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New Networking Campaign Opened in the Western District of Texas
New Patent Litigation
Commstech LLC, a Texas entity under the management of Hao Ni of Ni, Wang and Massand PLLC, received a portfolio of nine US patents from Harris Corporation last fall. The NPE has now asserted six of those patents in a new Western District of Texas suit against Cisco (6:19-cv-00296). The patents generally relate to network traffic management and memory management, with infringement allegations focused on Cisco’s provision of router operating systems, certain network devices running them, and related products.
May 15, 2019
DRM Vectors Expands Delaware Campaign
New Patent Litigation
DRM Vectors, LLC has added a case against Rakuten (d/b/a Overdrive) (1:19-cv-00878) to the campaign that it began last month with suits asserting the same patent against Alphabet (Google), Barnes & Noble, Lulu Enterprises, Microsoft, and Oracle. The patent broadly concerns a digital rights management (DRM) system that provides content from an “order server” and verifies content access privileges using an authentication server. Overdrive is accused of infringement through the exercise of DRM within its Media Console.
May 14, 2019
NPE’s Filing Pattern in Sudden Reverse as Federal Circuit Holds That Letter-Writing Campaign Is Sufficient to Establish Venue
Patent Litigation Feature
Multiple Delaware NPEs under the same apparent control have each taken over the litigation of patents—earlier passed to a Texas entity for assertion—after the patents have boomeranged back. Most recently, Circuit Ventures LLC assigned a family of circuit monitoring patents to Texas entity Wireless Monitoring Systems LLC, which asserted them in litigation from November 2016 to January 2019 before assigning the family back. Circuit Ventures has sued NXP Semiconductors (6:19-cv-00275) and Pepprl + Fuchs (4:19-cv-01515) in April 2019 and Honeywell (1:19-cv-00857), Link Interactive (1:19-cv-00856), and Scout Security (1:19-cv-00858) so far in May. Likewise, Universal Cipher LLC assigned a single patent generally related to “dynamic” text generation to Cumberland Systems, LLC, which asserted it in litigation from May 2017 to May 2018 before returning the patent to Universal Cipher, which has now sued Best Buy (2:19-cv-00160), Target (2:19-cv-00163), and Wal-Mart (2:19-cv-00164) over it. These reversals, as well as other assignment activity, suggest a return to Delaware for these and other NPEs affiliated with the same patent attorney, perhaps motivated by a recent Federal Circuit opinion clarifying that targets of letter-writing campaigns can seek declaratory judgments in their home districts, rather than risk being sued elsewhere.
May 13, 2019
California Judge Delivers Blow to Wireless Communications Campaign Days After Conversant Doubles Down Against LG Electronics in Texas
Patent Litigation Feature
Last week, District Judge Nathanael M. Cousins of the Northern District of California dealt Conversant Wireless Licensing S.à.r.l. (f/k/a Core Wireless Licensing S.a.r.l.) another blow in its long-running litigation campaign over former Nokia patents. An August 2018 Federal Circuit opinion upset an earlier jury verdict and judgment that Apple had infringed two Conversant patents, for which the jury had awarded $7.3M in damages. The appeals court reversed the jury’s finding of infringement as to one patent and vacated the trial court’s determination that the other patent was not unenforceable due to a failure to disclose to a related standard-setting body. On remand, Judge Cousins granted the motion for unenforceability, entering judgment in Apple’s favor. Meanwhile, in Texas, Conversant filed a new case against LG Electronics (LGE) (2:19-cv-00142) over patents at the heart of a recent win before a jury there, the new complaint targeting subsequently released LGE products.
May 12, 2019
Longhorn HD Files First Litigation from a Portfolio of Cloud Security Patents Divested by IV
Patent Market, Patent Watch
In March 2019, Virtual Watchdog Solutions, LLC, an entity created in Delaware in June 2018, assigned to Longhorn HD LLC 14 patents that it had received from several affiliates of Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) last July. The patents broadly relate to various aspects of networking (gateways, network security, mobile-VPNs, failure detection, etc.), the patents sourced prior to acquisition by IV from multiple different companies, including IP Dynamics, Ensim, OKI Electric, SteelCloud, Xerox, and individual inventors. Longhorn HD wasted little time asserting the first of these assets in litigation, suing Fortinet (2:19-cv-00124) in the Eastern District of Texas over five of them in mid-April. The new campaign is Longhorn HD’s second to date.
