Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) has filed its second suit of 2024, accusing Vivotek (6:24-cv-00361) of infringing four patents acquired from Eastman Kodak in a new Western District of Texas complaint. The Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC plaintiff targets facial recognition, object detection, and video summarization features within various image capturing or processing products. The only other active suit in this campaign, filed against TCL (TCT Mobile) in early January 2024, has become mired in a dispute over the proper service of process on foreign defendants, Magistrate Judge J. Baxter Boone recently ordering the defendants to provide an address for certain Chinese entities “to avoid an unnecessary game of ‘whack-a-mole’”.

Last month, Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) sued Tesla (6:23-cv-00750) over seven patents from a large former Eastman Kodak portfolio, targeting the provision of “image processing and recognition technology” incorporated in its automobiles, including Autopilot, Autosteer, Full Self-Driving, Sentry Mode, and other related features. Now, the Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC plaintiff has hit Samsara (1:23-cv-05687) over the provision of the Samsara Connected Operations Cloud system, focusing on “Video-Based Safety, Vehicle Telematics, Apps and Driver Workflows, Equipment Monitoring, and Site Visibility” features, which allegedly “integrate[] AI-powered analytics and cloud-based processing, storage, and access to capture and analyze imagery at customer sites and identify important content for review and action”. Three of those former Eastman Kodak patents are now in suit against Samsara.

Three plaintiffs associated with Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC have added defendants to their existing campaigns. Liberty Peak Ventures, LLC (LPV) has sued Fifth Third Bank (3:23-cv-00611) over the provision of various financial products related to “internal payment processing, authentication, authorization, overdraft, enrollment, and fraud detection”. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) has also sued Kyocera (2:23-cv-00127) over the provision of a wide array of products, including multifunctional printers, smartphones, tablets, and related software products, focusing on features related to battery management, image processing, and print management. Additionally, Redwood Technologies, LLC has hit Texas Instruments (2:23-cv-00135, 2:23-cv-00136) with two suits, targeting the provision of devices compliant with the IEEE 802.11ac/ax/n networking standards, mesh networking devices that are compliant with IEEE 802.11, and devices that are compliant with the Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) specification.

This fall, Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) has added three more cases to the litigation over its large portfolio of former Eastman Kodak patents, most recently suing TP-Link (6:22-cv-01250) in a Western District of Texas complaint that targets the provision of video surveillance hardware and software products. A September 2022 suit filed there against Alarm.com (6:22-cv-00982) has already been dismissed with prejudice in light of a settlement, while a September 2022 case filed in the Eastern District of Texas against Canva (2:22-cv-00360) continues, in the earliest stages, before Judge Rodney Gilstrap. 2022 has also seen the end of campaign cases filed separately against Acer, Johnson Controls, Vivint, and Xerox.

A joint motion to stay and notice of settlement has stopped activity in the case filed in September 2021 by Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) against Xerox in the Eastern District of Texas. MPV has now sued Vivint (6:22-cv-00635) in the Western District of Texas, where a February 2022 case against Acer remains active and headed toward an October claim construction hearing. Since March 2018, the plaintiff (across multiple campaigns, as a formal matter) has been asserting patents from a large portfolio of former Eastman Kodak patents, four of which are asserted in the newest complaint, against Vivint’s provision of certain surveillance cameras, smart home hubs, and related software products.

On the same day that Xerox’s attempt to have their dispute adjudicated in the Western District of New York resulted in a transfer, Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV) filed an affirmative case (2:21-cv-00345) against the company in the Eastern District of Texas. That suit concerns six former Eastman Kodak patents, asserted against various printers and scanners and related software over features primarily related to print management, document image processing, layout templates, and adjustable touchscreen displays. Xerox immediately dismissed the transferred case, which concerned a different subset of MPV’s portfolio, all of this activity occurring as the Federal Circuit considers MPV’s appeal from a final judgment from a Central District of California case, filed in November 2019 against Toshiba, invalidating another subset of those patents under Alice.

RPX data indicate that since 2016, NPEs have collectively launched over 80 separate litigation campaigns asserting patents received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV). Meanwhile, the outflow of patents from IV persists, and divestments executed last year (primarily during the fourth quarter of 2019) continue to be recorded with the USPTO—many preceding the start of new NPE campaigns.

Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV)—an NPE associated with monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC—has continued to assert patents from a large portfolio of former Eastman Kodak assets received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), filing a new suit targeting various models of security cameras and security systems of Robert Bosch (Bosch Security Systems) (1:20-cv-00611). The case follows a Xerox complaint filed roughly ten days ago seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement as to eight MPV patents, a complaint in which Xerox asserts that MPV is “no innovator”, characterizing it as an NPE with an “opportunistic” monetization strategy (6:20-cv-06263). The day before Xerox filed its complaint, Corrino Holdings LLC—an NPE associated with monetization firm IPValuation Partners LLC (d/b/a IPVal)—kept its sole litigation campaign alive, filing suit against Expedia (6:20-cv-00309) over patents from a portfolio also received from IV—a portfolio including assets that Palo Alto Research Corporation (PARC), a Xerox subsidiary, assigned to IV in May 2015.

Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (MPV)—a subsidiary of the patent monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC—has had a busy 2020 so far, picking up a portfolio from Siemens in February, receiving a group of patents from an inventor-controlled entity in March, and opening up a new campaign this past week involving former Kodak patents received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV).

The late 2019 peel off by Intellectual Ventures, LLC (IV) of more than 3,500 US assets to a batch of Georgia NPEs has ousted Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC from its long-held position as the top NPE assignee of IV divestitures. Meanwhile, as discussed in RPX’s Q1 in Review blog post, throughout the first quarter, NPEs continued filing new litigation asserting patents received from IV, hitting a broad range of targets, including over patents developed by major operating companies.