Zeppelin Corporation has refiled its suit against ZTE (4:23-cv-00454) in the Northern District of Texas, again targeting the provision of smartphones that include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset, an AMOLED display, Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax), and 5G cellular connectivity. The plaintiff also voluntarily dismissed without prejudice its April 2023 case against ZTE, filed in the Eastern District of Texas; in North Texas, the refiled suit joins a Huawei case already in progress before District Judge Brantley Starr, who recently posted a “Mandatory Certification Regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence” requiring litigants in his courtroom to attest that “no portion of any filing will be drafted by generative artificial intelligence [AI] . . . or that any language drafted by generative [AI] will be checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being” because, in part, “[t]hese platforms in their current states are prone to hallucinations and bias”. Such certifications would presumably prevent the presentation of “bogus quotes” and the citation of “non-existent cases”, as recently made headlines in the Southern District of New York.  

Zeppelin Corporation filed each of the previous cases in its sole litigation campaign—against ASUSTek, OnePlus, Verizon, Xiaomi, and ZTE—in the Eastern District of Texas, which only requires litigants to file a basic corporate disclosure. In its sixth complaint, Zeppelin accuses Huawei (3:23-cv-01233) of infringing the same patent, which is generally related to a smartphone with a display that includes a particular layer of fluorescent material. Zeppelin filed that sixth case in the Northern District of Texas, which imposes heightened disclosure requirements on litigants. There, unlike in the Eastern District of Texas, plaintiffs must file a separately signed certificate of interested parties that contains “a complete list of all persons, associations of persons, firms, partnerships, corporations, guarantors, insurers, affiliates, parent or subsidiary corporations, or other legal entities that are financially interested in the outcome of the case”.

In a set of April 2023 complaints, Zeppelin Corporation accused BBK Electronics (together with OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, and Vivo Communication Technology), Xiaomi, and ZTE of infringing a single patent generally related to a smartphone with a display that includes a particular layer of fluorescent material. In an additional suit, also filed in the Eastern District of Texas, the inventor-controlled plaintiff has now pegged Verizon (4:23-cv-00454) with the same patent, focusing infringement allegations on the sale of certain Samsung Galaxy-series smartphones and Apple iPhones. An exhibit attached to the new complaint purports to chart the iPhone 14 Pro, given as an exemplary product for its inclusion of the A16 Bionic Chip with 6-core processor, an OLED display, and Wi-Fi 6 and 5G cellular connectivity.

Inventor-controlled Zeppelin Corporation has filed three Eastern District of Texas complaints, accusing BBK Electronics, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, and Vivo Communication Technology (4:23-cv-00377), Xiaomi (4:23-cv-00378), and ZTE (4:23-cv-00381) of infringing a single patent generally related to a smartphone with a display that includes a particular layer of fluorescent material. Each defendant is accused of infringement through the provision of smartphones with certain Mediatek or Qualcomm chipsets, AMOLED displays with antennas alongside the display, and support for certain wireless protocols, including various Wi-Fi standards, 2G/3G/4G/5G connectivity, and Bluetooth 5.2, and certain features related to switching between Wi-Fi and cellular data and/or transferring data over Wi-Fi.