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Website User Authentication Campaign Hits Facebook
New Patent Litigation
Facebook (4:19-cv-04355) has become the fifth defendant sued in the new litigation campaign of Utah plaintiff TransactionSecure, L.L.C., which hit DeviantArt, Fitbit, Microsoft (GitHub), and Stripe earlier in July. The defendants are accused of infringement through the use of the OAuth 2.0 protocol, a user authentication framework, on their respective websites, in this new case focusing on its use by Instagram. The asserted patent broadly concerns authenticating a user’s identity using a “trusted entity” with a repository that holds the user’s personal information.
July 30, 2019
Commstech Expands Networking Campaign over Some Former Harris Corporation Patents, Passes Others Along to Separate NPE
New Patent Litigation
Texas NPE Commstech LLC has followed up its Western District of Texas case against Cisco, filed in May 2019, with two July suits, one each against Allied Telesis (3:19-cv-04006), filed in the Northern District of California, and Juniper Networks (4:19-cv-00545), filed in the Eastern District of Texas. Three of the six patents asserted against Cisco, generally related to network traffic management and memory management, are at issue in the new complaints, with infringement allegations targeting networking products and related software. On July 26, Cisco filed an answer to the complaint against it.
July 27, 2019
Recently Recorded Assignments Include Two Semi Portfolio Acquisitions by Quarterhill, Perhaps Signaling New Litigation to Come
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Quarterhill Inc. acquired over 1,000 US assets from two major semiconductor foundries in late 2018/early 2019, according to USPTO records released this month. The transacted portfolios include patents originating with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), DB HiTek, GlobalFoundries, IBM, Renesas, and STMicro. While the assignments were executed in November 2018/January 2019, they were only recently recorded with the USPTO—possibly in preparation for litigation by Quarterhill.
July 26, 2019
Virtual Assistants at Issue in New Western District of Texas Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Parus Holdings, Inc. has launched its second litigation campaign, filing suit against Alphabet (Google) (6:19-cv-00433), Apple (6:19-cv-00432), LG Electronics (LGE) (6:19-cv-00437), and Samsung (6:19-cv-00438) over the provision of products that feature virtual assistants, including Bixby (as to Samsung), Google Assistant (as to Google, LGE, and Samsung) and Siri (as to Apple). The two asserted patents are homegrown and generally relate to using voice recognition to browse the Internet on a device. The first litigation campaign of Parus Holdings ran into an Alice buzz saw when District Judge Sue Robinson in the District of Delaware invalidated the patents asserted there, against banks, under Alice, a decision affirmed per curiam by the Federal Circuit in April 2017, roughly one year before the appellate court’s Berkheimer and Aatrix decisions raised questions about the propriety of early patent eligibility determinations.
July 26, 2019
Texas Judge Rejects Social Media Patent Under Alice Amidst Broader Downturn in Section 101 Invalidation Rates
Patent Litigation Feature
The Northern District of Texas has invalidated a social media patent asserted by NetSoc, LLC against IAC/InterActiveCorp (Humor Rainbow (d/b/a OKCupid), Match Group, PlentyOfFish Media), a relatively rare Alice ruling in a venue that has historically seen far less patent litigation than some of its sister districts. On July 22, District Judge David C. Godbey ruled that the sole patent-in-suit is ineligible as directed to the abstract idea of “presenting results of data collection and analysis” without the addition of an inventive concept. Judge Godbey’s ruling runs counter to a notable, recent shift in Section 101 invalidation rates—which have dropped significantly since the Federal Circuit’s February 2018 rulings in Berkheimer and Aatrix, as detailed in RPX’s recent second-quarter update.
