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Following a “Blockbuster” Third Quarter Last Year, Quarterhill’s Patent Licensing Revenue Plummets in Q3 2018
Patent Market, Patent Watch
Quarterhill Inc. released its third quarter earnings on November 8, reporting $19.6M in revenue—with just $4.4M contributed by Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN), the company’s patent licensing business. In a call with investors, CFO Sean McEwan acknowledged the “quarterly variability” in WiLAN’s numbers, pointing to its “blockbuster” third quarter last year, during which it brought in $72.6M in revenue, and also touting WiLAN’s $145.1M trial win against Apple in August.
November 10, 2018
Inventor-Backed Campaign Targets Location-Based Spoken Query Results
New Patent Litigation
Inventor-controlled Mimzi, LLC has filed suit against Foursquare Labs (1:18-cv-01767) and Trip Advisor (1:18-cv-01768) in Delaware. The new complaints assert a single patent broadly related to returning location-based information from a “social network database” in response to a spoken request. At issue are the defendants’ mobile apps, which allegedly permit users (i.e., smartphone users) to view “location-dependent information” in response to questions asked (“Where is the nearest (best, most popular) Chinese restaurant?” given as an example).
November 9, 2018
Korean Plaintiff Tags Automakers in MirrorLink Functionality Campaign
New Patent Litigation
Korean plaintiff Dale Progress Ltd. has kicked off a new litigation campaign, suing Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) (2:18-cv-00472), Honda (2:18-cv-00471), Suzuki (2:18-cv-00473), Toyota (2:18-cv-00475), and Volkswagen (2:18-cv-00476) in the Eastern District of Texas. The NPE accuses the automakers of infringing a single patent, generally related to remotely displaying content from a “portable device”, through the provision of vehicles that support MirrorLink, a technology that mirrors the user interface of a mobile device on the screen of the vehicle’s infotainment unit and transmits input back to the mobile device.
November 9, 2018
New Networking Campaign Focuses on Bidirectional Fault Protection in Ring Topologies
New Patent Litigation
A second former Orckit-Corrigent patent has popped up in litigation. Ring Protection LLC has accused Colt Internet (1:18-cv-01770), Coriant (Tellabs) (1:18-cv-01773), Cox Enterprises (Cox Communications) (1:18-cv-01771), and SoftBank (Sprint) (1:18-cv-01772) of infringing the patent, which generally relates to fault protection in a bidirectional ring network. At issue are the defendants’ network architectures. Colt’s Switched Ethernet VPN service and Cox’s Internet Protocol (IP) services are both alleged to use Cisco’s ONS 15454 Multiservice Provisioning Platform (Colt’s service further identified as allegedly using Cisco’s Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology, but Cisco has not been named as a defendant in either case). The TITAN 6500 Multiservice Transport Switch (MTS) of Tellabs (allegedly supporting Four-Fiber Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) Bidirectional Line Switched Ring (BLSR)) and Sprint’s FTS2001 SONET architecture are also targeted.
November 9, 2018
Fortress’s Seven Networks Asserts More Patents Against Google and Samsung
New Patent Litigation
Seven Networks LLC, an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC, has refreshed its sole active litigation campaign with a pair of new lawsuits against existing defendants Alphabet (Google) (2:18-cv-00477) and Samsung (2:18-cv-00474), asserting six patents not previously seen in litigation. The NPE accuses the companies of infringement through the provision of certain models of the Google Pixel smartphone and certain Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets. At issue are the devices’ features designed to maintain a network connection; manage apps and processes differently when a device is in use versus idle; enter a power save mode when the device has been idle for a period of time; disable certain network connections when the device is idle; and allow the user to manually enter a power save mode. These new complaints come on the heels of a recent, split Federal Circuit opinion that denied Google’s improper venue challenge in another Seven Networks lawsuit.
November 8, 2018
Texas Jury Returns Infringement Verdict in Papst Licensing's Mobile Device Lawsuit Against Samsung
Patent Litigation Feature
A jury in the Eastern District of Texas has returned an infringement verdict against Samsung in litigation brought by German patent licensing firm Papst Licensing GmbH & Company Kg. In that November 6 verdict, the jury found that Samsung had infringed a single patent through the provision of certain mobile devices and awarded $5.9M in damages; in a second verdict issued that same day, the company’s infringement was determined to be not willful. The patent at issue is one of five asserted in this case and throughout Papst Licensing’s sprawling, 12-year litigation campaign. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has cancelled claims from each of the other four patents—including all claims asserted against Samsung—in a series of inter partes reviews (IPRs) filed by Samsung and other campaign defendants.
November 8, 2018
IP Bridge Prevails in Trial Against TCL
Patent Litigation Feature
On November 8, a jury in the District of Delaware handed down a verdict in favor of Japanese monetization firm IP Bridge, Inc., finding that certain TCL smartphones, sold under the Alcatel OneTouch brand, have infringed two patents developed by Panasonic. IP Bridge (as Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1) sued TCL in July 2015, opening up its first of three litigation campaigns in the US—each currently involving between one and 25 patents originating with Panasonic (with one campaign also asserting patents developed by NEC). Active defendants in IP Bridge’s US campaigns include Intel, OmniVision, Qualcomm, and Xilinx.
November 8, 2018
Topsy-Turvy Video Casting Campaign Sees Another Round of Suits
New Patent Litigation
The dismissal in late August 2018 of a case filed by Sockeye Licensing TX LLC against Lenovo ended that NPE’s last round of suits, filed in the Central District of California. Sockeye has now begun another round, this one comprising cases filed against Panasonic (1:18-cv-01750) and Toshiba (1:18-cv-01749) in the District of Delaware, over Blu-ray players that allow playback on a connected TV of video received on a smartphone, and against Hisense (1:18-cv-05129) in the Northern District of Georgia, over Hisense Smartcast, which facilitates similar functionality. At issue in the new complaints are two patents from a five-member family generally related to the use of a wireless communications device (e.g., a cell phone) to control and provide network connectivity to standard desktop peripherals (e.g., a monitor and keyboard).
November 7, 2018
ReCAPTCHA Campaign Continues Its Five-Months Roll
New Patent Litigation
The file-and-settle ReCAPTCHA campaign of Confident Technologies, Inc. has snagged another defendant, Best Buy (3:18-cv-02552), on the heels of the dismissal of a prior suit, against Fandango. In its complaints, the NPE asserts a single patent generally related to automated tests for distinguishing humans from computers, targeting the use of ReCAPTCHA technology on the companies’ websites; in this most recent complaint, Confident accuses Best Buy of infringement through the use of Google’s ReCaptcha V2 verification check (without naming Google as a defendant). In each of the prior three cases, the defendant responded to the complaint with a Rule 12 motion, two of those attacking the patent-in-suit on Alice grounds.
November 7, 2018
In DSL Campaign, Sisvel Turns from CenturyLink and Frontier to Verizon
New Patent Litigation
In August 2017, Sisvel International S.A. (d/b/a Sisvel Group) launched a litigation campaign over a portfolio of former Panasonic patents allegedly essential to the practice of the ITU G.994.1 standard related to DSL technology, asserting nine of them first against CenturyLink and then Frontier Communications. At the end of this past September, the CenturyLink case ended in a dismissal with prejudice after multiple stays to permit the parties to finalize an agreement resolving their disputes, and a similar set of stays has been entered in the case against Frontier, suggesting that an end to that case is imminent. Against this backdrop, Sisvel has filed a new suit, against Verizon (1:18-cv-01742), asserting the same nine patents and accusing Verizon of infringement through the provision of “DSL technology, equipment and services” that comply with the same standard.
November 6, 2018