Network System Technologies LLC (NST) has launched its inaugural litigation campaign with three district court cases filed in Texas on December 19: the first, against Arteris and Qualcomm in the Western District (1:22-cv-01331); the second, against Ford, TI, and Volkswagen (including Audi) in the Eastern District (2:22-cv-00482); and the third, against Lenovo, OnePlus, and Samsung, also in the Eastern District (2:22-cv-00481). A group of six former Philips patents—from a portfolio of nearly 50—are asserted across all three cases, with infringement allegations trained on certain Systems-on-Chip (SoC) products and automobile infotainment systems or mobile devices that allegedly include such SOCs. Public records indicate that NST has at its helm patent monetization veterans associated with multiple prior campaigns asserting former operating company patents—and they also point to the involvement of third-party litigation funding in this latest endeavor.

With settlements this past October with TSMC and UMC, Innovative Foundry Technologies LLC (IFT) announced the end of the “first wave” of its litigation over a portfolio of patents acquired from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in June 2018, “which now triggers the beginning of the second wave of IFT’s foundry licensing program”. That “second wave” appears to include a new case, filed this past week, against SMIC, together with Broadcom, Cypress Semiconductor, and DISH Network (6:19-cv-00719). The plaintiff accuses certain SMIC semiconductor manufacturing processes of infringing four of those former AMD patents, which generally relate to various aspects of semiconductor/transistor fabrication, configuration, operation, and packaging.

Innovative Foundry Technologies LLC (IFT) has filed an international salvo of litigation over a portfolio of patents acquired from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) last June, including the NPE’s first cases in the US and China and additional litigation in Germany. In the US, new complaints have hit chip makers MediaTek (1:19-cv-00304), Qualcomm (1:19-cv-00323), and TSMC (1:19-cv-00308), targeting products manufactured using 5-65 nanometer processes, and BBK Communication (Guangdong OPPO Mobile, OnePlus Technology, Vivo Mobile) (1:19-cv-00305), Hisense (1:19-cv-00306), TCL (1:19-cv-00307), and VIZIO (8:19-cv-00301), targeting smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, televisions, and/or other devices that include such semiconductor products. Asserted in each of the new US lawsuits are up to five of the roughly 60 US patents transferred to IFT; the patents are generally related to various aspects of semiconductor/transistor fabrication, configuration, operation, and packaging. According to a February 18 press release, IFT’s new Chinese complaint was filed in the Shanghai IP Court against Cisco and a local distribution partner, Shanghai Huimai Electronic Technology, with its German complaint filed in the District Court of Düsseldorf’s Patent Litigation Chamber against Ford, Texas Instruments (TI), and Volkswagen.