The EU’s Unified Patent Court (UPC) has delivered its first judgment in a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) case. On November 22, the court’s Mannheim Local Division (Mannheim LD) issued an infringement ruling and imposed an injunction in litigation filed by standard essential patent (SEP) owner Panasonic against implementer Oppo. The decision confirms that the UPC has jurisdiction over FRAND counterclaims and takes a deep dive into the proper application of Huawei v. ZTE, the seminal 2015 decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that laid out guidelines for SEP licensing negotiations. On multiple key points, the Mannheim LD diverged from positions taken by the European Commission, which in April pushed for a more rigid application of Huawei in an amicus brief filed in an unrelated German national court appeal.

In connection with the acquisition of a large portfolio of patent assets from Avaya earlier this year, Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC CEO David Pridham reportedly predicted, “We expect to have over 20,000 patents by the end of the year”, while also expressing that “[n]inety percent of [Dominion’s] deals are done without litigation”, litigating only “when we have to”. Apparently, the Texas monetization firm “had to”, filing a pair of September 2024 suits against Comcast over a subset of the former Avaya assets; meanwhile, Dominion more recently inched closer to its predicted year-end patent holdings mark, another of its Texas entities picking up roughly 100 wireless communications patents at the end of October.

In early October, five entities recorded a security interest in the patents each respectively holds, naming as the secured party the same Delaware LLC, with a name suggestive of the involvement of third-party litigation funding. Two of the entities launched litigation later in October, one of them already had active litigation underway, the sole case of a fourth closed back in 2012, and the fifth one does not appear ever to have litigated a patent—yet.

On November 22, 2024, an Eastern District of Texas jury returned another verdict for Netlist, this one awarding the plaintiff a combined $118M for the infringement of three memory patents, this time by Samsung. The bulk of the award is associated with a single patent claim that was canceled in an April 17, 2024 final written decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Most ($425M worth) of a $445M verdict from earlier this year, against Micron Technology, stems from that same patent; the judgment based on that prior verdict, as well as the final written decision from the PTAB, are now on appeal.

USPTO assignment records recently made public contain various other patent transfers worth noting, beyond the grant of security interests by five patent holders to the same secured party and the apparent construction of a new patent portfolio by Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC. Among them is a pair of transfers from an operating company to a recently formed Delaware entity suggestively located, the move of a single patent from a set of named inventors to an entity tied to a relatively new entrant to the monetization scene, and assignments from various sources, including a university, to an established monetization team.

UMBRA Technologies (US) Inc., UMBRA Technologies Ltd., and UMBRA Technologies Limited (CN) have filed a District of Delaware complaint against Juniper Networks (1:24-cv-01288). The coplaintiffs target the provision of network virtualization products and services with three patents, one familiar to this campaign and two making their litigation debut. The familiar patent has survived reexamination, with the patentability of all claims confirmed, and has (thus far) survived inter partes review (IPR), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) having declined to institute trial in response to a prior defendant’s petition.

Korea-based plaintiff International Semiconductor Group Co., Ltd. (ISG) has filed a complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC), naming as proposed respondents members Dell, HP, HP Enterprise (HPE), and Lenovo (337-TA-3785). The plaintiff targets with four wireless communications patents the provision of a wide array of wireless communication devices and components (e.g., computers, laptops, tablets, and wireless chipsets). It pleads that the domestic industry requirement is satisfied by the US activities of its licensee, Samsung.

On November 21, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act (PREVAIL Act), a legislative effort that, if passed into law, could effect significant changes to Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings.

Since mid-October, a plaintiff calling itself “NetMomentum LLC” has fired off five lawsuits, one against each of ASUSTek, Panasonic, Samsung, VTech Holdings, and Yealink Network Technology. In its complaints, all filed in the Eastern District of Texas, the plaintiff characterizes itself as a Delaware entity located at a New York, New York address. However, an assignment record recently made public by the USPTO has raised questions about the accuracy of those representations, perhaps calling into question the standing of this plaintiff, as characterized, to sue.  

Droplets, Inc. has filed a new round of cases, one against each of AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:24-cv-00967), Ford (2:24-cv-00968), Home Depot (2:24-cv-00969), and Walmart (2:24-cv-00970), all in the Eastern District of Texas. Asserted is a single patent, acknowledged to have expired in November 2021 and generally related to web-based app delivery. The complaints target the provision of “interactive functionalities” via the defendants’ respective mobile apps. This campaign, one of the oldest, began in 2006 and has seen two jury verdicts in favor of Droplets, most recently in a case filed against Yahoo! (together with others) back in September 2011.