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Ramey LLP Seeks to Maintain Appeals, Apparently to Defend Against Any Sanctions in the Court Below
In Case You Missed It, TPLF
Last Friday, the Federal Circuit gave CTD Networks LLC, a plaintiff under the apparent control of “AiPi, LLC (f/k/a AiPi Solutions)”, and district court defendant Alphabet (Google) a week “to file an updated status report indicating how they believe this appeal should now proceed” now that Whitestone Law has apprised the court that it has no plans to enter an appearance in the matter. On February 2, 2024, CTD’s current counsel, Ramey LLP, was allowed to withdraw from the appeal conditioned on the entry of appearance of new counsel for CTD Networks within 30 days. Per Ramey LLP’s emergency motion to withdraw, “In short, AiPi and Whitestone appear to be purposely prejudicing Ramey LLP’s and CTD Network’s [sic] interests in the pending appeal at the Federal Circuit by not filing an appeal brief”.
April 21, 2024
Quinn Emanuel, Longford Capital Announce Litigation Funding Deal
Patent Market, Patent Watch, TPLF
Litigation funder Longford Capital and law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP announced on April 11 a litigation financing offering for private equity firms and their portfolio companies. According to a press release, “Longford has committed up to $40M in equity capital to Quinn Emanuel’s private equity clients involved in litigation, funding attorneys’ fees and litigation costs and monetizing the value of meritorious legal claims”.
April 12, 2024
Westfleet Releases Its Fifth Annual Market Report on Litigation Finance
Patent Market, Patent Watch, TPLF
This week Westfleet Advisors released its annual market report on litigation finance, providing transactional data for 39 commercial litigation funders active in the US. As is the case for most reporting on the largely opaque practice of third-party litigation funding, the fifth iteration of Westfleet’s yearly publication is inherently incomplete; however, the report does offer useful metrics by which the growth of the litigation finance market can be measured.
March 30, 2024
Ascend Innovation Divestiture of AI-CORE Assets Revealed
Patent Market, Patent Watch, TPLF
RPX recently covered the new litigation filed by Byteweavr, LLC, an Ascend Innovation Management, LLC plaintiff, over former Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) patents received from Ascend Innovation cousin AI-CORE TECHNOLOGIES, LLC in February. As reflected in assignment records recently made public, AI-CORE actually moved the bulk of the 145 patent assets that it received from IV last October to another monetization enterprise for apparent assertion; this immediate October 2023 divestiture is not the first to follow that path, from IV to Ascend to an unrelated (likely) plaintiff.
March 29, 2024
Apex Beam Brings Those Newly Acquired Patents to Bear
New Patent Litigation, TPLF
Its prior case against Samsung stayed in light of a set of inter partes reviews (IPRs) of the five former Shanghai Langbo Communication Technology patents-in-suit, Apex Beam Technologies LLC has filed a second complaint against Samsung asserting a dozen patents from a different source against the provision of a long list of “5G mobile handsets, tablets, and notebooks”. In a parallel action against TCL (TCT Mobile), not stayed in light of those IPRs, Apex Beam has moved to amend the complaint to add five of those newly sourced patents. TCT Mobile has opposed that motion, through a sur-reply filed with Eastern District of Texas Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap at the end of February.
March 26, 2024
BMW Tries to Enter the Arigna-Susman-Longford “Tripartite” Fray
Patent Market, Patent Watch, TPLF
Briefing is now complete on a motion to intervene brought by BMW in the District of Delaware case that Arigna Technology Limited, a plaintiff operating under the umbrella of Dublin-based monetization firm Atlantic IP Services Limited, filed against Longford Capital Fund III, LP (“LCF”), an entity controlled by Chicago-based litigation finance firm Longford Capital, this past December. Arigna and Longford dispute the extent to which the latter is owed proceeds from a “global settlement” with an unnamed defendant sued across litigation run by multiple Atlantic IP-tied plaintiffs, not just Arigna. BMW has jumped in based on allegations that a “German court will be expected to award BMW from Arigna . . . between $380,000 and $1.1 million” in costs and fees there and that “Arigna has demonstrated an ability and willingness to reduce its capital abroad to insulate itself from paying fees to BMW in Germany”. BMW further argues that its involvement in this case is necessary because it is “the only party interested in shedding light on the possible violation of Irish champerty litigation financing laws” here.
March 24, 2024
New Eastern District of Virginia Case Targets Audiobook Services
New Patent Litigation, TPLF
Audio Pod IP, LLC has filed its first case, suing Amazon (Amazon Web Services, Audible) (2:24-cv-00185) in the Eastern District of Virginia. Asserted are five patents that generally relate to the online playback of audiobooks as represented by multiple digital audio files with associated timestamps and other data, as well as related features like bookmarking and storage allocation. The new complaint targets the provision of the Audible and Audible Library audiobook services, along with other “current and legacy services” that use or have used those Audible services, including Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading.
March 23, 2024
BMW and Bosch File DJ Action Against Atlantic IP’s Foras Technologies in the Eastern District of Virginia
New Patent Litigation, TPLF
BMW and Robert Bosch (1:24-cv-00363) have filed a declaratory judgment (DJ) action in the Eastern District of Virginia against Foras Technologies Limited—a plaintiff associated with Dublin-based monetization firm Atlantic IP Services Limited—seeking judgments of invalidity and noninfringement of one patent generally related to protecting against “loss of lockstep” in processors. The complaint is part of the companies’ response to an affirmative complaint filed against them in the Western District of Texas, where parallel motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and for pleading inadequacies have been fully briefed.
March 15, 2024
UPC Overturns First Preliminary Injunction as Another NPE Takes the Plunge
Top Insight, TPLF
One of the most important milestones in the patent space last year was the June launch of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), a European Union (EU) venue for infringement and validity actions with jurisdiction over 17 participating EU member states. The UPC has the authority to impose not just damages but also both preliminary and permanent injunctions spanning all 17 countries. While the potential scope of such injunctive relief makes it a powerful tool for plaintiffs, recent developments concerning injunctions have not been uniformly positive for patent owners. Though the court issued its first preliminary injunction in September, ruling in the process that NPEs are eligible for such relief, it overturned that injunction on February 26 due to concerns that the underlying patent is invalid. Nonetheless, a companion ruling addressing the impact of defendant NanoString Technologies’s related bankruptcy, along with another notable NPE joining the fray with its first UPC case, provide clues about how such plaintiffs may use the EU’s new court to gain leverage in multijurisdictional disputes.
March 3, 2024
QPRC’s Harbor Island Files First Suit
New Patent Litigation, TPLF
Harbor Island Dynamic LLC (HID), a subsidiary of Quest Patent Research Corporation (QPRC), has filed its first litigation, suing Samsung (2:24-cv-00140) in the Eastern District of Texas. The defendant is alleged to infringe four patents through the provision of products, including “smartphones, tablets, and other similar devices”, that incorporate certain Samsung image sensors (including some integrated into downstream products from Samsung customers Alphabet (Google), Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), and Leopard Imaging) and switching circuits.
March 3, 2024