A recently recorded assignment from QinetiQ, a multinational defense and security company, to a Delaware NPE, suggests that a new litigation campaign is likely imminent. The assignee now holding QinetiQ patents appears to be associated with two NPEs that collectively hit over 30 defendants in 2018-2019.

The international litigation campaign of Dynamic Data Technologies LLC continues to expand in the US, with the NPE filing suit against Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) together with Qualcomm (1:19-cv-01806) in the District of Delaware. The new case joins other complaints transferred there from the Eastern District of Texas (including cases filed separately against Alphabet (Google) and Qualcomm, both with other defendants and alone) and filed originally in Delaware (including separate suits against AmLogic and Brightcove). Five patents, generally related to image and video processing, are asserted against Lenovo and Qualcomm, one of them new to litigation, bringing the number of patents-in-suit closer to three dozen. Infringement allegations target Lenovo “cell phones, tablets, and other computing devices that contain integrated circuits designed, manufactured, sold and/or offered for sale by Qualcomm with video encoding and/or decoding functionality”. At issue are image/video processing, encoding, and decoding features, including those that support H.265 and/or VP9 video codecs.

Dynamic Data Technologies LLC has added online video platform Brightcove as a defendant to its sole litigation campaign, which has spread to Asia and Germany since being launched in the US late last year. Brightcove, which was sued in the District of Delaware on June 24 (1:19-cv-01190), is accused of infringing a group of 15 patents generally related to image and video processing. At issue are certain video platforms with image/video processing, encoding, and decoding features, including those that support H.265 and/or VP9 video codecs.

This past week, the USPTO made public assignment records confirming the acquisition of patents by two NPEs that have recently filed litigation. According to those records, Sovereign Peak Ventures, LLC (SPV), an affiliate of Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC, received over 500 assets from Panasonic in October 2018. SPV has launched a first litigation campaign from those assets, asserting three LED lighting patents in cases filed in December 2018 and earlier this month. The recently released USPTO records also identify roughly 65 US patents assigned from Entropic Communications, a subsidiary of MaxLinear, to Dynamic Data Technologies, LLC (DDT). Those patents are part of a larger acquisition effort by DDT, which in October began an international litigation campaign asserting a subset of the acquired portfolio.

In a case filed last week, Dynamic Data Technologies, LLC accuses Intel (1:18-cv-01977) of infringing 11 of the patents that it recently acquired from MaxLinear. A range of products are accused, including processors that offer “Localized Adaptive Contrast Control” (a feature that controls the contrast in a displayed image); processors supporting “Multi-Media Samples (‘MMS’) Version 1.3”, which “contain[s] functionality for generating a mosaic program guide” (a digital TV guide feature that displays a single frame from a video program for each TV program entry); processors offering certain versions of Intel Quick Sync Video (a hardware-based video encoder) along with a GPU, with certain video encoding features at issue; Intel RealSense products, which include depth-sensing cameras; and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) Video Image Processing (VIP) Suite IP cores, with certain video processing features at issue. Intel joins a dozen other companies already defendants in the campaign, including Alphabet (Google), AMD, Apple, Amazon, Dell, HTC, LG Electronics, MediaTek, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Samsung.

The recent campaign begun by Dynamic Data Technologies, LLC has expanded to include additional lawsuits filed in the Eastern District of Texas against LG Electronics (LGE) (2:18-cv-00468), Microsoft (2:18-cv-00469), and Qualcomm (2:18-cv-00470), as well as a new case against Dell (1:18-cv-10454) in the Southern District of New York. The NPE asserts up to 14 patents against each defendant—including in earlier cases against Alphabet (Google), Amazon, AMD, Apple, HTC, NVIDIA, and Samsung—from a larger portfolio acquired from MaxLinear and described in each complaint as covering “foundational technology” in image and video processing developed by Philips. (An assertion grid for the campaign can be viewed on RPX Insight here.) Dynamic Data targets a wide variety of products engaged in image/video processing, encoding, and decoding, including those that support the H.265 and/or VP9 video codecs.

Dynamic Data Technologies, LLC, a Delaware entity formed this past April, has launched an international litigation campaign over a large portfolio of patents recently acquired from MaxLinear. In the US, Dynamic Data has sued Alphabet (Google) (2:18-cv-00466), Amazon (2:18-cv-00461), AMD (1:18-cv-01715), Apple (2:18-cv-00464), HTC (1:18-cv-10180), NVIDIA (1:18-cv-01726), and Samsung (1:18-cv-00459) so far. In its complaints, however, the NPE pleads that it has begun enforcement actions against AMD, Google, and Microsoft in China (before the Nanjing Specialized Intellectual Property Tribunal) and against Apple in Germany. Dynamic Data further pleads that it is “pursuing remedies for infringement of its patents” in an effort to facilitate the licensing of “foundational technology” in image and video processing developed by Philips, the history of which the NPE recounts in detail in its complaints, from making carbon-filament lamps in 1891 to work in the 1960s leading to patents alleged to disclose “cutting-edge video compression and transmission technologies”.