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Irish NPE Takes Aim at OLED Display Panels
New Patent Litigation
Solas OLED Limited, an NPE formed in Ireland in March 2016, has filed suit against LG Display, LG Electronics (LGE), and Sony (6:19-cv-00236), targeting OLED (“organic light-emitting diode”) display panels made by LG Display and incorporated into televisions made by LGE and Sony. A single patent, received from the University of Stuttgart and generally related to a “driving circuit” for “image points” on an OLED screen, is asserted in the complaint. Solas OLED, an affiliate of Data Scape Limited, another Irish NPE with an ongoing litigation campaign, touts a worldwide portfolio of patents purportedly covering “all critical areas of OLED structures, display design/architecture, and driver circuitry”.
April 1, 2019
New Plaintiff, a Likely Family Affair, Files Suit over “Adaptive Communications” Patents
New Patent Litigation
Recently formed SRK Technology LLC has filed its first lawsuit, accusing Snap (2:19-cv-02515) of infringing two related patents broadly directed to selecting, on a “communication device”, a recording “communication mode” based on the duration for which a certain user “interface element” of an application is activated. SRK Technology’s infringement allegations take aim at Snap’s mobile app, targeting its camera interface feature where a tap of the record button captures a photo snap while a hold of the button records a video snap.
April 1, 2019
Alice Ruling Ends VoIP-Pal.com Cases Against Apple, AT&T, Twitter, Verizon
Patent Litigation Feature
The sole litigation campaign of VoIP-Pal.com, Inc. has hit another snag. District Judge Lucy H. Koh has ended the Northern District of California cases that the publicly traded NPE filed against Apple, AT&T, Twitter, and Verizon with a March 25, 2019 order invalidating the asserted claims of both patents-in-suit under Alice. Judge Koh characterized the patents as generally related to “the process of routing calls (either voice or video) between a caller and a callee, in which calls are classified as either public network calls or private network calls”, adopting the parties’ division of the asserted claims into “multi-network claims” and “single network claims” before choosing a representative claim for each category. Her order culminates in the invalidation of both the “multi-network” and “single network” claims as patent-ineligibly drawn to the abstract idea of “routing a call based on characteristics of the caller and callee”.
March 31, 2019
Phalanx of IP Edge Affiliates Swells, Asserting More Former Siemens Patents
New Patent Litigation
Blueprint IP Solutions LLC and Cassiopeia IP LLC have become the latest affiliates of IP Edge LLC to litigate patents that the Texas monetization firm acquired from Siemens last October. Blueprint IP has sued Fortinet (1:19-cv-00577), Hitachi (Hitachi Vantara) (1:19-cv-00579), HP Enterprise (HPE) (1:19-cv-00578), NetApp (1:19-cv-00580), Oracle (1:19-cv-00581), and Talend (1:19-cv-00582) over a former Siemens patent generally related to a redundant and “geographically separate” pair of “switching systems” where a “monitoring unit” keeps one switching system active and the other in a “hot-standby” mode, and switches the latter into active mode when the former loses network communications. Meanwhile, Cassiopeia IP has filed suit against HPE (Aruba Networks) (1:19-cv-00593), China Huaxin Post & Telecommunication Economy Development Center (Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise) (1:19-cv-00599), and Western Digital (1:19-cv-00594), also in Delaware, but over a former Siemens patent broadly directed to a system that enables the use of network services by detecting all usable services and entering them on a “blackboard”.
March 31, 2019
Chinese Tech Company Squares Off with Portuguese Inventor in US Court: Media Paints Dispute as a Modern David v. Goliath, but Questions Remain
Top Insight
Disputes over patent infringement frequently spill into the courts, but sometimes parties seek to bolster their chances—and their leverage—by litigating such disagreements in the court of public opinion. This has been the case for a recent dispute involving Huawei and a Portuguese inventor, Rui Pedro Oliveira, who has alleged that the company has infringed his patents through the provision of its EnVizion 360, a 360-degree smartphone camera accessory. After Huawei declined to take a license, Oliveira allegedly sold his family home to afford a US patent attorney in order to further pursue his case—and through a series of interviews with news outlets not traditionally focused on patent law, has received favorable media coverage portraying him as the underdog. However, Huawei has now pushed back with a declaratory judgment suit, alleging that Oliveira has used the threat of further negative media coverage as leverage to force a settlement. Meanwhile, an analysis of recent media coverage reveals certain key misconceptions about patent law, while questions remain as to the actual merits of Oliveira’s infringement case.
