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Third “Section 101 Day” in Delaware—This One Not Held by Judge Stark—Leads to Disparate Results
Top Insight
In a new District of Delaware suit, Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) has accused Panasonic (1:19-cv-01921) of infringing a single “multimedia” mobile device patent from a family of 30-plus members, targeting the mirroring features of the company’s Viera-series televisions. OAC asserted the same patent, together with others from the same family, in an August 2018 case in the same district against Roku, which responded with a quick motion to dismiss under Alice. Delaware District Judge Maryellen Noreika teed that motion up for argument on June 14, 2019—just five days short of the five-year anniversary of the Alice decision itself—in an omnibus hearing that addressed five Section 101 motions filed in cases before her, the others filed by OpenPrint LLC, Sandboxed Software, LLC (d/b/a Sandbox Software, LLC), TrackTime LLC, and EncodiTech LLC. Judge Noreika’s treatment of these motions on a “Section 101 Day” tracks the procedure already used in Delaware a couple of times this year by District Judge Leonard P. Stark. OAC is now suing Panasonic, begging the question: how did that Roku motion fare? More broadly, four months later, how did Judge Noreika’s “Alice day” affect the progress of those other NPE campaigns?
October 8, 2019
Zeroclick Expands Touch Screen Campaign Well Beyond Apple
New Patent Litigation
In June 2018, the Federal Circuit vacated a lower court order in which claims that Zeroclick, LLC had asserted against Apple in the Northern District of California were invalidated for indefiniteness. Roughly one year after remand, in June 2019, District Judge Jon S. Tigar handed down a new order, construing several disputed claim terms and rejecting Apple’s repeated indefiniteness arguments. Now, these several months later, Zeroclick has expanded its litigation campaign with a spate of new filings. The NPE accuses Dell (6:19-cv-00569), HP Enterprise (6:19-cv-00570), LG Electronics (LGE) (6:19-cv-00571), Microsoft (6:19-cv-00572), and Samsung (6:19-cv-00573) of infringing one or both of the patents already at issue against Apple, both generally related to a touch-only graphical user interface. The accused devices are various “touch screen computer products”.
October 6, 2019
Quarterhill Announces Another Executive Departure, This Time Its CEO
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Doug Parker has resigned as president and CEO of Quarterhill Inc., announced the company on October 1. Parker—who joined Quarterhill in January 2017—has also resigned as a board member of the company. His departure comes after Keaton Parekh, the CEO of Quarterhill’s licensing arm, Wi-LAN Inc., stepped down in Q1 following less than a year at the company.
October 6, 2019
Following Pivot to Cloud Location over Cellular Technology, Location Technology Startup Polte Announces Series A-2 Funding
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Polte Corporation announced on October 1 that it has raised $12.5M in “strategic funding” from “experienced private investors” (the identities of which it has not disclosed). “The Series A-2 funding will enable the company to focus on deployments of commercial and industrial applications of Polte’s patented alternative to GPS”, said the company in a press release. Last year saw Polte pivot to Cloud Location over Cellular Technology (C-LoC) following its earlier pursuits focused on indoor location tracking and Enhanced 911 services.
October 6, 2019
Princeps Moves to Drop Complaints After Challenge to Premature Assignment of “Universal Keyboard” Patent
New Patent Litigation
In June 2019, Princeps Interface Technologies LLC launched its sole litigation campaign with three District of Delaware lawsuits, one each against Alphabet (Google), Apple, and Samsung, about a month later adding another suit there against Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) and a suit against ASUSTek in the Northern District of California. A single patent—generally related to an “input device” that allows the user to switch between different input modes, including different keyboard types—was asserted in the complaints, a patent that RPX noted appeared to have been received by Princeps three weeks before the NPE’s actual formation in Delaware. In early September, Google filed a motion challenging the plaintiff’s standing at the time of filing, noting that “[a]ny assignment purporting to convey rights to a non-existent entity is ineffective”. Princeps has subsequently moved to dismiss all five of its complaints, without prejudice. Apple, which had filed an answer in Delaware, has now filed a complaint (3:19-cv-06352) seeking a declaratory judgment from the Northern District of California that it has not infringed that same keyboard patent.
