This past week, Lionra Technologies Limited, an Atlantic IP Services Limited plaintiff, filed a third case against Cisco (2:24-cv-00097) in the Eastern District of Texas, this one aiming a single former L3Harris patent at the provision of various networking switches and fabric extenders. Lionra first sued Cisco in August 2022, the same month that the plaintiff hit Fortinet, HP Enterprise (HPE), and Palo Alto Networks in separate complaints in the same district. Since then, HPE has exited the campaign, and trial has been set for May 2024 as to the rest, each of which has recently filed a motion to stay pending certain inter partes review (IPR) proceedings.

This past week, the Federal Circuit denied a petition for a writ of mandamus sought by RingCentral after Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright rejected its renewed motion to dismiss for improper venue. RingCentral had argued that plaintiff Marble VOIP Partners LLC could not fix a venue flaw by filing an amended complaint identifying for the first time a lease for an in-district property that RingCentral signed after the date of the original complaint. The appeals court turned RingCentral away, as it has two other recent mandamus petitioners: Apple, in a case filed by Lionra Technologies Limited (involving a transfer for convenience); and Realtek Semiconductor, in one filed by ParkerVision, Inc. (involving alternative means of service).

This past week, the Federal Circuit declined to disturb a decision from Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright that denied a motion to transfer a case filed by Lionra Technologies Limited against Apple to the Northern District of California. Apple sought reversal of Judge Albright’s decision to keep the case, arguing, among other things, that Lionra’s reliance on three witnesses not identified during venue-related discovery justified intervention. The appeals court disagreed, ultimately concluding that Apple failed to meet the heightened burden on mandamus review. Judge Albright’s treatment of motions to transfer, particularly for convenience, has produced a large number of petitions for writs of mandamus, several of which remain pending.

Lionra Technologies Limited, a plaintiff associated with Dublin-based monetization firm Atlantic IP Services Limited, has filed a fresh pair of suits, one against each of CrowdStrike (1:23-cv-00928) and VMware (1:23-cv-00929), both in the Western District of Texas. The asserted patents are broadly directed to various aspects of wireless networking, with CrowdStrike accused of infringement through the provision of the CrowdStrike Falcon network security solution and VMware, of certain VMware SD-WAN Edge and NSX-series network security products.

An RPX review of public records indicates that the second quarter of 2023 saw at least eight new patent infringement campaigns launched with the backing of third-party litigation funding. Also in Q2, several already existing third-party financed campaigns grew larger, with the plaintiffs hitting new defendants and/or going after familiar targets for a second or even third time.

BlackBerry’s sale of 32,000 patent assets to a Key Patent Innovations Limited sub this month has dominated discussion around patent divestures to NPEs. However, in the background, a number of smaller transactions involving operating company patents have recently come to light, some notable by virtue of their new owner’s ties to third-party litigation funding. At least one of those transactions has already resulted in new NPE litigation.

Lionra Technologies Limited, a plaintiff associated with Dublin-based monetization firm Atlantic IP Services Limited, has filed separate second cases against prior defendants Apple (1:23-cv-00513), Cisco (2:23-cv-00207), Fortinet (2:23-cv-00206) and Palo Alto Networks (2:23-cv-00214). The new suit against Apple, initially assigned to Western District of Texas Judge Robert L. Pitman, rather than Judge Alan D. Albright, targets the provision of products, including computers, laptops, smartphones, smartwatches, and tablets, that incorporate the Secure Enclave system and/or Apple Pay service. Lionra accuses the other defendants of infringing different patents through the provision of networking products that support access control lists (ACLs) and/or cybersecurity products with features for intercepting and evaluating email file attachments for potentially malicious content.

Plaintiffs tied to monetization firm Atlantic IP Services Limited have launched multiple litigation campaigns with cases most often filed in the Western District of Texas. A frequent defendant, Apple, has responded with repeated motions to transfer, for convenience, to the Northern District of California, with various results: several remain in limbo before District Judge Alan D. Albright after the Federal Circuit issued a writ of mandamus requiring that the transfer motions be adjudicated before the end of discovery; another was stricken in its entirety as a discovery sanction; and other such motions have been granted—with a bit of an asterisk, that is, over extensive criticism of a repeat venue declarant. Most recently, Judge Albright has outright denied an Apple motion to transfer in one Atlantic IP-tied suit, and, in an order newly made public, transferred another of those cases—but not to the Northern District of California, as Apple had requested.

So far this year, two plaintiffs associated with Dublin-based Atlantic IP Services Limited, Speir Technologies Limited and Togail Technologies Limited, have filed suit against TCL (together with multiple subsidiaries, including TCT Mobile) (2:23-cv-00027, 2:23-cv-00039) in the Eastern District of Texas. Both plaintiffs assert wireless communications patents, albeit from different sources, targeting the provision of mobile devices (including smartphones and tablets) that support 5G networking capabilities. If past patterns hold, a suit against TCL from fellow Atlantic IP plaintiff Lionra Technologies Limited could follow in the weeks ahead.

Lionra Technologies Limited, a plaintiff associated with Dublin-based monetization firm Atlantic IP Services Limited, has initiated a second litigation campaign, suing Cisco (2:22-cv-00305), Fortinet (2:22-cv-00322), and HP Enterprise (HPE) (Aruba Networks) (2:22-cv-00319) in the Eastern District of Texas. Lionra targets the provision of a variety of networking products, including aggregation routers, firewall products, networking switches, and wireless access points, asserting five patents in overlapping sets, all of them against Cisco, four of them against Fortinet, and two against HPE, each apparently received from operating companies over the past year.