The fight over a set of state laws punishing bad-faith patent assertion is heating up before the Federal Circuit. In June 2023, monetization firm Longhorn IP LLC and affiliate Katana Silicon Technologies LLC filed an appeal over one such law in Idaho, both seeking to overturn an $8M bond imposed against them under that statute in litigation with Micron—apparently the first time such a bond has been ordered—and to invalidate the statute as preempted by federal patent law. Now, as Micron and Idaho lay out their positions in response briefs, they have received additional support: 27 other states and the District of Columbia have sought leave to file an amicus brief in support of upholding Idaho’s law, as have two industry associations.

On January 31, 2024, FG Innovation Company Ltd. (f/k/a FG IP Innovation Company Ltd.) (FGI) divested a portfolio of 35 assets, including 30 issued US patents, to a Texas entity, which moved the portfolio to a second Texas LLC the next day. This FGI divestiture is the sixth to an apparent US NPE since May 2021, to date four of the prior five recipients having launched litigation over the patents received.

This summer saw the escalation of a long-running fight between Longhorn IP LLC and Micron, with the latter’s July suit accusing the monetization firm of violating a largely untested Idaho law barring bad-faith patent assertion—seeking both damages from Longhorn IP and asking the court to impose a $15M bond against it. Now, as the defendant pushes forward on a motion to dismiss arguing that the law is unconstitutional, the state of Idaho has intervened in the statute’s defense, arguing that the law is narrowly tailored enough to avoid preemption by federal patent law.

The long-running battle between Micron and Longhorn IP LLC has taken a new turn with the semiconductor company’s suit invoking a largely untested Idaho state law barring “bad faith assertion[s] of patent infringement”. That 2014 statute, in part, allows a court to require the patent owner making such an “assertion” to pay a bond that equals the accused infringer’s likely cost of litigation plus related damages for the patent owner’s violation of the statute. Micron has requested $15M for that bond, triggering a fight in the federal District of Idaho—where the case was moved from state court last month—over the underlying facts, timeliness, and the propriety of the law itself. The first ruling on the bond issue did not go in Longhorn IP’s favor: On August 8, the court declined its request to stay the bond proceedings pending the outcome of its related motion to dismiss.

Earlier this month, the case that Katana Silicon Technologies LLC filed against Western Digital in April of last year settled in the middle of claim construction. Now, the Longhorn IP LLC plaintiff has sued Globalfoundries (6:22-cv-00191) over two of the seven patents asserted since this campaign began back in May 2019. Infringement allegations in the latest complaint target the provision of integrated circuit devices that are made using its 12nm node LP FinFET, 14nm node LPP FinFet, and 12nm node LP+ FinFET processes (with the AMD RADEON RX 480 graphics card identified as an exemplary product), as well as the Globalfoundries 32nm controller (which is allegedly found in the Micron MT43A4G40200NFA-S15 ES A HMC integrated circuit, among others).

Samsung (5:20-cv-08205) has asked the Northern District of California for declaratory judgments of noninfringement of three patents held by NPEs Longhorn IP LLC and Trenchant Blade Technologies, LLC, seeking enforcement of a prior covenant not to sue in the same complaint. The semiconductor fabrication patents originated with TSMC, which assigned the assets to Trenchant Blade this past March, on the same day that litigation between Katana Silicon Technologies LLC and TSMC was dismissed. In April, Trenchant Blade allegedly sent a letter indicating an intent to license the acquired assets to multiple companies, including GlobalFoundries, Intel, Micron, SK hynix, SMIC, and UMC, as well as Samsung. The relationship between Katana Silicon, Longhorn IP, and Trenchant Blade is at the center of Samsung’s new complaint.

Longhorn IP LLC’s Katana Silicon Technologies LLC has filed a second patent infringement lawsuit, accusing TSMC (6:19-cv-00695) of infringing five patents originating with Sharp, including the same two patents that it asserted in a May 2019 case against Samsung, together with two other patents sourced elsewhere. The patents all generally relate to semiconductor/transistor fabrication, with Katana identifying TSMC’s accused products as semiconductor devices made at a “variety of different process nodes”, including the Altera Stratix IV GX FPGA, Apple A9 chip, Qualcomm MDM9235M 4G LTE modem and advanced modem; semiconductor packages using the Integrated Fan-Out (InFO) wafer level packaging technology, including the Apple A10, Apple A11, and G7232 Rear-Cam ISPA; and Through-Silicon-Via (TSV) CMOS Image Sensors.

Katana Silicon Technologies LLC, an affiliate of Longhorn IP LLC, has filed its first litigation, accusing Samsung (6:19-cv-00344) of infringing two of the nine patents that the NPE acquired from Sharp last summer. The patents generally relate to transistor fabrication, with infringement allegations focused on Samsung’s 2D planar technologies, “such as its 20nm planar technology”; its bulk FinFET technologies, “such as its 14nm, 11nm, 10nm, 8nm, and 7nm bulk FinFET technologies, which include but are not limited to the 14LPU, 11LPP 10LPE, 10LPP, 10LPU, 8LPP, and 7LPP nodes”; and certain processors and consumer products that contain either of them.

According to USPTO records, in early August, Sharp transferred five US patents and four foreign counterparts to an affiliate of Longhorn IP LLC. This latest transfer follows an assignment between the same parties in May—a month that also saw Longhorn acquire patents from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV).

A May assignment from Sharp to a newly formed affiliate of Longhorn IP LLC was recorded with the USPTO this month, closely following the NPE’s acquisition in early May of a portfolio from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV). Longhorn IP has launched one campaign in the US to date, suing Micron, Nanya, Renesas, SanDisk, SMIC, Toshiba, UMC, and Western Digital over patents originating with AMD. It also has active litigation in Asia.