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WirelessWERX IP Campaign Provides a Double Dose of Panama
New Patent Litigation
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.
April 27, 2024
You Can’t Get Blood from a Stone
Patent Litigation Feature
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.
April 19, 2024
AuthWallet Attempts Financial Services Campaign Reboot After Alice Invalidation
New Patent Litigation
AuthWallet, LLC has filed second suits against Amarillo National Bank (7:24-cv-00064), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC Bank USA) (7:24-cv-00065), Cullen/Frost Bankers (7:24-cv-00066), Fiserv (7:24-cv-00063), and PNC Financial Services Group (7:24-cv-00067), again in the Western District of Texas. The defendants are again accused of infringement over the support of certain mobile banking/payment functionalities in various financial products. The first cases against these defendants, filed in February 2023, faced serious headwinds, the defendants immediately challenging the sufficiency of AuthWallet’s (sometimes facially incomplete) infringement allegations in its pleadings and then raising the Federal Circuit’s May 2023 affirmance of an invalidation under Alice of a “closely related patent” of AuthWallet.
March 8, 2024
Second Autonomous IP Complaint Raises Questions
New Patent Litigation
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.
February 22, 2024
Motion for Clarification and “Scheduled Procedures” Push Off Additional Delaware Scrutiny
In Case You Missed It
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.
February 18, 2024
MISSED CALL Adds Northern District of California Cases Amid Existing Delaware-West Texas Tangle
New Patent Litigation
MISSED CALL, LLC has sued 8x8 (3:23-cv-06723) and RingCentral (3:23-cv-06728) in the Northern District of California, asserting the same “missed call” patent at issue throughout this campaign. Three Delaware cases filed by the plaintiff in May 2022 were assigned to Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, compliance with whose April 2022 standing orders on heightened transparency has more sensationally embroiled Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC over the past year and a half. However, MISSED CALL’s separate suits against Freshworks, Talkdesk, and Twilio have been stayed in Delaware for over a year, ostensibly to await the outcome of certain mandamus proceedings in the IP Edge cases (although those proceedings have long since ended). A second pair of suits, one against each of Freshworks and Twilio filed last October in the Western District of Texas, prompted counsel to submit letters to Judge Connolly to seek the lift of a prior stay and to distance itself from the West Texas cases, respectively.
January 10, 2024
CSHIP Targets Remote Control and Remote Monitoring in New Complaints
New Patent Litigation
CLOUD SYSTEMS HOLDCO IP LLC (CSHIP) has filed a second suit against each of Carrier Global (8:23-cv-02269) and Philips (Philips North America) (7:23-cv-00186), this time targeting the UltraSync mobile app and Philips Avent baby monitor, respectively. At issue are features such as remote control and remote monitoring. The two asserted patents, asserted in overlapping sets, generally relate to controlling an “environment” through a server and a control client. Since launching its sole litigation campaign in October 2022, the plaintiff has sued 12 defendants including Alphabet (Google), Amazon (Ring), Bosch (Bosch Security Systems), NRG Energy (Vivint), and Samsung.
December 7, 2023
After a 2022 Dismissal Without Prejudice, SmartWatch Mobileconcepts Refiles Against Philips
New Patent Litigation
In June 2022, SmartWatch Mobileconcepts LLC (SWM) voluntarily dismissed, without prejudice, a Western District of Texas case that it had filed roughly three weeks earlier against Philips (Philips North America) over a single patent generally related to allowing access to a “secured electronic system” after authenticating a user through biometric information obtained from a wearable device. Now, in a new Western District of Texas complaint against the same defendant (6:23-cv-00775), SWM again targets provision of the Lifeline medical alert wearable with that same patent, this time pleading that Philips has had prefiling knowledge of that patent, reaching back to the June 2022 complaint.
November 22, 2023
Cisco Asks Judge Albright to Impose a “Prefiling Injunction” on the “Band of Merry Lawyers at Ramey LLP”
Patent Litigation Feature
Cisco has asked District Judge Alan D. Albright to issue a “prefiling injunction” against Ramey LLP, preventing that firm and its principal from filing any case against Cisco in the Western District of Texas without prior approval to do so from the district’s chief judge and from filing any case against Cisco in any other district without “attaching a copy of the opinion and order issuing the injunction with” that filing. Cisco made this request in a motion for attorney fees in a case filed by mCom IP, LLC that Judge Albright dismissed with prejudice after Ramey failed to show up at a hearing on a motion to dismiss. mCom IP, in a (corrected) brief signed by William P. Ramey, III, has opposed the request, arguing that “nothing rare happened in this case”, that “it was normal litigation”, and that the imposition of a “prefiling injunction” is “wholly unwarranted”, “severe”, “drastic”, and “extreme”.
November 12, 2023
CSHIP Counters Stay in First Case Against Google
New Patent Litigation
The cases that CLOUD SYSTEMS HOLDCO IP LLC (CSHIP) filed against Amazon (Ring), in the Central District of California, and against Alphabet (Google), in the Western District of Texas, have been stayed to await the outcome of an ex parte reexamination (EPR) of the sole patent there asserted. CSHIP has hit Google a second time, now with two other patents from the same family, one of which is making its debut in this campaign, begun last October; again targeted is the control of connected devices via mobile app within the Google Home platform.
November 11, 2023