Last September, Arlington Technologies, LLC, a Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC plaintiff, filed its first litigation over a large portfolio of former Avaya patents received earlier in 2024, suing Comcast in a pair of Eastern District of Texas complaints. Those cases have ended, after a notice of settlement. Now, Arlington has filed against Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) (2:25-cv-00279) in the same district. Targeted is the provision of “wireless access points” that are configured to support 802.11ax and Wi-Fi Multimedia, cellular services that support Voice over LTE (VoLTE), and cellular networks that support STIR/SHAKEN call verification.

In September 2023, WinView IP Holdings, LLC, an entity formed by former WinView CEO David Lockton, acquired ownership of WinView’s patent portfolio as part of a settlement of a Delaware lawsuit for breach of fiduciary duty by those running WinView through an alleged “merger freeze-out” into Engine Media Holdings. WinView's patent cases against DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment (FanDuel) had been filed, in July 2021 in the District of New Jersey, but were administratively terminated while certain inter partes review (IPR) proceedings played out. Now, familiar patents, new counsel, and litigation funding all in hand, WinView IP Holdings seeks a reboot of those whittled-down cases while filing new ones against the same two defendants (3:25-cv-01143 and 3:25-cv-01146, respectively), this time over at least eight more patents.

VideoLabs, Inc. has filed suit against TCL (and multiple subsidiaries) in the Eastern District of Texas (2:25-cv-00161). The plaintiff targets with seven patents—one new to litigation in this campaign—the provision of a wide array of devices, including projectors, smartphones, tablets, and TVs. At issue is the support of the H.264 video compression standard, HDCP digital copy protection, and the TCLtv+ app. Earlier cases in this campaign have either come back alive after a plaintiff setback before the International Trade Commission (ITC) or face continued stay requests in light of ongoing activity arising before the USPTO.

InterDigital, Inc., together with several subsidiaries, has filed suit against Disney (BAMTech, ESPN, Hulu) (2:25-cv-00895) in the Central District of California. Targeted with six patents is the provision of the defendants’ various video streaming services—including Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Hulu Live. At issue is the support for the H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) video compression standards, Dolby Vision technology, and “Skip Intro” features.

Scale Video Coding LLC, an Equitable IP Corporation plaintiff, first sued Cisco in September 2023. Eastern District of Texas Judge Sean D. Jordan has since received opposed motions to amend infringement contentions (from Scale Video) and invalidity contentions (from Cisco). In what appears to be a belt-and-suspenders second complaint (4:25-cv-00095), Scale Video now accuses Cisco of infringing the same patent—generally related to a “video router” that transmits a certain “layered video data stream”—through the provision of additional products and services that implement the “scalable video coding features” of the AV1 coding format and H.264 video coding standard, including the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), Cisco Webex-series products, and Cisco Meeting Server version 3.9 and higher, as well as related hardware and software products.

One-E-Way, Inc.’s 2020 case against Apple ended in August 2023 when the Federal Circuit affirmed a Central District of California summary judgment of noninfringement. That ruling was based on an agreed-upon construction of the claim term “unique user code”: “fixed code (bit sequence) specifically associated with one use of a device(s)”. Per the court, “unique user code” is therefore “associated with one user of a device, and not the device itself”. Now, One-E-Way has asserted the same two patents previously in suit against Apple, as well as a third, against Anker Innovations (1:24-cv-01559), Dell (1:24-cv-01558), and Samsung (1:24-cv-01561), in new Western District of Texas complaints. Targeted is the provision of wireless headphones and speakers that support “wireless transmission and/or reception of an audio signal in compliance with versions of the Bluetooth standard”, including Bluetooth 5.0.

OpenTV, Inc. has filed suit in the District of Delaware against Pinterest (1:24-cv-01301), alleging infringement of four patents through the provision of features such as adaptive bitrate streaming and personalized advertisement/content recommendation systems within the Pinterest platform (i.e., mobile app and website), also targeting its “digital advertising manager, ad delivery system, machine learning content distribution technologies, and all related methods of predicting and suggesting content to end users”. The plaintiff’s last case in this campaign, filed against May 2017 against the NFL, ended in June 2018.  

In its latest complaints, Texas plaintiff ERR Content IP LLC targets the media casting services of three more defendants, Hisense (2:24-cv-01053); Roku (7:24-cv-00330) in the Western District of Texas; and Spotify (1:24-cv-09530), in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiff here asserts the same patent already in suit in cases filed earlier this fall against Amazon, LG Electronics (LGE), and Comcast, in that order. The patent generally relates to “providing a main content” on a first device (in its complaints, identified as a smartphone), and “extra content” synchronized to the main content on a second device (identified as a television).

USPTO assignment records recently made public contain various other patent transfers worth noting, beyond the grant of security interests by five patent holders to the same secured party and the apparent construction of a new patent portfolio by Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC. Among them is a pair of transfers from an operating company to a recently formed Delaware entity suggestively located, the move of a single patent from a set of named inventors to an entity tied to a relatively new entrant to the monetization scene, and assignments from various sources, including a university, to an established monetization team.

Having sued Brightcove in October, OptiMorphix, Inc. filed November suits against Intel (1:24-cv-01291), NVIDIA (1:24-cv-01282), and Salesforce (MuleSoft, Slack) (1:24-cv-01278), all in the District of Delaware and each over a subset of former Citrix patents received in April 2023. Intel is accused of infringing five such patents through the provision of chipsets (e.g., GPUs and processors), computing devices, and networking hardware (e.g., adapters and controllers). NVIDIA is accused of infringing 11 of those patents through the provision of a wide array of networking products, including encoders, GPUs, graphics cards, infrastructure computing platforms, laptops, and network adapters. Finally, Salesforce is accused of infringing seven such patents through the provision of the MuleSoft Anypoint, MuleSoft Cloudhub 2.0, Salesforce, and Slack platforms. At issue are features such as adaptive bitrate management, data packet scheduling and transmission, H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoding, and webpage rendering.