July 26, 2019
3Dlabs Founders’ New Company Sues Sony over Game Streaming
New Patent Litigation
Sony (8:19-cv-01432) has been sued in the Central District of California by Intellectual Pixels Limited (IPL) over a family of patents originally developed at 3Dlabs, the cofounders of which control IPL. The four asserted patents generally relate to providing remote access to a graphics application, with IPL’s infringement allegations targeting Sony’s provision of the PlayStation Now gaming streaming service and the PlayStation Remote Play and Remote Play app streaming service, with underlying technologies developed by Gaikai and acquired by Sony in 2012. IPL’s complaint recounts the history of 3Dlabs, from independence as a “prominent develop of graphics processing units” through acquisition by Creative Technology in 2002, the plaintiff further pleading that “[a]lthough never commercialized by 3Dlabs or Creative, the concept of cloud gaming and streaming other graphics applications from a server or the cloud to a client device was considered one of the most valuable inventions developed by 3Dlabs”.
July 25, 2019
Akoloutheo Continues Targeting SaaS Products
New Patent Litigation
Last week saw a May 2019 case against Symantec follow the path of most defendants in Akoloutheo, LLC’s first litigation campaign: quick dismissal with prejudice (following a notice of settlement). However, the week also saw the NPE file a new suit in the Eastern District of Texas, against IBM (4:19-cv-00551), as it awaits a decision from District Judge Amos L. Mazzant whether to grant a motion to transfer filed in an earlier case there, against Thoughtspot, to the Northern District of California. Thoughtspot’s would be the second case in the campaign to persist meaningfully past the pleadings stage; a Texas suit filed roughly one year ago, against Blackrock (NetScout Systems), has proceeded into discovery, with a claim construction hearing before Judge Mazzant currently set for October 30 of this year.
July 24, 2019
After a Bit of a False Start, Campaign Targeting Cloud-Connected Mobile Devices Hits HP
New Patent Litigation
In mid-June, District Judge Richard G. Andrews granted a stipulation to dismiss, without prejudice, a case brought in the District of Delaware by SynKloud Technologies, LLC against BLU Products. The plaintiff has now brought a second case, asserting against HP (1:19-cv-01360) two of three patents that were briefly at issue in the prior case. Those patents broadly pertain to a wireless device that stores data on an external storage server, with infringement allegations against HP focused on the provision of products that use cloud services (calling out Microsoft One Drive), including certain HP 2-in-1 convertible laptops, desktops, and laptops.
July 23, 2019
Ultravision Reaffirms Agreements with Investment Firm, Files New Cases in LED Display Panel Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Ultravision Technologies, LLC (d/b/a Ultravision International) has continued its litigation campaign over two patents generally related to modular display panels, suing Barco (2:19-cv-00253) and Samsung (2:19-cv-00252) in the Eastern District of Texas over the provision of certain LED displays and lighting: for Barco, the C8s, V-Series, and IB-6 series LED displays; and for Samsung, VRR Series (i.e., FreeSync VRR), VMR-O Series, XAJ Series, and VMR-I Series LED displays, and HiLOM Series light modules. The campaign began in April 2016, but the bulk of its cases, including an investigation before the International Trade Commission (ITC), were filed against a wide array of LED display panel manufacturers, private label resellers, and distributors, in March of last year.
July 22, 2019
Discovery over Patent Transfer Agreements Roils Cypress Lake Campaign
Patent Litigation Feature
Late last month, District Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas granted a sealed motion, brought by defendants Dell and Samsung, to compel NPE-plaintiff Cypress Lake Software, Inc. to produce a set of communications that it had logged as attorney-client privileged and/or protected as attorney work product prepared in anticipation of litigation. Cypress had sought to prevent production of its communications with Robert Paul Morris, the inventor named on the patents that the NPE has been asserting in litigation since 2015; Sitting Man, LLC, a Delaware entity under Morris’s control; and Mirai Ventures, LLC, a Texas entity that, according to the court’s order, entered into an October 30, 2015 “Financial Backer(s) Agreement . . . whereby Mirai agreed to provide funding and patent-prosecution services to Sitting Man in exchange for a portion of any proceeds from the enforcement, sale, or licensing of the patents”. Judge Kernodle’s order comes as the Texas court has been pelted with filings over multiple issues, as a separate portion of the campaign—against HP and ZTE—may also be ramping up in the Northern District of California after a transfer there, and as Cypress has filed a fourth case against Samsung (6:19-cv-00328) in the Eastern District of Texas, this time targeting the Korean parent entity itself.
July 21, 2019