Ring Protection LLC has followed up the prior week’s complaints against Colt Internet, Coriant (Tellabs), Cox Enterprises (Cox Communications), and SoftBank (Sprint), with a new case filed against NEC (3:18-cv-03055). The NPE asserts in the campaign a single patent, generally related to fault protection in a bidirectional ring network, originally developed by Corrigent Systems (later renamed Orckit-Corrigent). The defendants’ network architectures are at issue; with respect to NEC, Ring Protection names the “SpectalWave U-Node”, which the complaint alleges supports Four-Fiber Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) Bidirectional Line Switched Ring (BLSR). The earlier complaints were filed in the District of Delaware; NEC has been sued in the Northern District of Texas.

A second former Orckit-Corrigent patent has popped up in litigation. Ring Protection LLC has accused Colt Internet (1:18-cv-01770), Coriant (Tellabs) (1:18-cv-01773), Cox Enterprises (Cox Communications) (1:18-cv-01771), and SoftBank (Sprint) (1:18-cv-01772) of infringing the patent, which generally relates to fault protection in a bidirectional ring network. At issue are the defendants’ network architectures. Colt’s Switched Ethernet VPN service and Cox’s Internet Protocol (IP) services are both alleged to use Cisco’s ONS 15454 Multiservice Provisioning Platform (Colt’s service further identified as allegedly using Cisco’s Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology, but Cisco has not been named as a defendant in either case). The TITAN 6500 Multiservice Transport Switch (MTS) of Tellabs (allegedly supporting Four-Fiber Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) Bidirectional Line Switched Ring (BLSR)) and Sprint’s FTS2001 SONET architecture are also targeted.