March 31, 2019
Zelle Digital Payments Network Targeted in Latest Grecia Complaints
New Patent Litigation
Inventor William Grecia has followed up a November 2018 wave of lawsuits against carriers Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), SoftBank (Sprint), and Verizon over their provision of Samsung Galaxy phones using Samsung Pay, with a new wave of cases against financial institutions. Bank of New York Mellon (1:19-cv-02810), Citibank (1:19-cv-02811), Morgan Stanley (1:19-cv-02811), and TIAA Bank (1:19-cv-02812) are each accused of infringing a single Grecia patent broadly directed to user authentication for digital content stored in a cloud; at issue are payment transfer services using the Zelle digital payments network, which was founded by a group of US financial institutions.
March 30, 2019
Prolific Inventor Assigns “Nano” Portfolio to Red Dragon’s Rondevoo, Three Other Patents to Red Dragon’s Eloqui Voice Systems
Patent Market, Patent Watch
On March 21, 2019, individual inventor Bao Tran assigned to California entity Rondevoo Technologies, LLC a portfolio that includes 16 US patents generally related to “nano” sensors, circuit elements, packaging, and genetic engineering. That same day, Tran assigned to Eloqui Voice Systems, LLC (EVS) a set of three US patents, two of them generally pertaining to speech recognition systems, and the third, to a “smart system powered by a light socket”. Both Rondevoo and EVS can be traced through Red Dragon Innovations, LLC to attorney Daniel C. Cotman of Cotman IP. With both Rondevoo and EVS already in litigation, over patents acquired separately, these latest transfers suggest that more campaigns or cases may be coming.
March 30, 2019
Marathon Reports 2018 Financials, Additional Details About Its Arrangement with Fortress
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Marathon Patent Group, Inc. released its 2018 year-end financials on March 25, revealing just $2.6M in cash on hand as of December 31. Marathon’s 10-K also sheds new light on the NPE’s arrangements with Fortress Investment Group LLC, to which Marathon relinquished a portfolio of patents in 2017, including one now being litigated by Fortress against Amazon.
March 29, 2019
Smartphone Makers Both Exit and Enter Special Character Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Rondevoo Technologies, LLC has added a case against HMD Global and Nokia (1:19-cv-00595) to its litigation campaign over a single patent that generally pertains to “clustering” keys on an input device, such as a telephone keypad or computer keyboard, to facilitate selection entry. The NPE has targeted the ability to enter alternate (e.g., accented) characters through the keypads of certain Android smartphones in complaints filed earlier against HTC, LG Electronics (LGE), Sony, and ZTE, calling out the Nokia 9 PureView in its latest complaint. The case against Sony was dismissed without prejudice (before an answer was filed) in January 2019, while the ZTE suit was dismissed in March, with prejudice in light of a settlement after the defendant answered. HTC has also answered, while the court granted LGE an extension of the deadline to respond Rondevoo’s complaint.
March 29, 2019
Lyft and Uber Hit for a Second Week Running, This Set of Complaints over a Patent Received from Sisvel
New Patent Litigation
With new suits filed against Lyft (1:19-cv-00566) and Uber (1:19-cv-00561), the number of litigation campaigns initiated by Blackbird Tech LLC (d/b/a Blackbird Technologies) since September 2014 has reached two dozen. These most recent complaints accuse the ride-sharing companies of infringing a single patent—generally related to a system for vehicle guidance where logged-in vehicles are each separately identified and that provides navigation to one or more destinations and utilizes traffic information to update routes—through provision of the Lyft Driver app and Uber Driver app, respectively, as well as related services and software, with their specialized vehicle navigation features at issue. Last week was the second in a row to see a new campaign hit both Lyft and Uber.
March 28, 2019