Nearly two years ago, Optima Direct, LLC acquired eight US patents from AmTRAN Technology, five of them originating with Sarnoff (now STI International) and three, with Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Optima Direct has filed its first litigation over the acquired assets, asserting one of the former ITRI patents in separate cases against INPAQ (5:21-cv-02817), Sunlord (5:21-cv-02822), and Yageo (4:21-cv-02823) in the Northern District of California; Yageo subsidiary Pulse Electronics (3:21-cv-00768) in a separate suit in the Southern District of California; and Panasonic (1:21-cv-00177) and TI (1:21-cv-00176) in the Eastern District of Texas. The litigation, which is not Optima Direct’s first, targets the provision of certain chip antenna units, either alone or within larger “Wi-Fi modules”.

District Judge Richard G. Andrews has invalidated claims from two patents “directed to a ‘nano gas sensor device’ that detects and changes in reaction to the presence of a gas, chemical, or biological object” under Alice. The court held that the claims are patent-ineligibly directed to the abstract idea of a sensor, observing along the way that the plaintiff, NPE Rondevoo Technologies, LLC, has filed numerous complaints throughout the country with “virtually no real litigation in any of these cases”. Judge Andrews’s order comes as the Western District of Texas has cemented its place at the top of the list of patent venues favored by NPE plaintiffs, outpacing Delaware in the first quarter.

After three attempts to sue the manufacturer of Anker’s Roav SmartCharge Car Kit, Hailo Technologies, LLC has changed tacks, this time accusing retailers Best Buy (4:20-cv-00025), Target (4:20-cv-00026), and WalMart (4:20-cv-00024) of infringement through sales of the devices. The plaintiff first sued Roav in January 2018, shifting to Anker by amended complaint in that same case, which was dismissed for improper service. Hailo then, in May of last year, tried suing Anker in the Western District of Washington but voluntarily dismissed the suit, without prejudice, after Anker reiterated by letter that it is “a holding company registered in Hong Kong and does not have an agent for service of process in the United States”—the standoff triggering the current retailer suits.

Optima Direct, LLC has filed a second round of suits in the litigation campaign that it began in October 2019, one of five campaigns launched by the NPE throughout the year. The new defendants are IDaptive (1:19-cv-02336), OneLogin (1:19-cv-02337), and Silverfort (1:19-cv-02339), each sued in Delaware over the same patent, generally related to using a third-party for key escrow and encrypted message transmission to send electronic documents, asserted against Assa Abloy (HID Global), Okta, and Ping in October complaints filed across multiple districts. Two of those earlier cases have already closed.

Optima Direct, LLC has expanded its sixth litigation campaign with two new Eastern District of Texas suits, one each against Oracle (2:19-cv-00380) and Symantec (2:19-cv-00381). At issue is the same secure document transmission patent asserted in complaints filed this month against Citrix (1:19-cv-02091) in the District of Delaware and Dropbox (1:19-cv-01098) in the Western District of Texas. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of software platforms that feature secure file sharing and syncing through encryption or hashing. Oracle is targeted over the BEA Tuxedo Security system and Symantec, over the Symantec Desktop Email Encryption feature of the NortonLifeLock PGP platform.

Last week Optima Direct, LLC filed suit against Dropbox (1:19-cv-01098) in the Western District of Texas over the same secure document transmission patent asserted in its complaint against Citrix (1:19-cv-02091), filed in the District of Delaware one week before. File sharing and syncing features in the defendants’ respective products—Dropbox and Citrix Files App—are accused. This new campaign is the sixth that Optima Direct has launched in just over a year.

Hailo Technologies, LLC has recently revived two of its three litigation campaigns to date and may yet revive the third. The NPE just added a case against Safr Technologies (1:19-cv-01139) to a June case against Juno (1:19-cv-01139) and May cases against Curb Mobility (1:19-cv-00945), Flywheel Software (1:19-cv-00949), and Via Transportation (1:19-cv-00946) in a campaign over a taxi dispatch patent that emerged from a reexamination triggered by Hailo itself with all claims found patentable as amended to avoid patent-ineligibility under Alice. In the second campaign, Hailo has recently added suits against Anker Innovations (2:19-cv-00751) and Moovn Technologies (2:19-cv-00958) over a patent generally related to locating a parked vehicle. In the third campaign, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) handed down a final written decision in an inter partes review (IPR) that found no challenged claims of a different taxi dispatch patent unpatentable under the arguments presented in a petition filed by Unified Patents.

TZU Technologies LLC, one of the “licensing programs” under “intellectual property accelerator” 2S Ventures, LLC, has launched a second litigation campaign, this one over a patent, generally related to a “self-articulating behind-wall camera”, from a family familiar to litigation. The NPE has accused Fluke (2:19-cv-00561), Milwaukee Electric Tool (1:19-cv-00651), and Optim (1:19-cv-00709) of infringement through the provision of diagnostic scopes (e.g., a videoscope for insertion and inspection of a vehicle’s gas tank). The subject matter of TZU Technologies’s prior litigation campaign suggests that the proper pronunciation of the plaintiff’s name is meant to be “tease you”.

On March 21, 2019, individual inventor Bao Tran assigned to California entity Rondevoo Technologies, LLC a portfolio that includes 16 US patents generally related to “nano” sensors, circuit elements, packaging, and genetic engineering. That same day, Tran assigned to Eloqui Voice Systems, LLC (EVS) a set of three US patents, two of them generally pertaining to speech recognition systems, and the third, to a “smart system powered by a light socket”. Both Rondevoo and EVS can be traced through Red Dragon Innovations, LLC to attorney Daniel C. Cotman of Cotman IP. With both Rondevoo and EVS already in litigation, over patents acquired separately, these latest transfers suggest that more campaigns or cases may be coming.

Rondevoo Technologies, LLC has added a case against HMD Global and Nokia (1:19-cv-00595) to its litigation campaign over a single patent that generally pertains to “clustering” keys on an input device, such as a telephone keypad or computer keyboard, to facilitate selection entry. The NPE has targeted the ability to enter alternate (e.g., accented) characters through the keypads of certain Android smartphones in complaints filed earlier against HTC, LG Electronics (LGE), Sony, and ZTE, calling out the Nokia 9 PureView in its latest complaint. The case against Sony was dismissed without prejudice (before an answer was filed) in January 2019, while the ZTE suit was dismissed in March, with prejudice in light of a settlement after the defendant answered. HTC has also answered, while the court granted LGE an extension of the deadline to respond Rondevoo’s complaint.