Last week, the Federal Circuit revived a wireless communications patent—asserted first by Australian NPE Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited and then by Fortress Investment Group LLC—reversing an order from Judge Lucy M. Koh of the Northern District of California that invalidated all claims as directed to unpatentable subject matter (2019-1835). Last May, the Federal Circuit similarly overturned the Alice invalidation of two former IBM patents held and asserted by Fortress-Uniloc, in response to which the resuscitated assets began appearing in litigation anew. However, greater caution may prevail this year as to the patent just revived, which was originally developed by Philips, as claims 1 and 8 stand invalidated as indefinite as a result of an Eastern District of Texas claim construction order. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) trials are also underway over the validity of claims 11 and 12, in response to separate petitions for inter partes review (IPR) filed by Apple, Microsoft, and LG Electronics (LGE).

By the end of the first week of October, Fortress Investment Group LLC and Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited had filed four cases against Alphabet (Google) this year. Since then, the floodgates have remained steadily open, with the NPEs hitting Google ten more times over the subsequent weeks. In May, Uniloc, a prolific plaintiff on its own, transferred over 600 US patent assets to Fortress, including much of a large portfolio that Uniloc had acquired in January 2018 from Pendrell Corporation. While many of the new cases against Google assert one of those former Pendrell assets, homegrown Uniloc patents and patents acquired from separate sources are at issue in others of those ten cases—and Google is not alone. Three recent Fortress-Uniloc cases have brought the total number of cases filed against Apple since the beginning of 2017 north of 20; a new case against Samsung joins more than ten such others over that same time period; and in recent weeks, the NPEs have also tagged Disney (ABC, ESPN), Hulu, and Netflix with one case apiece.

The filing spree of Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited continues unabated after handing over the reins of its monetization efforts to Fortress Investment Group LLC earlier this year. Last week alone, plaintiffs related to these entities jointly filed a new suit against Apple in the Western District of Texas, one against Cisco, two against Hike, and four against Alphabet (Google), all in the Eastern District of Texas. Since its acquisition of a large portfolio from Pendrell Corporation subsidiary Pendragon Wireless LLC this past January, Uniloc has been filing new lawsuits on nearly a weekly basis over those patents, on its own, before its transfer of over 600 US patent assets to Fortress in May, and together with Fortress since. That shift in patent ownership came as Fortress announced a new, $400M IP fund focused on patent assertion.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw activity in August 2018 involving a variety of frequent litigants. This included petitions for inter partes review (IPR) filed against two NPEs controlled by Fortress Investment Group LLC, INVT SPE LLC and Uniloc 2017 LLC, the latter of which has in recent months cofiled a barrage of lawsuits with subsidiaries of Australian NPE Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited (Uniloc). The PTAB also instituted trial in August for IPRs against Uniloc 2017 and some of its campaign coplaintiffs, and in an IPR against an NPE controlled by patent attorney Brian Yates, whose US litigation has waned as he pursues a new patent licensing initiative through his company iPEL, Inc. Finally, the PTAB issued final decisions in August for IPRs against Uniloc, Empire IP LLC, and Quarterhill Inc.

Fortress Investment Group LLC and Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited have added two additional patents to one of their existing litigation campaigns with new suits against AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:18-cv-00379) and Verizon (Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless) (2:18-cv-00380). The plaintiffs accuse AT&T of infringing a patent generally related to system control using a “wireless terminal” through the provision of the Smart Home Manager mobile app, as used to change settings for a home Wi-Fi network; Verizon, of infringing a patent broadly related to the delivery of data through “beacon devices” through the use of Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) beacons in its retail stores, as used to send notifications to mobile devices running the Verizon app. The two complaints each assert additional patents already in suit in the campaign, all of them part of a large, January 2018 acquisition from Pendrell Corporation, with ownership moving to Fortress subsidiary Uniloc 2017 LLC this past May.

Yet more cases have been filed by Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited and Fortress Investment Group LLC, through controlled subsidiaries—six against Amazon (2:18-cv-00328, 2:18-cv-00329, 2:18-cv-00339, 2:18-cv-00340, 2:18-cv-00341, 2:18-cv-00342), and one against Microsoft (8:18-cv-01320). These filings follow a barrage of new cases filed the prior week against BlackBerry (four new cases), Huawei (one case), Samsung (one case), and ZTE (four cases), as well as against Amazon (four cases) and Microsoft (one case). Uniloc has now launched over 15 campaigns in 2018 alone, most of them asserting patents received this past January from publicly traded NPE Pendrell Corporation. In May 2018, Uniloc executed an assignment of nearly 600 US patents to Uniloc 2017 LLC, a Fortress subsidiary, according to a March 28, 2018 Asset Purchase Agreement, the terms of which have not been made public.