October 5, 2019
IP Edge Charges Up New Campaign with Patent Apparently Received from IP Bridge
New Patent Litigation
Boracho IP Holdings LLC has initiated yet another litigation campaign of Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC, filing suit against OutBack Power Technologies (2:19-cv-01558), Schneider Electric (1:19-cv-01823), Sensata Technologies (1:19-cv-01822), SMA Solar Technology (1:19-cv-01821), and Solax Power (4:19-cv-03748). The complaints assert a single patent, originating with Seiko Epson and generally related to a charging device with multiple power sources, of which Boracho pleads full ownership. Currently available USPTO records do not yet indicate an assignment away from Japanese monetization firm IP Bridge, Inc. (via Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1), which received the patent, together with three others, in September 2016.
October 4, 2019
Six Months After Microsemi Settlement, Sentient Sensors Sues Cypress Semiconductor
New Patent Litigation
In March 2018, inventor-controlled Sentient Sensors, LLC began litigating a single patent generally related to a controller “that can freely be reprogrammed in the field to work with various inputs and outputs” and that “is similar to a ‘system-on-a-chip’…but…transcends the functional capability of a single integrated circuit”. The plaintiff accused Microchip (Microsemi) of infringement in an Eastern District of Texas case that ended roughly one year later, in April 2019. Now, Sentient Sensors has tagged Cypress Semiconductor (1:19-cv-01868) in the District of Delaware, accusing the defendant of infringing the same patent through the provision of its “Programmable System on a Chip (“PSoC®”) lines of system-on-a-chip (SoC) products including the PSoC 3, PSoC 4, PSoC 5, and PSoC 6 product lines”.
October 4, 2019
Smart Home Campaign of IP Edge Hits Four Defendants Across Multiple Districts
New Patent Litigation
Zyrcuits IP LLC, an NPE apparently associated with monetization firm IP Edge LLC, has expanded its smart home campaign, adding suits against Assa Abloy (3:19-cv-02317), eZLO (1:19-cv-01828), Robert Bosch (Bosch Security Systems) (1:19-cv-01827), and SengLED (1:19-cv-04393) across various districts, targeting the provision of smart home products supporting the ZigBee wireless communications standard, including, for example, the eZLO Jilia Hub and the RADION PIR ZB Wireless Motion Detector. The new suits join a campaign launched in August 2019 against five defendants, including Samsung and Spectrum Brand Holdings, with the NPE asserting a single patent generally related to spread-spectrum wireless data transmission.
October 4, 2019
Mobile Device Cameras at Issue in New Case Against Samsung
New Patent Litigation
Inventor-controlled Clear Imaging Research, LLC has filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas against Samsung (2:19-cv-00326), accusing the tech giant of infringing six image capture and processing patents through the provision of a long list of smartphones and tablets. The plaintiff pleads that it was founded by Fatih Ozluturk, the sole inventor named on the asserted patents, a former engineer with InterDigital, Inc. and former managing principal of Soryn IP Group, LLC.
October 4, 2019
Claims from BlackBerry Messaging and Social Media Patents Invalidated Under Alice in Central District of California
Patent Litigation Feature
A California judge has ruled that claims from four messaging and social media patents asserted by BlackBerry are invalid under Alice. In an October 1 order issued in the company’s lawsuit against Twitter, District Judge George H. Wu held that two patents generally related to notification management are unpatentably directed to abstract ideas but granted the plaintiff leave to amend its complaint in order to add additional factual allegations regarding those patents. The court also declined to invalidate two other patents, one due to a factual dispute under Aatrix and the other due to its similarity to certain other patents previously upheld by the Federal Circuit. In addition, the order incorporated Judge Wu’s analysis from another sealed decision issued that same day in cases against Facebook and Snap in which the court invalidated a further two patents but left a third intact.
October 4, 2019