Showing 11 - 20 of 442 news articles
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Expanding OLED Display Panel Campaign Snags Apple
New Patent Litigation
In December 2018, Irish entity Solas OLED Limited augmented its sizeable portfolio of patents, received from Casio in April 2016, with an additional set of assets received from Microchip Technology (Atmel) and one additional patent received from the University of Stuttgart. The patents generally relate to various aspects of display panels, and Solas OLED began asserting them in litigation by suing LG Display, LG Electronics (LGE), and Sony in the Western District of Texas, later adding cases against Samsung (in the Eastern District of Texas) and Alphabet (Google) and Dell (back in the Western District of Texas). With subsequent amendments to its early complaints and with a new case filed in the Western District against Apple (6:19-cv-00537), Solas OLED has now brought all of this litigation into a single display panel campaign.
September 12, 2019
Ancora Opens Up a Fourth Front in Its Long-Running Mobile Devices Campaign
New Patent Litigation
With its new cases, filed separately last week against Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (1:19-cv-01712) and Sony (1:19-cv-01703) in the District of Delaware, Ancora Technologies Inc. is now actively waging its sole litigation campaign in four districts. A favorable Federal Circuit opinion revived a case over the sole patent-in-campaign—generally related to preventing unauthorized use of software on a computer—against HTC in the Western District of Washington, while June 2019 cases against LG Electronics and Samsung are getting underway in the Western District of Texas and an August 2019 suit against TCL is in the earliest stages in the Eastern District of that state. Throughout its operative complaints, Ancora targets the provision of myriad mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets), calling out “over-the-air software update” features on such devices.
September 11, 2019
Lightside Continues Video Processing Campaign over Patents Issuing to “the Epitome of the Ingenious Tinkerer”
New Patent Litigation
Lightside Technologies, LLC has followed up last month’s complaint against TCL Communication Technology (5:19-cv-01458) in the Central District of California with a new case this month against ZTE (3:19-cv-02128), filed in the Northern District of Texas. Each complaint asserts two different members of the same patent family, generally related to upscaling video content and providing video frame-rate conversion. Accused of infringement are TCL’s Roku HDTVs and UHDTVs and certain ZTE Axon smartphones with slow-motion video features. Previously, Lightside sued VIZIO (in 2017), Haier (in 2018), and Hisense (in 2019), each of which cases is now closed, the last administratively so to facilitate the finalization of a settlement.
September 10, 2019
Named Inventor Opens Up Litigation Campaign over Patents Apparently Aimed at “Zapping Fraud”
New Patent Litigation
ZapFraud, Inc., an entity formed by Bjorn Markus Jakobsson, has initiated a litigation campaign, suing Barracuda Networks (1:19-cv-01687), FireEye (1:19-cv-01688), Fortinet (1:19-cv-01689), Mimecast (1:19-cv-01690), and Proofpoint (1:19-cv-01691) in separate cases filed in the District of Delaware. A single patent naming Jakobsson as sole named inventor, and which generally relates to secure electronic communications, is asserted in each complaint with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of email security products and services that allegedly “protect customers against email-based targeted social engineering attacks known as Business Email Compromise”, including emails where the sender is impersonating someone else.
September 10, 2019
Cedar Lane Adds Coolpad as a Defendant in Its First Campaign, Targeting Image Capture and Editing
New Patent Litigation
Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. has filed suit in the District of Delaware against Yulong Computer (Coolpad Technologies) (1:19-cv-01648), targeting the defendant’s provision of the Coolpad Illumina smartphone with six patents from a portfolio of roughly 50 patents formerly held by Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV). The NPE began this campaign in May and has since hit ten defendants with more than two dozen patents in multiple venues.
September 8, 2019
New Delaware Entity Sues HERE Technologies over Its Cellular Signals Network
New Patent Litigation
NavTopia LLC, an entity created in Delaware this past July, has filed suit in the Northern District of Illinois against Here Holding (d/b/a HERE Technologies) (1:19-cv-05934) over HERE Cellular Signals, which provides “multiple layers of information on the cellular networks in areas of service delivery, including network coverage, carriers, signal strength and frequency bands”. The sole patent-in-suit, and only patent that currently available USPTO records indicate has been assigned to NavTopia, generally relates to a GPS device with cellular connectivity.
