ERR Content IP LLC has filed suit in the Southern District of Texas against Comcast (4:24-cv-04385) over the provision of XFINITY Home. Asserted is the same patent—broadly directed to “providing a main content” on a first device and “extra content” synchronized to the main content on a second device—already in suit via August 2024 cases against Amazon, in the Western District of Texas, and against LG Electronics (LGE), in the Northern District of Texas. Per the claim chart attached to the ERR Content IP complaint, the identified first device here is a smartphone; the second device, a TV.

CLOUD SYSTEMS HOLDCO IP LLC (CSHIP) has filed suit against Savant Systems (1:24-cv-08502) in the Southern District of New York. The patent-in-suit generally relates to controlling an “environment” through a server and a control client, just one from five asserted across the roughly 20 complaints that have been filed in this campaign since its October 2022 start. The accused products are certain media/music servers (“the PAV-SIPA devices (SIPA1SM, SIPA50SM, SIPA125SM)”) together with apps used to control them. The new complaint drops a couple of weeks after the USPTO canceled, via ex parte reexam (EPR), all 20 claims of one of the asserted patent’s family members.

This past August, Eastern District of Texas Judge Sean D. Jordan ruled ineligible one of the three e‑commerce patents that AML IP LLC has been litigating in a campaign that has hit close to 90 defendants since December 2020. The court characterized that patent’s claims as “strikingly similar” to those ruled ineligible in the Alice case itself. AML IP has filed an appeal (apparently in the wrong court), Bath & Body Works has sought a shift of attorney fees, and, its active suits against other defendants now imperiled by the Alice ruling, AML IP, backed by litigation funding, has circled back to file new complaints that assert another patent from the same family, including complaints against existing retail defendants Estee Lauder (Aveda) (7:24-cv-00276), Petco (7:24-cv-00253), Sally Beauty, (7:24-cv-00254), and Sephora (6:24-cv-00546).

ERR Content IP LLC, an entity associated with Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) and Pueblo Nuevo LLC, has filed its first litigation, suing Amazon (7:24-cv-00207) in the Western District of Texas and LG Electronics (LGE) (3:24-cv-02191) in the Northern District of Texas. The sole asserted patent generally relates to “providing a main content” on a first device and “extra content” synchronized to the main content on a second device. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of their respective smart TV platforms: for Amazon, over the “picture-in-picture” feature; and for LGE, over the “Screen Share / Screen Mirroring – Device to TV” feature.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.