform, targeting a variety of certain data collection and advertisement methods; in a separate suit, Roku has filed a declaratory judgment complaint against AlmondNet and Intent IQ (1:21-cv-01035), seeking a judgment of noninfringement (of the same patents) by the same OneView advertisement platform. Both lawsuits were filed on July 15, AlmondNet’s in the Western District of Texas; Roku’s, in the District of Delaware.

Inventor-controlled Xennial IP LLC has sued Alphabet (Fitbit) (1:21-cv-01051) and Hidrate (1:21-cv-01050) in the District of Delaware and Apple (5:21-cv-01405) in the Northern District of Ohio. The plaintiff targets provision of the Hidrate Spark STEEL and/or the Hidrate Spark 3 smart water bottles and featured integration capabilities through the defendants’ wrist activity trackers, including the Apple Watch and FitBit. Two patents generally directed to a “communicative sports water bottle” equipped with a display and sensors have been asserted in each case.

Giga-Byte Technology (6:21-cv-00719), Hon Hai Precision Industry (Sharp) (6:21-cv-00733), and Micro-Star International (6:21-cv-00732) are the latest defendants to be added to the sole litigation campaign that Digital Cache, LLC launched in February 2021. The plaintiff asserts a single patent received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), generally related to “overwriting nonvolatile memory data”, with the defendants targeted over laptops with solid-state drives (SSDs)—manufactured by Kingston Technologies (Micro-Star), Samsung (Sharp), and Transcend Information (Giga-Byte)—that support the TRIM command and garbage collection features.