As RPX previously reported, the litigation operation associated with monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) created persistent confusion in its early days, as it moved from litigation by Illinois entities to litigation through Texas entities. Some of that confusion pervades a recently unsealed order from Western District of Texas Alan D. Albright shifting potentially $600K in attorney fees against plaintiff Silent Communication, LLC and its counsel Ramey LLP in a case filed against BlackBerry, at the same time that Fiserv has asked West Texas Judge David Counts to clear away a cloud now hovering over the ownership of the patent family that AuthWallet, LLC, also repped by Ramey, has been litigating. The named inventor there has filed declarations with the USPTO suggesting that AuthWallet never actually owned that family.

In March 2024, AuthWallet, LLC filed a second set of suits—after an earlier round had been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice—against Amarillo National Bank, Cullen/Frost Bankers, and Fiserv, all in the Western District of Texas. This past week, District Judge David Counts dismissed the complaints because they failed to adequately plead direct, indirect, and willful infringement, relying on “mixing and matching different accused products in its claim charts”. The dismissal, though, is with leave to amend, and, in the Cullen/Frost Bankers case, the court denied a concurrent motion to sanction AuthWallet’s litigation counsel, Ramey LLP, under Rule 11.

Northern District of Texas Judges Ada Brown and Jane J. Boyle have recently denied motions to proceed without representation by local counsel, as local rules require, in cases filed last month by WirelessWERX IP LLC against Honda, Mitsubishi, and Nissan. After such a denial, the plaintiff has 14 days to get local counsel or face possible dismissal. Meanwhile, current counsel Ramey LLP has filed six additional cases in this campaign, one against each of Ford (2:25-cv-00241) and Subaru (2:25-cv-00225), in the Eastern District of Texas; Tesla (7:25-cv-00093) and Zebra Technologies (7:25-cv-00094), in the Western District of Texas; Blues (1:25-cv-10469) and HERE Technologies (1:25-cv-10418) in the District of Massachusetts; and OnStar (5:25-cv-00104), in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

After a December 2023 hearing on a Cisco motion for sanctions against Ramey LLP, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright indicated on the docket that a written order was “forthcoming”. Cisco asked the court to impose a “prefiling injunction” against Ramey LLP, preventing that firm and its principal from filing any case against Cisco in that district without prior approval to do so from the 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. The docket of that case, filed by mCom IP, LLC, has been quiet for more than a year since Cisco’s motion was taken under advisement—but that is not the only thing that has been quiet over the past 14 months.

WirelessWERX IP LLC has been suing over a location tracking portfolio—so far over six of the patents from that portfolio—since October 2022. It recently added separate cases against AT&T (d/b/a FirstNet) (2:25-cv-00182) in the Eastern District of Texas; against Honda (3:25-cv-00342), Hyundai (3:25-cv-00341), Mitsubishi Motors (3:25-cv-00340), and Nissan (3:25-cv-00382) in the Northern District of Texas; against Samsara (1:25-cv-00245) in the Northern District of Georgia; against VOXX (8:25-cv-00386) in the Middle District of Florida; and against PointR (1:25-cv-10391) in the District of Massachusetts, all to the one filed against Samsung earlier in January. Several of the districts in which WirelessWERX IP has filed cases requires litigants to file a certified list of interested parties. WirelessWERX IP has purported to do so there (and elsewhere), each time represented by Ramey LLP and each time providing a certified list that appears to be, at best, incomplete.

Nearly three years after its first case against Adobe, AK Meeting IP LLC—an entity associated with patent monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP)—has filed suit against it again (7:25-cv-00019), back in the Western District of Texas. The sole asserted patent generally relates to group software that uses a server that receives information from a client comprising both content and cursor movement information, where the server sends the messages to the client devices. Adobe is again targeted over the provision the Adobe Connect web conferencing platform, with features related to remotely controlling another user’s screen at issue.

Texas plaintiff Random Chat LLC has added a Western District of Texas case against Amazon (7:25-cv-00011) to the litigation campaign it began this past summer, over a single patent generally related to a method for setting up random multimedia connections between users who have logged into a server and are part of a pool of users. Targeted throughout has been the provision of customer support chat services. Prior defendants, including Abercrombie & Fitch and Aveda, challenged the claims of the asserted patent under Alice, as directed to the abstract idea of “permitting online chat sessions”.

Samsung (7:25-cv-00007) is the latest defendant to be added to the sole litigation campaign of WirelessWERX IP LLC, a plaintiff associated with Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) and Pueblo Nuevo LLC. In the new Western District of Texas complaint, the plaintiff asserts a single patent generally related to “selectively communicating” with a device within “pre-defined geographical zones”. Samsung is accused of infringement through the provision of the SmartThings Find platform, with features for allowing users to receive notifications when a device arrives at or leaves certain locations (i.e., Zones) at issue.

CLOUD SYSTEMS HOLDCO IP LLC (CSHIP) has followed up its November 2024 suit against Savant Systems in the Southern District of New York with one filed in the Western District of North Carolina against Resideo Technologies (Snap One) (3:24-cv-01116). The same patent, generally related to controlling and monitoring multiple devices, is asserted, with infringement allegations against Snap One focused on features within its Control4-series controllers that allow the selection or control of smart devices. Earlier 2024 cases, one against each of Comcast and Kramer Electronics, also remain active, Kramer having previewed a motion to dismiss in which it notes that CSHIP has floated $49K as the price tag for “an early-stage settlement”.

In its latest complaints, Texas plaintiff ERR Content IP LLC targets the media casting services of three more defendants, Hisense (2:24-cv-01053); Roku (7:24-cv-00330) in the Western District of Texas; and Spotify (1:24-cv-09530), in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiff here asserts the same patent already in suit in cases filed earlier this fall against Amazon, LG Electronics (LGE), and Comcast, in that order. The patent generally relates to “providing a main content” on a first device (in its complaints, identified as a smartphone), and “extra content” synchronized to the main content on a second device (identified as a television).