ERR Content IP LLC has filed suit in the Southern District of Texas against Comcast (4:24-cv-04385) over the provision of XFINITY Home. Asserted is the same patent—broadly directed to “providing a main content” on a first device and “extra content” synchronized to the main content on a second device—already in suit via August 2024 cases against Amazon, in the Western District of Texas, and against LG Electronics (LGE), in the Northern District of Texas. Per the claim chart attached to the ERR Content IP complaint, the identified first device here is a smartphone; the second device, a TV.

CLOUD SYSTEMS HOLDCO IP LLC (CSHIP) has filed suit against Savant Systems (1:24-cv-08502) in the Southern District of New York. The patent-in-suit generally relates to controlling an “environment” through a server and a control client, just one from five asserted across the roughly 20 complaints that have been filed in this campaign since its October 2022 start. The accused products are certain media/music servers (“the PAV-SIPA devices (SIPA1SM, SIPA50SM, SIPA125SM)”) together with apps used to control them. The new complaint drops a couple of weeks after the USPTO canceled, via ex parte reexam (EPR), all 20 claims of one of the asserted patent’s family members.

ERR Content IP LLC, an entity associated with Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) and Pueblo Nuevo LLC, has filed its first litigation, suing Amazon (7:24-cv-00207) in the Western District of Texas and LG Electronics (LGE) (3:24-cv-02191) in the Northern District of Texas. The sole asserted patent generally relates to “providing a main content” on a first device and “extra content” synchronized to the main content on a second device. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of their respective smart TV platforms: for Amazon, over the “picture-in-picture” feature; and for LGE, over the “Screen Share / Screen Mirroring – Device to TV” feature.

It looks as if April 2024 will end with three additional defendants having been sued in the sole litigation campaign of WirelessWERX IP LLC, a DynaIP and Pueblo Nuevo LLC plaintiff. Those defendants are Trimble (1:24-cv-01035), MapleBear (d/b/a Instacart) (6:24-cv-00208), and AT&T (2:24-cv-00282), accused, in April complaints filed in that order in three separate district courts, of infringing patents from a family generally related to communicating with a device inside a “pre-defined geographical zones”. AT&T’s and Trimble’s accused products are their TruckMate and Fleet Management platforms, respectively, while Instacart is targeted over the provision of its “products and technology platform for connecting consumers with restaurants and other merchants”, including the Instacart website.

Litigation between MISSED CALL, LLC, a Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) and Pueblo Nuevo LLC plaintiff, and Twilio has made headlines for several reasons in the past, but now it can be added to the list of matters involving a party represented by Ramey LLP that has missed an important deadline, here to respond to a motion a dismiss. Northern District of California Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler posted an order last Friday noting that MISSED CALL’s opposition (or statement of nonopposition) to Twilio’s motion to dismiss was due on April 8, 2024, but “[n]othing was filed”—ordering the plaintiff to make such a filing, or otherwise request more time, by April 22 at 2 p.m. Among its reasons for issuing the order is “to give notice to the plaintiff of the consequences of not participating in the litigation, including monetary sanctions and dismissal of the case for failure to prosecute it”. The latter consequence has now fallen upon the plaintiff: After MISSED CALL missed this latest deadline as well, Judge Beeler ordered the plaintiff to dismiss the case with prejudice.

In February 2023, Northern District of Texas Judge Brantley Starr shifted attorney fees in favor of defendant VMware, ordering ZT IP, LLC to pay VMware $92,130.35 within 30 days of that order. The court deemed the case exceptional, in part, because the accused product was released in 2002, a full year before the application that led to the patent asserted in the case; per Judge Starr, “VMware provided all the information for ZT to quickly realize that it had no claim and that it should have dropped the suit before any of the parties spent unnecessary fees”. Not “a single dime” received from ZT IP by August of last year, VMware propounded post-judgment discovery and filed motions to amend the judgment and to join additional parties, including Dynamic IP Deals LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) and its principal Carlos O. Gorrichategui, Entente IP, LLC and its principal David Ghorbanpoor, Pueblo Nuevo LLC (but not its principal Hernan Arturo Perez Torrijos), and litigation counsel Ramey LLP and its principal William P. Ramey III. By December 2023, though, having expended tens of thousands more dollars trying to collect the fees owed from ZT IP, which VMware characterizes as a “judgment-proof shell company”, VMware withdrew its motions, and just this month, Judge Starr granted Ramey LLP’s motion to withdraw from the suit.

In its newest complaint, filed by Ramey LLP in the Western District of Texas, CLOUD SYSTEMS HOLDCO IP LLC (CSHIP) states, “The Accused Instrumentality is Google Smart Home”. That assertion appears to contradict the identity of the defendant, Comcast (7:24-cv-00072), as well as the claim chart attached to the complaint, which instead identifies a variety of Comcast’s own smart home security products sold under its Xfinity brand, including the Xfinity Home app, its “The Panel” control device, as used to control a home security system, including security cameras, sensors, video doorbells, and door locks. In an earlier, separate action, Google has asked the court to dismiss the case with prejudice because CSHIP missed its deadline to respond to a motion to dismiss.

After suing Tesla last month, Autonomous IP LLC has filed a second Western District of Texas complaint, this time against Lyft (7:24-cv-00051). The new pleading, filed by William P. Ramey III of Ramey LLP, raises questions in that it states in its body that the “Accused Instrumentality is Tesla Autopilot” but purports, through an attached claim chart, to target provision of the Level 5 initiative, described as a “self-driving system for ridesharing”, a division apparently sold to Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet in October 2021.

Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly has recently returned attention to certain plaintiffs that had filed cases before him, cases that became tied up in concerns about compliance with his April 2022 standing orders late that year but had been sliding under the radar. In mid-January, the court questioned two attorneys about representation of an additional pair of plaintiffs tied to Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC, subsequently ordering one of those plaintiffs to produce to the court a set of documents designed to determine whether ethical violations occurred in the conduct of the suits before him. Separately, the court set a status conference in a case filed by MISSED CALL, LLC, requiring counsel to appear in person, after that plaintiff began suing the same defendants elsewhere. Now, events have stalled both inquiries.

Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly has ordered Jimmy Chong of the Chong Law Firm P.A. and William P. Ramey III of Ramey LLP to attend—in person—a status conference to be held on February 16, 2024. The conference has been set in connection with a case that Ramey (as lead counsel) and Chong (as local counsel) filed on behalf of MISSED CALL, LLC against Twilio back in June 2022. That suit was stayed to await the outcome (now clear) of certain mandamus petitions filed in connection with a set of IP Edge LLC-tied lawsuits before Judge Connolly. After MISSED CALL filed an October 2023 suit against Twilio, substantively identical to the prior Delaware case, counsel for Twilio and Chong submitted separate letters to Judge Connolly, the first seeking a lift of the existing stay and the second to inject some distance from the new filing.