Last week, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) canceled all claims from five patents that were tried to a Western District of Texas jury earlier this year. In February, that jury returned a verdict awarding plaintiff Flypsi, Inc. (d/b/a Flyp) $12M in damages for infringement by Alphabet (Google) of six now-canceled claims, not otherwise proven invalid at trial, through the provision of Google Voice. In the lead up to the trial, District Judge Alan D. Albright denied, without an explanatory memorandum, a motion to stay the case to await the outcomes from these same inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. Google filed that motion in mid-August 2023; it was fully briefed a month later.

The Federal Circuit has denied two more petitions for writs of mandamus asking the appellate court to order Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright to transfer cases before him elsewhere for convenience. In late January, the Federal Circuit turned away a similar petition from GM in litigation brought by Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV). Thus, as in the IV-GM suit, it looks like the case between Flypsi, Inc. (d/b/a Flyp) and Alphabet (Google) and the case between ViaSat and Western Digital will play out before Judge Albright, whose growing body of convenience transfer rulings—as now left undisturbed multiple times and as considered alongside that court’s solidifying pattern when it comes to claim construction—suggests a significant reason why the venue fight has become such a pivotal event for many cases landing there.

Flypsi, Inc. (d/b/a Flyp) has filed suit against Alphabet (Google) (6:22-cv-00031) targeting the forwarding of calls via a relay number through the Google Voice telephone app with five patents broadly directed to associating multiple phone numbers with a mobile device and using different “processing rules” when connecting calls from various numbers. This case is the second in Flyp’s campaign, which began last June with a suit against Dialpad. There, Flyp originally asserted four patents, adding the fifth patent—which just issued on January 4, 2022—via a recent amended complaint.

Flypsi, Inc. (d/b/a Flyp) has filed its first litigation, over a family of four patents generally related to associating multiple phone numbers with a mobile device and using different “processing rules” when connecting calls from various numbers. The plaintiff accuses Dialpad (6:21-cv-00642) of infringement through the provision of features for forwarding calls via a relay number through the Dialpad Talk cloud-based phone system. Flyp pleads that “[b]ut for rampant infringement of its patented technology, Flyp would be well positioned to play a role in” a growing cloud-based telephony market.