Last October, in response to a petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Alphabet (Google), the Federal Circuit ordered District Judge Alan D. Albright to transfer a case filed by Jenam Tech, LLC from West Texas to Northern California. The next day, the court did so, transferring that case, as well as a second one between the same parties to the Northern District of California, which has since consolidated the two actions under a single case number (4:21-cv-07994). A likely direct consequence of that transfer is the stay that District Judge Jon S. Tigar imposed in that consolidated case in late March, to allow certain Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings to run their courses. Jenam Tech has since filed four new cases against Google in the same district (5:22-cv-02836, 5:22-cv-02837, 3:22-cv-02838, 3:22-cv-02839), over more recent patents in the same family, pleading that “Jenam will promptly move to stay . . . under the terms governing the stay currently in place in the two consolidated related cases”.

In the span of a single week, the Federal Circuit has reversed two more decisions from District Judge Alan D. Albright that denied convenience transfers, granting mandamus for the defendants in two separate cases: one filed by Jenam Tech, LLC against Google and the other filed by Correct Transmission LLC against Juniper Networks. These latest rulings continue a wave of mandamus writs issued in the past few weeks by the Federal Circuit against Judge Albright, the latest skirmish in a long-running battle over his handling of transfer motions that began in mid-2020. While Judge Albright briefly appeared to begin following the court’s guidance earlier this year, these subsequent appellate reversals indicate that the Western District of Texas judge may not intend to change course after all.

As reported in more detail last week, the Federal Circuit reaffirmed on March 8, in response to a mandamus petition filed by TracFone Wireless, that courts must prioritize the resolution of transfer motions. The decision imposed a stay in a case brought by Precis Group LLC against Tracfone until District Judge Alan D. Albright ruled on a pending motion to dismiss or transfer the case. Three days later, on March 11, Judge Albright issued the required ruling—denying the motion—but the appellate order appears likely to ripple beyond the Precis-TracFone litigation, particularly given the number of patent cases now filed in the Western District of Texas.

Jenam Tech, LLC has filed a second suit against Samsung (4:20-cv-00279), asserting five patents from the same family to which the previous two patents-in-suit belong. The family generally pertains to “detecting an idle TCP connection”, with infringement allegations targeting the provision of computing devices, including certain Galaxy smartphones and tablets, as well as Chromebooks, desktop computers, and laptops. At issue are the devices’ use of the QUIC protocol, a variant of the TCP communications protocol. One year ago, nearly to the day, Jenam Tech sued both LG Electronics (LGE) and Samsung, in separate suits, along similar lines—motions to dismiss Jenam’s complaints for failure to state a claim under Alice and to transfer the suits to the Northern District of California, filed months ago, remain pending before District Judge Amos L. Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas.

Grus Tech LLC has launched its first litigation campaign, suing LG Electronics (LGE) (4:20-cv-00192) and Samsung (4:20-cv-00190) in the Eastern District of Texas on the same day that Vulpecula, LLC has hit those two defendants (4:20-cv-00191 and 4:20-cv-00189, respectively) in the same district. Each plaintiff asserts patent(s) naming Robert Paul Morris as the sole inventor, with infringement allegations targeting certain of the defendants’ smartphones. These plaintiffs—two of five Texas entities, formed under similar circumstances roughly one month ago, to initiate litigation this past week—are part of a constellation of entities litigating Morris patents.

Jenam Tech, LLC has begun a new litigation campaign, suing LG Electronics (LGE) (4:19-cv-00249) and Samsung (4:19-cv-00250) in the Eastern District of Texas over two patents generally related to “detecting an idle TCP connection”. The plaintiff accuses both defendants of infringement through the provision of devices—certain smartphones and laptops, as well as, for Samsung, other “computing devices” such as “laptops, desktops, [and] Chromebooks”—with Google Chrome preinstalled. At issue is Chrome’s support of QUIC, a Google-developed protocol that improves the performance of certain web applications by establishing multiplexed connections between two endpoints.

Jenam Tech, LLC and Gummarus, LLC recently kicked off litigation campaigns over patents that the two affiliates of California monetization firm Oso IP, LLC received from Sitting Man LLC, a Delaware entity created by the patents’ sole named inventor to hold the assets. Those plaintiffs, however, are not the first to litigate the patents of Robert Paul Morris—and assignment records made public by the USPTO suggest that they are not likely to be the last.

During the first half of February, RPX saw the recordation with the USPTO of multiple past assignments of patent assets to various NPEs, including multiple entities affiliated with California attorney Kevin Zilka’s Oso IP, LLC recording the past assignment of patent assets between them, assets originally received from Hard Data Factory (online data scraping), Go2 Media (mobile media), or InstantBull (content aggregation). As usual, several of the other noted transfers involved apparent affiliates of Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), which records made available during this period reveal has received patent assets generally related to three-dimensional data modeling (received from DeltaSphere) and mobile payment platforms (received from Mocapay).