May 12, 2019
Kannuu Asserts Smart TV and DVD Search Patents in New Suit
New Patent Litigation
Kannuu Pty Ltd., an Australian company, has filed suit against various subsidiaries of Samsung (1:19-cv-04297) in the Southern District of New York over three patents from a seven-member family generally related to selecting an item from a database, as well as a fourth patent not related by prosecution but of similar subject matter. The complaint targets the provision of certain search functionality on various smart TVs and Blu-ray DVD players. Kannuu also pleads breach of a nondisclosure agreement between the parties, based on the recitation of a history of interactions between the companies, beginning in 2012.
May 11, 2019
In Wake of Global Resolution with Samsung, Xperi Chip Fabrication and Packing Campaign Alive with New Suit
New Patent Litigation
Invensas Corporation and Tessera Advanced Technologies, Inc. (TATI), both subsidiaries of publicly traded Xperi Corporation, have together filed suit in the District of Delaware against NVIDIA (1:19-cv-00861), alleging infringement of five patents generally related to semiconductor fabrication and packaging. The new complaint targets the provision of a large number of semiconductor products, including 40nm Fermi GPUs, 28nm Kepler GPUs, 28nm Maxwell GPUs, 16nm Pascal GPUs, 28nm Tegra K1 systems-on-chips (SoCs) (which allegedly incorporate 28nm Kepler GPUs), 20nm Tegra X1 SoCs (which allegedly incorporate 20nm Maxwell GPUs), and Tesla GPUs. Xperi’s last forays into litigation were global efforts, with a worldwide set of disputes against Broadcom ending in 2017 and a worldwide set of disputes against Samsung ending this past December.
May 11, 2019
Judge Alsup Orders Unsealing of Fortress-Uniloc Licensing Info in Apple Suit, Seeking to “Police” the “Litigation Gimmick” of “Bloated” Royalty Demands
Top Insight
Late last year, a battle over standing unfolded in litigation between Apple and Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited (Uniloc). Apple had moved to dismiss four of the NPE’s cases against it after learning of a complex set of agreements between Uniloc and Fortress Investment Group LLC, asserting that Uniloc’s purported “defaults” under those agreements had deprived it of standing by shifting certain rights in the asserted patents to Fortress. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California denied that motion in January, and Apple’s motion for reconsideration of that order remains pending. Now, a related, parallel dispute over confidentiality has come to a head: Judge Alsup has ruled, for the second time, that Uniloc has sought to withhold too much information about its agreements with Fortress, its prior licenses, and other related documents, declining to reconsider his earlier denial of the NPE’s first request to seal and rejecting its attempt to seek a more limited set of redactions. Judge Alsup cited the inherent public interest in learning information on patent ownership, licensing, and related standing issues as well as Uniloc’s failure to seek more limited relief in the first instance.
May 10, 2019
NPE Relaunches Campaign with Two Patents Arising from Reissue Applications Filed after Earlier IPR Invalidations
New Patent Litigation
In February of this year, the USPTO issued to Wildcat Licensing WI LLC two patents that the NPE obtained based on reissue applications filed after their earlier predecessors were invalidated through inter partes review (IPR). Wildcat Licensing WI began litigating those prior patents in May 2013 in a campaign that appeared to close in December 2016 when the Federal Circuit affirmed the cancellation of all challenged claims through two IPRs brought by district court defendant Johnson Controls. That closure, however, has proved only temporary; Wildcat Licensing WI has now rebooted its campaign, filing suit against BMW (1:19-cv-00834), Faurecia (1:19-cv-00839), Fiat Chrysler (FCA US, FCA Italy) (1:19-cv-00840), Ford (1:19-cv-00842), GM (1:19-cv-00843), Lear (1:19-cv-00845), Magna International (1:19-cv-00846), and TATA (Jaguar Land Rover) (1:19-cv-00844), and Volkswagen (Audi) (1:19-cv-00833). The two asserted reissue patents are described as “encompass[ing] core technology in the field of assembling articles of manufacture”; infringement allegations focus on the provision of vehicles and automotive components manufactured using methods that “perform error free fastening or error-proofing automated assembly”.
May 10, 2019
Mobile Device Display Backlights Targeted in New IPVal Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Kamino LLC, a recently formed affiliate of IPValuation Partners, LLC (d/b/a IPVal), has kicked off a litigation campaign over a single patent generally related to a light-conducting plate for an LCD backlight. The new complaints accuse F5cs (5:19-cv-00057), Panasonic (5:19-cv-00058), and Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies) (5:19-cv-00056) of infringement through the provision of mobile devices, calling out certain features of the display backlights for the Panasonic Toughpad, the Fusion5 10.1 Inch Tablet PC, and Coolpad’s Defiant smartphone and Rogue tablet.
May 9, 2019