In cross-appeals, plaintiff Ollnova Technologies Limited and defendant Generac Holdings (ecobee) each contest aspects of a judgment entered by District Judge Rodney Gilstrap after an Eastern District of Texas jury returned a mixed verdict awarding Ollnova $11.5M in October 2023. One issue up for the Federal Circuit’s consideration is the practice of submitting a question to the jury to resolve the second prong of an Alice analysis: i.e., whether the elements of a challenged claim, taken individually or as an ordered combination, supply an “inventive concept”, enough to save it from invalidation. ecobee faults Judge Gilstrap for not apprising the jury of the abstract idea to which the court had found the challenged claim here directed, and a set of interested nonparties—Forescout Technologies, High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA), HP, and SAP—argue in a “friend of the court” brief that Judge Gilstrap’s jury instructions here “lower the standard for patent eligibility and permit a jury to uphold claims where their only inventiveness lies in the patent ineligible subject matter”.

A set of security interests recorded with the USPTO and recently made public indicate that a group of patentholders, five of which have already launched litigation and the sixth of which RPX previously noted appears poised to file suit, have all done so (or apparently plan to do so) with the same backing. Each document notes that “[r]eference is made to that certain funding agreement, dated as of February 27, 2025, among Grantor, Security Holder and certain other parties (as amended, restated, amended and restated, supplemented or otherwise modified from time to time, the ‘Security Agreement’)”, with the same backer taking a security interest in collateral defined in that Security Agreement and including each Grantor’s enumerated patent assets.

In a Southern District of Florida complaint, K.Mizra LLC has accused Cloud Software Group (Citrix Systems) (0:25-cv-60803) of infringing a single patent through the provision of “Citrix’s Secure Private Access (SPA) solution (including native cloud and/or on premises implementations) and/or Citrix products including the SPA solution”. The sole asserted patent generally relates to securing a network by quarantining an “insecure condition”; it has appeared in nearly every complaint in this particular K.Mizra campaign, against past defendants Cisco, Forescout Technologies, Fortinet, and HP Enterprise (HPE), sued in that order, as well as against active defendants sued earlier this year, SonicWall and Alphabet (Google)—and now Citrix.

Earlier this month, publicly traded Quest Patent Research Corporation (QPRC) purchased more than 2,500 US patents, as well as foreign counterparts and applications, for $9M from Monterey Research, LLC. The subsidiary receiving those assets, MR Licensing LLC, has filed its first suit, in which it accuses DENSO and Renesas Electronics (2:25-cv-00441) of infringing eight of the patents through the provision of a long list of accused products. QPRC’s recent SEC filing describes the portfolio as related to “storage device security and semiconductor circuitry”, indicating that the financing for the deal includes “up to $7,500,000 for patent enforcement costs, including legal fees subject to budget limitation to be agreed upon”. Monterey Research sued the same two defendants over four of the patents appearing in MR Licensing’s new complaint last year; word on the docket of that case concerning this change of ownership has yet to appear, beyond entries of appearance by MR Licensing counsel Fabricant LLP.

In a new Central District of California complaint, Avatier IP, LLC accuses Microsoft (2:25-cv-03640) of infringing eight patents through the provision of “Microsoft Authenticator Products”, including “Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Authenticator, and other Authenticator products”, as used with other Microsoft products—including Windows, Office 365, Microsoft 365, the various Microsoft Office apps, other apps related to cloud security, Exchange server, Azure Information Protection Scanner, and other software running on Android, macOS, or iOS—to “provide platforms e.g., for generating, distributing, and/or consuming protected documents and emails”. The plaintiff, represented by Daignault Iyer LLP and Perkowski Legal, PC, has yet to file the certificate of interested parties required by local rules.

A Northern District of Texas jury has returned a verdict in favor of VidStream LLC, awarding it over $105M against X (f/k/a Twitter). Six claims from two patents were tried, the patents generally related to “a system of receiving and distributing user-generated video content for distribution on television broadcasts and the Internet”. The jury found only one claim from one patent infringed and not proven invalid; the others were found not infringed and proven invalid. The verdict comes in a case first filed in March 2016, by a different plaintiff, Youtoo Technologies, LLC, over patents that were invalidated under Alice years ago, only to have VidStream step in with new counsel and successfully seek a reboot of the case, which request District Judge David C. Godbey granted in April 2021. 

Auto Injection Technologies LLC has launched litigation over the portfolio that it received from Sanofi last September 2024. The Anjay Venture Partners LLC plaintiff has accused Bayer (2:25-cv-00374), GSK (2:25-cv-00373), Medtronic (2:25-cv-00375), Novo Nordisk (2:25-cv-00376), and Ypsomed (2:25-cv-00377) of infringing up to seven of the patents from that portfolio, each through the provision of certain inhalers and/or injection devices. The Eastern District of Texas cases have been assigned to District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, currently, by far, the top judge overseeing patent cases in the US.

In a new Western District of Texas complaint, K.Mizra LLC has sued Broadcom (7:25-cv-00164) over the provision of devices (i.e., chipsets and Systems-on-Chip (SoCs)) that support Wi-Fi 5, 6, and/or 7. Asserted are two wireless communications patents, issuing to Intel but received by the plaintiff in a July 2024 assignment from Daedalus Prime LLC. The plaintiff alleges that it provided notice of infringement of the patents-in-suit to Broadcom and related entities and individuals on “multiple occasions” prior to the lawsuit but received no response.

This is a pivotal time for the US IP system, with the new administration’s policy reforms potentially wielding enormous consequences for innovation, economic stability, and geopolitical relations. RPX’s report on the first quarter of 2025 is slated for release this week and will include an overview of recent policy developments in the US IP space, including patent-related bills pending before Congress, the White House’s picks for US Commerce Secretary and USPTO Director; and recent changes at the USPTO.

EireOg Innovations Limited, an Atlantic IP Services Limited plaintiff, has sued Amazon (Amazon Web Services (AWS)) (1:25-cv-00552) in the Western District of Texas where the same plaintiff has active cases against Dell, HP, and Oracle. Those suits, each filed in the first half of 2024, have all pushed into claim construction, having recently been assigned to District Judge Alan D. Albright. A separate wing of this campaign is underway before Eastern District of Texas Judge Rodney Gilstrap, against Acer, Cisco, Fortinet, HP Enterprise (HPE), IBM, Lenovo, and Palo Alto Networks. There, the Federal Circuit recently dismissed a petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Lenovo, the appeals court refusing to reverse a denial of Lenovo’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Across this campaign, EireOg asserts up to five former NXP patents, targeting devices alleged to incorporate certain Intel and/or AMD CPUs.