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Longtime Leadership at Acacia Steps Aside as Board Members Resign and New Texas NPE Asserts Saint Lawrence Sub’s Patents
New Patent Litigation
Recently formed Texas NPE EVS Codec Technologies, LLC has kept a portfolio of wideband audio patents in litigation, filing suit against Huawei (2:18-cv-00346), LG Electronics (LGE) (2:18-cv-00343), and ZTE (2:18-cv-00344) on nearly the same day that saw the last case in a prior campaign closed. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of mobile devices supporting the Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) codec via Ultra HD Voice compatibility. LGE and ZTE were both defendants in the prior campaign as to devices supporting a predecessor of Ultra HD Voice/EVS (the AMR-WB, or HD Voice, codec) waged by Saint Lawrence Communications LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded NPE Acacia Research Corporation. Acacia recently announced a significant shakeup in both its executive team and board of directors.
August 8, 2018
Fourth Affiliated NPE Asserts Another Nero AG Patent, This Time Against Audio Workstation Software Providers
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Balor Audio LLC, a Texas NPE created this past January, has initiated a litigation campaign, suing Avid Technology (1:18-cv-11662) and Mark of the Unicorn (1:18-cv-11663). The new complaints assert a single patent, generally related to audio signal generation, with infringement allegations focused on the provision of audio workstation software: Avid Technology’s Pro Tools and Mark of the Unicorn’s Digital Performer. Balor Audio’s patent-in-suit is the fourth of four patents transferred late last year from German computer software company Nero AG to affiliated NPEs to be asserted in court.
August 7, 2018
Dominion Harbor Looks Ready to Assert Former WiLAN Patents
New Patent Litigation
USPTO records suggest that Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC could be gearing up to launch a campaign asserting patents acquired from Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN). The tell-tale patent transfer was executed between two Dominion affiliates in early August and includes patents developed by operating companies, including a subsidiary of AT&T.
August 6, 2018
More Suits Against Amazon and Microsoft Follow Transfer of Hundreds of Patents from Uniloc to Fortress
Biotech and Pharma, Patent Litigation Feature
Yet more cases have been filed by Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited and Fortress Investment Group LLC, through controlled subsidiaries—six against Amazon (2:18-cv-00328, 2:18-cv-00329, 2:18-cv-00339, 2:18-cv-00340, 2:18-cv-00341, 2:18-cv-00342), and one against Microsoft (8:18-cv-01320). These filings follow a barrage of new cases filed the prior week against BlackBerry (four new cases), Huawei (one case), Samsung (one case), and ZTE (four cases), as well as against Amazon (four cases) and Microsoft (one case). Uniloc has now launched over 15 campaigns in 2018 alone, most of them asserting patents received this past January from publicly traded NPE Pendrell Corporation. In May 2018, Uniloc executed an assignment of nearly 600 US patents to Uniloc 2017 LLC, a Fortress subsidiary, according to a March 28, 2018 Asset Purchase Agreement, the terms of which have not been made public.
August 4, 2018
Bell Northern Research Targets Mobile Devices in New Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Bell Northern Research, LLC, a Hilco Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global) company, has launched its first litigation campaign, asserting a subset of patents from a portfolio of thousands received from Broadcom. Last week, it sued Huawei (3:18-cv-01784), Kyocera (3:18-cv-01785), Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies) (3:18-cv-01783), and ZTE (3:18-cv-01786), accusing each defendant of infringing up to six former Broadcom patents through the provision of smartphones with proximity sensors and that support 802.11n and/or 802.11ac Wi-Fi as well as multiple UMTS cellular data standards. Also at issue are the accused devices’ ability to maintain multiple types of network connections at once (e.g., holding a voice call while switching between cellular and Wi-Fi data).
August 4, 2018
PTAB Sees First New IPR Petition Against Native American Tribe as Sovereign Immunity Defense Gets Rejected
Medical, Patent Market, Patent Watch
In July 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw the first new petition for inter partes review (IPR) filed against a Native American tribe since the Board’s March ruling that IPRs against tribes are not barred by sovereign immunity, a decision that was upheld by the Federal Circuit on July 20. Institution decisions were also issued by the Board in July for IPRs against Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited and Sound View Innovations, LLC, among other notable plaintiffs. In addition, the PTAB issued final decisions throughout July for IPRs against a variety of other NPEs, from Intellectual Ventures LLC (which has continued to pursue its existing campaigns but has seemingly stopped filing new US litigation) to smaller entities like Andrea Electronics Corporation and XPRT Ventures LLC as well as individual inventor Daniel L. Flamm.
August 3, 2018
Sequoia Technology Asserts ETRI Patent in New Metadata Storage Campaign
Sequoia Technology LLC, as exclusive licensee of the patent-in-suit, has launched a litigation campaign, suing Dell (EMC) (1:18-cv-01127), Hitachi (1:18-cv-01129), and HP Enterprise (HPE) (1:18-cv-01128) in Delaware. Currently available USPTO records identify Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) as the assignee of the patent, which is generally related to managing the storage of metadata. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of products and services offering Logical Volume Manager (LVM) dynamic resizing (which allows the dynamic resizing of storage partitions), including certain Linux operating systems and server hardware.
August 3, 2018
Native American Tribe Is Among the Latest Recipients of Patents from Intellectual Ventures
Patents continue to peel off from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) at a rapid rate, with one of its most recent divestitures, involving nearly 40 US assets, received by a Native American tribe. The transaction came just days after a ruling by the Federal Circuit that inter partes reviews against tribal entities are not barred by sovereign immunity.
August 3, 2018
Altair Logix Expands New Campaign with Suits against Microsoft and Samsung
Cases against Microsoft (2:18-cv-00325) and Samsung (2:18-cv-00326) have been added to the litigation campaign begun with a mid-July complaint against TI by Altair Logix LLC, an affiliate of monetization firm IP Edge LLC. A single patent, described as relating to “the field of runtime reconfigurable dynamic-adaptive digital circuits”, is asserted in each suit, with infringement allegations against Microsoft focused on convertible tablets (e.g., the Surface 2 equipped with the NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor) and those against Samsung focused on Chromebooks equipped with the Exynos 5 Dual processor. Both complaints identify the ARM Quad core Cortex A-15 as the “media processing units” working in conjunction with the products’ processor.
August 2, 2018
Siemens and Konica Minolta Hand Over Patents to Dominion Harbor
This past week saw Konica Minolta and Siemens assign portfolios to Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV), an affiliate of Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC. MPV has two ongoing litigation campaigns in the US, both asserting former Kodak patents received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) last year.
August 2, 2018