VB Assets, LLC has filed an Eastern District of Texas complaint against Samsung (2:24-cv-00828), targeting the provision of the Bixby 2.0 voice assistant and supporting devices such as earbuds, home appliances, smartphones, smart watches, tablets, TVs, and more. The plaintiff previously asserted four of the six former VoiceBox patents appearing in the new complaint against Amazon, two of which were the partial subject of a District of Delaware verdict in VB Assets favor last November. A couple of weeks ago, District Judge Maryellen Noreika ruled on the parties’ posttrial motions in that case, trimming the jury’s running royalty award down from $46.7M to just over $40M based on a judgment as a matter of law that no reasonable jury could have found one of the four tried claims infringed. Characterizing itself as “ill-equipped to assess whether the jury’s awarded royalty rate would be an appropriate rate for the ongoing royalty”, the court asked for supplemental briefing concerning that calculation; VB Assets just made its submission.

A Western District of Texas trial has ended in Apple’s favor in litigation from inventor-controlled plaintiff Identity Security LLC (f/k/a Integrated Information Solutions Corporation). On October 4, a jury returned a verdict that the defendant had not infringed four patents through the provision of the Secure Enclave system-on-chip (SoC) incorporated in various Apple devices, including Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod, iMac iPhone, and iPad-series products, as well as devices that feature the Apple T2 Security Chip.

This past January, TP Lab, Inc. transferred nearly 30 US patents to New Mexico plaintiff Lab Technology LLC, which began suing over its received assets in May-June. Lab Technology filed separate complaints against 18 defendants, including Alphabet (Google), Amazon, AT&T, Bose, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, LG Electronics (LGE), Lyft, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung, Stryker, Verizon, and Zoom Video Communications, among others. Voluntary dismissals without prejudice ended some of those suits quickly, but now Lab Technology has refiled some complaints, again in the Eastern District of Texas, over the same respective patents, targeting the same respective accused products, against Amazon (2:24-cv-00829) and AT&T (2:24-cv-00830), perhaps signaling some circling back.

HBCU Messaging US LP (f/k/a Rembrandt Messaging Technologies II, LP), a subsidiary of the HBCU Technology Foundation, has accused Apple and Green Dot (1:24-cv-01199) of infringing seven mobile messaging patents in a single Western District of Texas complaint. Apple is accused of infringement through the provision of the Apple Cash service and supporting hardware (e.g., laptops, smartphones, and smart watches) and software (e.g., Apple’s Messages app and related servers/infrastructure) products, while Green Dot is targeted over the implementation of its payment technology in the Apple Cash service. This litigation is not the first between the plaintiff and Apple; the new complaint recounts in some detail the history of a German action filed against Apple (“and others”) in June 2015, an action that remains active today.

The EU’s Unified Patent Court (UPC) has played an increasingly important role in multijurisdictional patent disputes since its launch last June. While the court’s approach to various substantive and procedural issues has come into focus as its first batch of cases reach merits decisions, its handling of issues specific to disputes over fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing is still evolving. However, clarity could soon come for one such issue, as the UPC’s Mannheim Local Division has held the court’s first-ever FRAND hearing.

Lenovo (United States) Inc. (1:24-cv-01126), a US subsidiary of Lenovo, has filed suit against Universal Connectivity Technologies Inc. (UCT) in the District of Delaware. The Lenovo sub seeks declaratory judgments of noninfringement of the eight patents that UCT asserted against Lenovo (the Hong Kong parent) in a Eastern District of Texas complaint filed in late 2023. UCT also sued Dell and HP last year. Threshold issues have dominated each case: against Dell, the production of documents created by Stout Capital in connection with a valuation of the sale of Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN)’s monetization business; against HP, a convenience transfer to the Northern District of California (which occurred this past summer); and against Lenovo, the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the parent entity.

1LSS Inc. (d/b/a MagBak) has filed suit in the Central District of California against Apple (2:24-cv-08769), asserting a single patent generally related to using “magnetic material” to attach a wallet to a mobile device. Targeted is Apple’s provision of its MagSafe-series wallets, with the plaintiff pleading willful infringement based on an alleged communication concerning the alleged infringement as early as this past February.

PSLC LLC, a recently formed Wyoming plaintiff, has filed its first litigation, suing Generac Holdings (Generac Power Systems) (2:24-cv-01270) in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The three asserted patents are broadly directed to power load management, with Generac targeted over the provision of its “backup power sources and load management devices”, including the Generac PWRcell system and related products.

Last week, Intel filed a motion to show cause why VLSI Technology LLC’s recent statements (here and here) have not violated the standing orders of Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly related to corporate disclosure and third-party litigation funding. VLSI filed those statements concurrently with its own motion to dismiss, stay or transfer Intel’s Delaware declaratory judgment action to the Western District of Texas, where District Judge Alan D. Albright is considering the same parties’ submissions concerning whether Intel’s license defense (allegedly arising after Fortress Investment Group LLC acquired Finjan, Inc. in 2020) to VLSI’s patent infringement claims involves any issue for presentation to a jury. Intel argues that VLSI’s motion to dismiss, stay, or transfer should be denied without prejudice while the court focuses instead on compliance with its standing orders.

The third quarter of 2024 saw multiple funded NPEs launch new patent campaigns, with several funded plaintiffs also filing new cases in existing litigation campaigns. In addition, towards the end of the quarter, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas awarded a large verdict to a plaintiff funded by a prominent litigation finance firm.