Kamatani Cloud LLC has revived a litigation campaign dormant since 2016, accusing NEC (1:20-cv-06721) of infringing a single patent generally related to networked measurement systems. The complaint accuses NEC of infringement through its provision of the NeoFace SmartID facial-recognition mobile app. General Patent Corporation (GPC), Kamatani Cloud’s ultimate parent and a familiar patent monetization firm, has been relatively quiet in recent years, at least in terms of filing patent litigation.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw 54 petitions for AIA review brought against NPEs in May, up from 20 such petitions filed in April. May PTAB filings included a resurgence in petitions against publicly traded NPEs, including Acacia Research Corporation; Pendrell Corporation; Quest Patent Research Corporation; VoIP-Pal.com, Inc.; Xperi Corporation (f/k/a Tessera Holding Corporation); and Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN) (which was renamed to Quarterhill Inc. on June 1). A variety of private litigants were also hit by PTAB petitions in May, including Blackbird Tech LLC, Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd., General Patent Corporation, Realtime Data LLC, and Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited.

General Patent Corporation (GPC) subsidiary LaserDynamics USA, LLC has added Advanced Media and Ritek (1:16-cv-06621), CD Video Manufacturing (1:16-cv-06619), and Media Masters and Moser Baer India (1:16-cv-06626) to its sole litigation campaign, asserting three patents (6,426,927; 6,529,469; 7,116,629) generally related to recordable optical discs. Ritek is accused of infringing the ‘469 patent alone, while the others are targeted over all three patents. The companies are alleged to infringe by making and selling single- and dual-layer optical DVD discs in multiple formats, including DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW.