Gummarus, LLC has filed a second Eastern District of Texas case against Samsung (4:20-cv-00310), alleging infringement of the same six patents at issue in last April’s suit, as well as of a seventh. All of the patents generally relate to a search system that operates within an instant messaging application; a new accused product is identified in this second suit: the Samsung Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging system, with allegations targeting networking applications (e.g., Messaging as a Platform (MaaP) and/or chatbot, etc.) that can be configured on the messaging app. Gummarus recently changed counsel in its first suit, requesting and receiving a 30-day stay to make the switch—a stay that the court was told “may be useful to allow the [p]arties to work through issues in the infringement contentions” in that first case.

Grus Tech LLC has launched its first litigation campaign, suing LG Electronics (LGE) (4:20-cv-00192) and Samsung (4:20-cv-00190) in the Eastern District of Texas on the same day that Vulpecula, LLC has hit those two defendants (4:20-cv-00191 and 4:20-cv-00189, respectively) in the same district. Each plaintiff asserts patent(s) naming Robert Paul Morris as the sole inventor, with infringement allegations targeting certain of the defendants’ smartphones. These plaintiffs—two of five Texas entities, formed under similar circumstances roughly one month ago, to initiate litigation this past week—are part of a constellation of entities litigating Morris patents.

Gummarus, LLC identifies as the accused product in its Eastern District of Texas suit (4:19-cv-00251) the Samsung Chatbot, an automated, browser-based technical support assistant that operates through instant messaging-style text chat, as used within a browser (like Google Chrome) running on a “personal computing device (e.g., a desktop computer, laptop computer, smartphone, tablet computer, etc.)”. At issue is a feature that allows the user to select a device category (e.g., “Mobile” or “TVs & Home”) and then a specific device for support (e.g., the Galaxy Note 9) by clicking an image from each of two successive series of images, which are presented in response to the user’s initial text requests.

Jenam Tech, LLC and Gummarus, LLC recently kicked off litigation campaigns over patents that the two affiliates of California monetization firm Oso IP, LLC received from Sitting Man LLC, a Delaware entity created by the patents’ sole named inventor to hold the assets. Those plaintiffs, however, are not the first to litigate the patents of Robert Paul Morris—and assignment records made public by the USPTO suggest that they are not likely to be the last.