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Acacia Kicks Off Third 2020 Campaign, With a Major Venue Ruling and a Disputed Portfolio Marking Other Efforts
New Patent Litigation
Semiconductor Connections LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded NPE Acacia Research Corporation, has filed its first litigation, asserting a single patent, generally related to semiconductor fabrication, against TSMC (6:20-cv-00109) in a new Western District of Texas complaint. The plaintiff pleads that it is the exclusive licensee of the patent-in-suit, the most recent owner of which is identified in currently available USPTO assignment records as German research institution Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. At issue is TSMC’s provision of certain semiconductor devices, including the “Xilinx Virtex-7 2000T and H580T FPGAs manufactured by TSMC, and all TSMC semiconductor devices, integrated circuits, and products manufactured at the 28nm technology nodes or other process nodes in the same or similar manner”.
February 14, 2020
One IPVal Entity Opens Up Second Litigation Campaign as Another Receives a Portfolio of Patents from Sharp
New Patent Litigation, NPE
Terrestrial Comms LLC, an entity associated with Texas monetization firm IPValuation Partners, LLC (d/b/a IPVal), has launched a second litigation campaign from a portfolio of wireless communications and mobile devices patents received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) in December 2018. The NPE has asserted subsets of six of those patents against ACCO Brands (6:20-cv-00097), Best Buy (6:20-cv-00106), NEC (6:20-cv-00096), and Perixx Computer (6:20-cv-00105) in complaints filed last week in the Western District of Texas. The accused products include wireless keyboard and mouse combination products provided by ACCO, Best Buy, and Perixx; NEC’s MultiPresenter Stick; and NEC’s SL1100 telephone systems.
February 14, 2020
Endpoint IP’s Tactus Technologies Tags Third Mobile Device Maker
New Patent Litigation
Tactus Technologies LLC, an entity associated with Texas monetization firm Endpoint IP LLC, has filed suit against Samsung (2:20-cv-00035), alleging infringement of the same patent—generally related to a mobile device authentication system that uses “user-defined” touch gestures—previously asserted against LG Electronics (LGE) and ZTE. The plaintiff again targets the Pattern Lock feature offered by Android mobile devices.
February 14, 2020
As 2020 Ramps Up, Rothschild Quickly Adds Defendants and Launches 20th Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Throughout the last few years, prolific inventor and patent plaintiff Leigh M. Rothschild has consistently remained one of the top filers of NPE litigation. 2019 was no different. Last year saw over 160 defendants added to campaigns launched by plaintiffs associated with Rothschild, the campaigns spanning a wide range of technologies and now involving suits filed (and typically litigated in file-and-settle fashion) in myriad districts. A quick glance at the plaintiff’s early 2020 filings suggest that this year will see more of the same.
February 14, 2020
Mobile Navigation Campaign Gains Steam in the Western District of Texas
New Patent Litigation
Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (6:20-cv-00100) and TomTom (6:20-cv-00112) have become the latest defendants in the new campaign launched last week by NavBlazer, LLC over two GPS vehicle navigation patents. Suits against Apple, LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung remain active, with NavBlazer targeting all of the defendants in the Western District of Texas over the provision of devices equipped with GPS and road navigation apps that account for traffic conditions (i.e., for Apple, various iPhones and iPads together with Apple Maps; for Lenovo, LGE, and Samsung, various Android mobile devices with the Google Maps app; and for TomTom, GPS devices, in-dash software and hardware, and mobile apps that incorporate navigation features).
February 14, 2020
Neodrón Adds New Defendants and Patents to Touchscreen Campaign, While Hitting Existing Defendants Again
New Patent Litigation
Neodrón Limited has further expanded its touchscreen litigation campaign over patents acquired from Microchip. Already in suit were 14 such patents, asserted in overlapping sets in district court cases and in an action before the International Trade Commission (ITC) against Amazon, Dell, HP, Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), Microsoft, and Samsung. A new round of filings has added four more former Microchip patents, asserted in various combinations against existing campaign defendants Amazon (6:20-cv-00115), Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (3:20-cv-01179), Microsoft (6:20-cv-00119), and Samsung (6:20-cv-00121), and against new defendants Apple (6:20-cv-00116), ASUSTek (6:20-cv-00117), LG Electronics (LGE) (6:20-cv-00118), and Sony (6:20-cv-00122)—and a new complaint over those four patents has also been filed with the ITC (337-TA-3435).
February 14, 2020
New Slingshot Entity Picks Up Remaining Daedalus Group Patents, Acquired from IBM
Patent Market, Patent Watch
The bulk of a large tranche of patents that Daedalus Group LLC picked up from IBM last fall was assigned to Daedalus Blue LLC in late January. A day later, the remainder of those assets—many of them generally related to various aspects of self-driving vehicles—was transferred to Slingshot IOT LLC, a Maryland entity created one week earlier. Daedalus Blue has already begun litigating its portion of that portfolio; given its apparent origins, Slingshot IOT may not lag by much.
February 14, 2020
Kewazinga’s Restarted Campaign over “Telepresence” Patents, Already Underway Against Microsoft, Hits Google
New Patent Litigation
Kewazinga Corp. has resumed litigation against Alphabet (Google) (1:20-cv-01106), asserting in a new complaint three patents generally related to a camera array that captures adjacent fields of view and “stitches” them together in a mosaic-like image so that the entire environment can be viewed in a seamless, panoramic view. The plaintiff targets the provision of Google Maps, the Google Street View feature of which allows users to simulate “movement along a path”. Kewazinga’s suit against Google joins a May 2018 case against Microsoft in the Southern District of New York, filed four months after a security interest in the asserted patents was granted to a “leading global alternative asset management firm”.
February 13, 2020
Google Servers Do Not Establish Venue, Federal Circuit Holds—Rejecting Another Gilstrap Venue Rule
Top Insight
The US Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in TC Heartland significantly changed the distribution of patent suits through its ruling that a corporation “resides” for venue purposes in its state of incorporation. However, tension remained over the other, unaffected prong of the patent venue statute, under which venue is proper in part where a defendant “has a regular and established place of business”. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas has since pushed an expansive reading of that prong, holding in 2018 (in Seven Networks v. Google) that certain Google servers maintained in an ISP data center were enough to establish venue. A subsequent decision with the same rationale has now been rejected by the Federal Circuit, which on February 13 held in In re: Google (2019-0126) that the “regular, physical presence of an employee or other agent of the defendant conducting the defendant’s business” is required “at the alleged ‘place of business’”. This decision is not the first in which the Federal Circuit has rebuffed an attempt by Judge Gilstrap to push a broad interpretation of that statutory prong.
February 13, 2020
Buoyed by a String of Victories and Settlements, QPRC’s Campaign Targeting E-Commerce Retailers Heads to Trial
Patent Litigation Feature, TPLF
Quest Patent Research Corporation’s (QPRC’s) CXT Systems, Inc. campaign, which since 2018 has hit 15 retailers over patents received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), has seen a number of interesting developments over the past six months. Ahead of CXT’s trial against J.C. Penney, scheduled to commence on February 18 in the Eastern District of Texas, a recently issued order on motions in limine will catch the eye of those following the debate over disclosure of third-party litigation funding. Meanwhile, a review of QPRC’s SEC filings shed light on the NPE’s possible returns on its enforcement efforts.
February 12, 2020