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License Apparently Expired, a Claim Construction Ruling in Hand, Hilco’s Bell Northern Tags Samsung
New Patent Litigation
A prior license agreement having expired on December 31, 2018, Bell Northern Research, LLC, a Hilco Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global) company, has filed suit against Samsung (2:19-cv-00286) over five patents allegedly covered by that license, as well as three others already in suit in the campaign that Bell Northern began roughly one year ago. Certain Samsung smartphones, tablets, and “home or office electronics products” (e.g., smartwatches, laptops, TVs, home theater equipment, and Blu-Ray or DVD players) are targeted with the eight patents from among the portfolio of thousands received in December 2017 from Broadcom, having general subject matter ranging from wireless communication to battery conservation, integration of accelerometers to music playback with mobile devices, among other things. The new complaint avoids two patents, also previously in suit, perhaps in recognition of unfavorable rulings in a Southern District of California claim construction order handed down earlier this month.
August 25, 2019
“Non-Contact” Charging Campaign Hits Wireless Carriers
New Patent Litigation
Another NPE associated with Equitable IP Corporation has been brought out of a tax forfeiture just before filing new lawsuits. In mid-August, Post Media Systems LLC rebooted its litigation campaign with cases against Alphabet (Google), Apple, and Pandora; now Magnacharge LLC has filed suit against T-Mobile (1:19-cv-01565) and Telephone and Data Systems (US Cellular) (1:19-cv-01566) a week or so after John T. Meli, Jr., Equitable IP’s founder, brought the entity’s Texas registration current. The sole patent-in-suit generally relates to a “non-contact” charging device, with infringement allegations targeting wireless mobile device chargers that utilize the Qi standard. Magnacharge accuses the wireless carriers of infringement through the provision of “non-contact type battery pack chargers” and mobile devices “configured to be chargeable by non-contact charging means according to the Qi Standard”, calling out various smartphones provided by Alphabet (Google), Apple, or LG Electronics (LGE).
August 24, 2019
Defeating Inducement Matters
Patent Litigation Feature
Both plaintiff Opticurrent, LLC and defendant Power Integrations have filed Federal Circuit appeals after District Judge Edward M. Chen, in a June decision, trimmed an earlier jury award to Opticurrent from $6.7M to $1.2M. In posttrial briefs, Opticurrent had defended the jury’s identification of a three percent royalty rate and its application to a base that included all products that ended up in the US, even if imported by third parties. The NPE relied on the same theory used in the Carnegie Mellon v. Marvell case, which saw damages awarded on such imported products based on the defendant’s original, domestic design work. The court distinguished the case before it from Carnegie Mellon based on a pivotal jury finding: that Opticurrent did not prove inducement of infringement. As a result, Judge Chen applied a six percent factor to the relevant Power Integrations sales figures to limit the royalty base to direct sales into the US by the defendant.
August 24, 2019
Already Forced to Litigate in the Northern District of California, Packet Intelligence Sues Juniper There
New Patent Litigation
In May 2019, Palo Alto Networks filed a suit in the Northern District of California seeking declaratory judgments that it does not infringe five network traffic monitoring and packet processing patents held by Packet Intelligence LLC. July saw Packet Intelligence answer that complaint and file affirmative counterclaims, and now the NPE has sued Juniper Networks (3:19-cv-04741) in the same forum, alleging infringement of the same five patents, which were each also targeted with a July 2019 petition for inter partes review (IPR) by campaign defendant Nokia. Meanwhile, NetScout Systems has filed its opening brief in support of its Federal Circuit appeal from a jury verdict and final judgment in the Eastern District of Texas.
August 24, 2019
Honeyman Cipher Files New Litigation over Former Liddle Patent, Repeating Infringement Arguments Challenged by Groupon
New Patent Litigation
Delaware plaintiff Honeyman Cipher Solutions LLC has expanded the litigation campaign that it launched in June with a single suit against Groupon, targeting that company’s use of Apple’s iTunes Connect and Google’s Android Developer Console to register and distribute its respective iOS and Android apps. Now, as Groupon challenges the sufficiency of Honeyman Cipher’s infringement allegations in that Northern District of Illinois case, the NPE has filed a pair of new complaints in Delaware against LogMeIn (1:19-cv-01545) and Snap (1:19-cv-01547) over their use of the same systems—laying out virtually the same arguments currently under fire by Groupon. A related set of arguments were also raised by Groupon in an unresolved motion to dismiss a Texas case brought by the patent-in-campaign’s prior owner, Bradley D. Liddle’s Plano Encryption Technologies, LLC (PET), before that case was dismissed for improper venue (thereby mooting the defendant’s allegations of noninfringement).
August 23, 2019
Altaba Filing Provides Update on Excalibur
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Altaba Inc.’s liquidation and dissolution plan is now underway, and in a semi-annual report released on August 23, the investment management company formerly known as Yahoo said that it has begun monetizing its equity interests in Excalibur IP, LLC—the entity created to hold a portfolio of IP assets after Verizon acquired Yahoo’s core operating business in 2017. Meanwhile, Q2 saw patents from Excalibur’s portfolio continue to spread, as well as appear in new litigation.
August 23, 2019
Federal Circuit Rules That Claim Construction Disputes May Preclude Alice Dismissal under Aatrix
Patent Litigation Feature
The Federal Circuit’s February 2018 decisions in Berkheimer and Aatrix have had a sweeping impact on district court patent eligibility challenges by establishing that factual disputes over inventiveness may preclude dismissal under Alice. A recent RPX analysis indicates that the result has been a roughly 23% drop in nationwide Section 101 invalidations by patent since those opinions issued. Now, a new Federal Circuit opinion may provide an additional obstacle for defendants filing Alice motions: On August 16, the appeals court clarified that Aatrix also requires district courts to address claim construction disputes before issuing a ruling on a patent’s eligibility.
August 23, 2019
July 2019 RPX Acquisitions Update
Patent Market, Patent Watch
RPX completed a number of deals in July 2019 on behalf of its patent risk management network and acquired rights to a single patent portfolio. The acquisition occurred within the Consumer Electronics and PCs market sector.
August 22, 2019
2019 Sees Second Campaign with Apparent Backing by the Same Investment Firm
New Patent Litigation
Inventor-controlled AlterWAN, Inc. has filed a District of Delaware suit against Amazon (1:19-cv-01544), accusing the tech giant of infringing six patents generally related to routing Internet traffic across autonomous systems. The complaint emphasizes the background of the inventor named on the patents-in-suit, Richard Haney, who purportedly began working in 1999 “to address limitations in private networking technology”, including the fact that “[p]rivate networks that used the Internet as a backbone were inexpensive but inefficient and unreliable, exhibiting problems of lack of reserved bandwidth and latency as well as poor data security”. Amazon is accused of infringement through the provision of its Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) platform.
August 19, 2019
Dominion Harbor Divests Smaller Portfolios in Wake of Larger-Acquisition Assertion Efforts
Patent Market, Patent Watch
The last couple of years have seen Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC shift away from the acquisition of smaller families of patents from various sources toward the acquisition of large portfolios of assets—of former Kodak patents in March 2017, of former NEC patents in February 2018, and of former American Express patents in March 2018, all from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), as well as a large portfolio of assets acquired directly from Panasonic beginning in October 2018. Dominion (through subsidiaries of its litigation arm Monument Patent Holdings, LLC) has asserted patents from those large-portfolio acquisitions in litigation, and while it has continued litigating assets acquired prior to this strategy shift, that activity has dropped off. Assignment records recently made public by the USPTO suggest that, in addition, Dominion has begun to shed some of the smaller families that it had acquired under its earlier model.
August 18, 2019