Western District of Texas District Judge Alan D. Albright once found himself regularly at odds with the Federal Circuit, which repeatedly reversed him over his handling of convenience transfers starting in early 2020. Now, not only have those reversals largely subsided, Judge Albright has even begun to sit by designation on that very court: After writing his first Federal Circuit opinion earlier this summer, Judge Albright has just authored his first precedential opinion in another appeal. That decision overturned an award of attorney fees for DISH and Sling TV against Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RAS), ruling that District of Colorado Judge R. Brooke Jackson erred in finding the case exceptional based on several identified “red flags” related to patent ineligibility and invalidity.

Prolific litigant Realtime Data LLC (RTD) saw its long-running litigation campaign splinter off into a variety of new districts in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland, both through transfers (typically from Texas to California) and through new filings. The campaign’s defendant count now tops 110, with court disclosures revealing that the NPE has received funding from public litigation fund Juridica Investment Limited and Brickell Key Investments LP (which is handling Juridica’s run-off). Amidst that expansion, RTD subsidiary Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RTAS)—which joined the campaign in September 2017, asserting a family of homegrown video compression patents—moved in April 2018 to consolidate various pending lawsuits in either Texas or Colorado, the latter of which has in particular seen many new filings by RTD and RTAS since TC Heartland. However, that effort hit a wall earlier this month, when the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) denied the motion. Meanwhile, RTD has filed eight new suits in Delaware throughout early August, asserting a well-worn set of data compression and storage acceleration patents against Hitachi, Nutanix, and SoftNAS, among others.

In June 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw petitioners wage validity challenges against a variety of prominent NPEs. Among those hit by petitions for AIA review in June was Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), which has not filed any new litigation in the US since October 2017, but continues to assert patents overseas; and NPEs affiliated with Fortress Investment Group LLC and Industrial Technology Research Institute. Also in June, the PTAB instituted trial for two IPRs against affiliates of top litigant IP Edge LLC, which remains the most prolific patent plaintiff of the past 18 years by the number of defendants added to US patent suits. In addition, the Board issued final decisions in IPRs against IV, the California Institute of Technology, inventor Daniel L. Flamm, and frequent litigants Realtime Data LLC and Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited.

Both Realtime Data LLC (RTD) and its subsidiary Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RAS) recently added cases to their respective wings of what has become one of the longest-running, widest-ranging active litigation campaigns. RTD asserted three familiar data compression patents against Facebook (1:18-cv-01373), targeting its Zstandard compression algorithm, as well as products and services “that incorporate the algorithm”. Meanwhile, RAS tagged Charter Communications (1:18-cv-01345), Comcast (1:18-cv-01446), and Cox Communications (8:18-cv-00942), asserting three equally familiar video compression patents against the companies’ respective broadcasting services, training infringement allegations—as it has in most of its cases in this campaign—on the use of the H.264 video compression to standard “to deliver HD video broadcasting products/services” to customers.

The number of defendants in the sprawling litigation campaign of Realtime Data LLC (RTD) and its subsidiary Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RAS) has now topped 100, with the latter entity’s new suits against AMD (1:18-cv-01173), Intel (1:18-cv-01175), LG Electronics (LGE) (6:18-cv-00215), and Mitel Networks (1:18-cv-01177), filed last week. RAS accuses the defendants of infringement through the provision of products that support the H.264 video compression standard, including its Scalable Video Coding feature/extension (which allows a video bitstream to contain a subset bitstream that can comprise a lower-resolution or lower-quality version of the video). The accused AMD products include GPUs and APUs incorporating its Video Coding Engine; the accused Intel products, QuickSync Video implemented in Intel Core I9-8950HK, Intel Core i7-8850H, Intel Core i7-8750H, Intel Core I5- 8500B, and Intel Core i3-8300T processors; LGE, smartphones, hybrid recording DVRs, video servers, and surveillance systems; Mitel, video communications products and routers.

