“We are not prepared to say that the district court clearly abused its discretion in making what here was a case-specific assessment of the record that it was uniquely well-positioned to do”. So ruled the Federal Circuit last week in denying an Apple petition for a writ of mandamus that would have required Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright to transfer for convenience a case filed by Resonant Systems, Inc. (d/b/a RevelHMI) to the Northern District of California. Observers have noted greater recent deference from the appeals court concerning Judge Albright’s denials of motions for convenience transfers, the reason for which deference might be the simplest one, observable simply by considering the heart of Judge Albright’s denial of Apple’s motion here.

The sole campaign of Jawbone Innovations, LLC has been rocked by a large number of instituted trials before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), a partly unfavorable claim construction ruling in the Western District of Texas, and a recent Federal Circuit decision that moved its center of gravity to the Northern District of California. The funded plaintiff has nevertheless escalated this litigation, over former Aliph (d/b/a Jawbone) patents generally related to acoustic noise suppression, filing seven new cases last week across several districts: against HTC (2:23-cv-00077), LG Electronics (LGE) (2:23-cv-00078), OPPO (2:23-cv-00079), Panasonic (2:23-cv-00081), and ZTE (2:23-cv-00082) in the Eastern District of Texas; Meta Platforms (f/k/a Facebook) (6:23-cv-00158) in the Western District of Texas; and Sony (2:23-cv-01161) in the District of New Jersey.

The Federal Circuit has for the first time interpreted a closely watched decision on venue from the Fifth Circuit, the regional circuit that determines the applicable law governing convenience transfers in Texas patent cases. That October 2022 ruling, In re: Planned Parenthood, appeared to depart from the Federal Circuit’s prior take on issues central to the analysis of such transfer motions, including the location of evidence, the cost of attendance for witnesses, and the district judge’s overarching discretion over such matters. However, the Federal Circuit’s precedential In re: Google opinion, issued on February 1, argues that Planned Parenthood does not undercut its current approach. In Google, the court held that a clear showing that a venue is more convenient takes precedence over the district judge’s discretion. Even more significantly, the Federal Circuit determined that NPEs do not have an interest in getting cases to trial quickly—and that a district judge lacks the discretion to give undue weight to his district’s time to trial. The opinion reversed another transfer denial from Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright, and comes months after Judge Albright began attempting to fill the gap with his own reading of Planned Parenthood.

Amazon (2:21-cv-00435) has joined Apple, Alphabet (Google), and Samsung as a defendant in the growing litigation campaign of Jawbone Innovations, LLC. Targeted is Amazon’s provision of products with voice activity detection features and related microphone arrays, including smart home devices, smart speakers, smart displays, hands-free streaming devices, and ear buds. The complaint, filed in the Eastern District of Texas on November 29, asserts eight former Aliph (d/b/a Jawbone) patents out of the nearly 80 active grants apparently held by the NPE plaintiff.

Multiple litigation finance players announced large fundraises during the third quarter, signaling a continued interest in the asset class by institutional investors. Also during Q3, several NPEs began new campaigns financed by third parties, including an established litigation finance firm as well as a hedge fund.

Apple (6:21-cv-00984) and Alphabet (Google) (6:21-cv-00985) are the latest defendants to be added to Jawbone Innovations, LLC’s sole litigation campaign, launched in May 2021 with a suit against Samsung. The plaintiff asserts eight patents, each originating with Aliph (d/b/a Jawbone) and broadly directed to various aspects of microphone technology. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of a wide variety of devices (e.g., earphones, headphones, notebooks, smartphones, smart home devices, tablets, and wearables), with features related to microphone arrays, noise cancellation, and voice detection at issue. In its new complaints, Jawbone Innovations asserts six additional patents for the first time.

Among patent assignments recently made public by the USPTO is the transfer of more than two dozen assets generally related to speech recognition and/or processing from Nuance Communications to a Delaware LLC. The transaction, dated January 1, 2021, followed by two and a half months the execution of an assignment of two US patents, also broadly directed to speech recognition, to the same LLC from another player in the space. This collection of similar assets suggests that additional patent cases may be on the verge of joining a slew of speech recognition campaigns spread out across nearly all stages of the litigation life cycle.

Some of the former intellectual property assets of Aliph (d/b/a Jawbone), a maker of Bluetooth headsets and other audio accessories that was liquidated in 2017—75 of them—have landed in litigation. The current owner, Jawbone Innovations, LLC, has sued Samsung (2:21-cv-00186) over the provision of products with voice activity detection features and related microphone arrays, including earbuds and smartphones. The complaint specifically highlights the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro and Galaxy S20 as products accused of infringing the two asserted patents.