September 8, 2019
SynKloud Acquires Third Portfolio, Opens Second Cloud Computing Campaign from Existing Assets
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Earlier this summer, SynKloud Technologies, LLC—which touts itself as “a research and Intellectual Property Licensing company located in Milton, Delaware” that is “focused on providing needed Intellectual Property solutions for the cloud computing industry and beyond”—received a portfolio of patents from Presto Services. Those six patents generally relate to Presto’s core service: printing and delivering electronic mail and other materials “without requiring [recipients] to have a computer or Internet connection” (e.g., “elder loved ones”). The transferred assets join cloud computing portfolios assigned last year to SynKloud separately from STT WebOS and Ximeta—portfolios that, as of this past week, have both spawned district court litigation, most recently against Adobe (6:19-cv-00527) and Dropbox (6:19-cv-00525, 6:19-cv-00526) in the Western District of Texas.
September 8, 2019
Corydoras Pivots from Device Manufacturers to Retailer Best Buy
New Patent Litigation
Corydoras Technologies, LLC has shifted gears a bit in its latest lawsuit, tagging retailer Best Buy (2:19-cv-00304) over the sale of a variety of accused products made by Acer, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, BLU Products, Dell (and subsidiary Alienware), HP, Microsoft, or Nokia. The inventor-controlled NPE has previously hit Apple, ASUSTek, Huawei, Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), LG Electronics (LGE), Samsung, Sony, and ZTE, with eight patents from a family of nearly 30 asserted in the campaign. Five of those patents are now at issue against Best Buy, the lot generally related to various aspects of a mobile communications device that displays a mirror image of an object taken from a camera facing the direction of the display. The last case filed in the campaign, in August 2018, ended just this past July with the entry of judgment pursuant to an offer that ASUSTek provided to the court.
September 7, 2019
Federal Circuit Rules That State Sovereign Immunity Does Not Supersede Venue Law
Biotech and Pharma, Patent Litigation Feature
The Federal Circuit has rejected a state university’s argument that its Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity allows it to sidestep the patent venue statute (28 USC Section 1400(b)) (2018-1700). On September 5, the appeals court upheld an order transferring a case filed by the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System (UT) out of the Western District of Texas, where the university had sued Boston Scientific despite the fact that it is incorporated in Delaware (the transferee district) and headquartered in Massachusetts, agreeing that venue was improper under both prongs of the venue statute. More broadly, the Federal Circuit held that sovereign immunity does not grant UT “the right to bring suit in an otherwise improper venue”, disagreeing with the university’s arguments that it may sue a nonresident in any forum with personal jurisdiction, that the venue statute cannot limit its sovereign immunity, and that Delaware lacks jurisdiction for several reasons also stemming from state sovereignty.
September 6, 2019
Federal Circuit Addresses Apple-Uniloc Standing Battle in Related Alice Appeal, Calling Fortress Agreement “Little More Than a ‘Hunting License’”
Top Insight
An ongoing dispute over standing continues to simmer in litigation between Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited and Apple, the latter of which has alleged that the NPE relinquished certain rights in the patents-in-suit by defaulting under a long series of agreements with Fortress Investment Group LLC—thereby depriving Uniloc of the right to sue. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California rejected those arguments earlier this year, ruling that any default(s) by Uniloc had since been cured. While Judge Alsup declined to reconsider that decision in early August, he also allowed Apple to later seek a trial and conduct discovery on the issues of default and cure. Any additional evidence such discovery might uncover could now spill over into another Uniloc case, dismissed under Alice before the standing battle began and currently on appeal, as the result of a new Federal Circuit ruling. On August 30, the appeals court remanded that lawsuit for consideration of Apple’s subsequently raised standing challenge, ordering Judge Alsup to supplement the record and resolve the same jurisdictional issues hanging over the other four proceedings.
September 1, 2019