Last week saw a barrage of new complaints filed in the long-running campaign litigated by Realtime Data LLC (RTD) and its subsidiary Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RAS). RTD asserted overlapping subsets of patents from its data compression portfolio in new cases against Cloudera (1:18-cv-00653), Huawei (6:18-cv-00182), and IBM (6:18-cv-00188). Meanwhile, RAS filed complaints asserting overlapping subsets of patents from its video compression portfolio against Alphabet (Google) (2:18-cv-03629), Avaya (1:18-cv-01046), Broadcom (1:18-cv-01048), and Wowza Media (1:18-cv-00927). With these new cases, the number of defendants in this sprawling litigation campaign now approaches 100, with the number of patents asserted holding steady at just shy of 40 and the number of petitions for inter partes review (IPR) of various of those patents topping 50.

So far in 2018, Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RAS) has filed two new cases in the sprawling campaign that its parent entity, Realtime Data LLC (RTD), has been litigating since April 2008 and that it joined as a plaintiff last August. The new suits accuse Adobe (1:18-cv-10355) and Samsung (6:18-cv-00113) of infringing the same set of seven patents, five of which are drawn from a homegrown family of nine video compression patents, and the other two of which, broadly concerning similar subject matter, have been recently acquired. The accused devices include a long list of Adobe products and an even longer list of Samsung products (including EXYNOS application processors, smartphones, tablets, DVRs, Blu-ray players, cameras, and surveillance cameras) that operate in compliance with the H.264 and/or H.265 video compression standards. RAS’s latest cases bring its campaign defendant count to nearly 90.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw petitions for inter partes review (IPR) filed in large campaigns affecting a variety of market sectors in January, including the automotive campaign waged by Intellectual Ventures LLC; frequent plaintiff Realtime Data LLC’s long-running data compression and media streaming campaign; the USB device charging campaign brought by Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC; and the mobile device campaign run by IPA Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of publicly traded Quarterhill Inc. The Board instituted trial in January for petitions against Realtime Data and in the sprawling, 12-year anti-malware campaign still being litigated by publicly traded Finjan Holdings, Inc. The PTAB also issued final decisions in January in IPRs against Realtime Data; ChriMar Systems, Inc.; and IP Bridge, Inc.

Thanksgiving week provided no break in filing for related plaintiffs Realtime Data LLC (RTD) and Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RAS). The latter sued Netflix (1:17-cv-01692) and Sony (1:17-cv-01693) over the same six video compression patents, asserting a seventh such patent in the case against Sony. As it has in all of its complaints, RAS accuses the new defendants of infringement through provision of products and services operating in compliance with the H.264 (or H.265) video compression standard. In particular, RAS targets Netflix’s streaming service, while Sony is alleged to infringe through a wide range of devices, including video security cameras, still and video cameras, video recorders and satellite receivers, various models of PlayStation, smart TVs and set-top boxes for streaming media, and Blu-Ray and DVD players. Meanwhile, RTD has added to the campaign a suit accusing Reduxio Systems (1:17-cv-01676) of infringement through provision of software and/or services (and related hardware) offering data compression and deduplication features.

So far in November, a new case has been added to each portion of a long-running, chaotic litigation campaign, one waged by Realtime Data LLC (RTD), the New York plaintiff involved from the campaign’s beginning, and the other waged by Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (RAS), a Texas subsidiary of RTD only involved in the campaign since this past August. RTD has filed suit against Fortinet (1:17-cv-01635) in the District of Delaware, asserting four data compression patents, already at issue in other cases brought by RTD, against Fortinet’s network security products Fortigate and Fortigate IPS. Meanwhile, RAS has filed suit against Polycom (1:17-cv-02692) in the District of Colorado, asserting five video compression patents, already at issue in earlier RAS cases, against Polycom’s telepresence and other video communication products that use the H.264 video compression standard. These new suits follow the cancellation by the PTAB of claims from one of the most frequently asserted RTD patents.