MORRIS ROUTING TECHNOLOGIES, LLC (MRT) has filed separate lawsuits against AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (4:24-cv-00623), Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (4:24-cv-00625), Samsung (4:24-cv-00624), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) (4:24-cv-00626) over their various networks (e.g., 5G, fixed-line, fiber, IP, and wireless) and networking solutions. At issue is the support for segment routing (SR) technologies, including the “functionality specified in the SF RFCs” published by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standards setting organization. Asserted in non-overlapping subsets are 31 of the 39 wireless networking patents that currently available USPTO records suggest that MRT holds; Texas records indicate that the patents’ sole named inventor is backing this litigation.  

Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright may no longer be the nation’s top district court patent judge as of Q1 2023, but his back-and-forth with the Federal Circuit, which has repeatedly reversed him on the issue of convenience transfer motions, remains. Some had expected the Fifth Circuit’s October 2022 In re: Planned Parenthood ruling to tip that back-and-forth in Judge Albright’s direction, since that decision appeared to require more deference to district judges on venue. This February, though, the Federal Circuit held otherwise, doubling down on its prior approach in In re: Google. Judge Albright has now acknowledged the binding impact of that holding, though not without offering a passing criticism. In refusing to reverse a prior order granting transfer of a Motion Offense, LLC case against Alphabet (Google), Judge Albright remarked that the Federal Circuit’s determination in Google that NPEs lack an interest in getting cases to trial quickly “appears to be made out of whole cloth”.

Motion Offense, LLC has filed yet another case against Dropbox (6:23-cv-00303), asserting the latest member to issue in the large filesharing family of patents at issue in multiple prior suits. One of those, filed by Dropbox against Motion Offense in August 2019 in the District of Delaware, was transferred to the Western District of Texas, where Judge Alan D. Albright is preparing to try the case to a jury on May 15. The court is in receipt of multiple motions (e.g., dispositive, in limine, etc.), having this past week docketed a memorandum explaining the reasoning behind its June 2, 2021 claim construction order.

The Federal Circuit has for the first time interpreted a closely watched decision on venue from the Fifth Circuit, the regional circuit that determines the applicable law governing convenience transfers in Texas patent cases. That October 2022 ruling, In re: Planned Parenthood, appeared to depart from the Federal Circuit’s prior take on issues central to the analysis of such transfer motions, including the location of evidence, the cost of attendance for witnesses, and the district judge’s overarching discretion over such matters. However, the Federal Circuit’s precedential In re: Google opinion, issued on February 1, argues that Planned Parenthood does not undercut its current approach. In Google, the court held that a clear showing that a venue is more convenient takes precedence over the district judge’s discretion. Even more significantly, the Federal Circuit determined that NPEs do not have an interest in getting cases to trial quickly—and that a district judge lacks the discretion to give undue weight to his district’s time to trial. The opinion reversed another transfer denial from Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright, and comes months after Judge Albright began attempting to fill the gap with his own reading of Planned Parenthood.

When district courts decide patent matters, they must typically look to the Federal Circuit: as the appellate court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent litigation, its precedential decisions bind the lower courts on patent-related issues. However, convenience transfers present an interesting wrinkle: since they are governed by a venue statute not specific to patent cases, the Federal Circuit must apply the law of the applicable regional circuit court when resolving disputes over such motions. As a result, for appeals of convenience transfer decisions from the Western District of Texas, it is the law of the Fifth Circuit—albeit, as interpreted by the Federal Circuit—that applies. It is for this reason that a new precedential venue ruling from the Fifth Circuit, In re: Planned Parenthood, could force the Federal Circuit to rethink its approach to a variety of issues, including district judge discretion, the location of evidence, and the cost of attendance for witnesses, that have been at the center of the latter court’s series of mandamus rulings involving Waco District Judge Alan D. Albright. The impact of that decision is now being debated by two parties in his court, Motion Offense LLC and Google, while two other plaintiffs linked to Motion Offense have hit the defendant with new complaints of their own.

In June, the USPTO issued another patent in a family that Motion Offense, LLC and related entities have been asserting in litigation. Roughly one month later, the plaintiff has sued Dropbox (6:21-cv-00758) in an original complaint and Alphabet (Google) in an amended complaint, over that new patent, both complaints filed in the Western District of Texas. File sharing features within the Dropbox platform—including Dropbox Plus, Dropbox Professional, Dropbox Business Standard, and Dropbox Business Advanced—are the accused products in the new case, which joins litigation between Motion Offense and Dropbox already underway in West Texas.

Motion Offense, LLC has filed suit in the Western District of Texas against Alphabet (Google) (6:21-cv-00514) over the provision of the Google Drive platform; the Google Chrome browser, Chrome OS, and Android OS; and the Google Cloud platform. Broadly directed to either data sharing or web browsing on an electronic device, the five asserted patents, while new to litigation themselves, belong to a large—and growing—family of patents familiar to litigation.

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.

In mid-July, Motion Offense, LLC filed a Western District of Texas case accusing Sprouts Farmers Market (6:19-cv-00417) of infringing two data sharing patents through the use of Dropbox Business “for, among other things, sharing and storing data”. Roughly one month later, Dropbox has responded by filing a complaint against Motion Offense in the District of Delaware (1:19-cv-01521) seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of the same two patents asserted in Texas. Patents naming the same inventor, Robert Paul Morris, have popped up in litigation by multiple NPEs over the past few years.

Late last month, District Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas granted a sealed motion, brought by defendants Dell and Samsung, to compel NPE-plaintiff Cypress Lake Software, Inc. to produce a set of communications that it had logged as attorney-client privileged and/or protected as attorney work product prepared in anticipation of litigation. Cypress had sought to prevent production of its communications with Robert Paul Morris, the inventor named on the patents that the NPE has been asserting in litigation since 2015; Sitting Man, LLC, a Delaware entity under Morris’s control; and Mirai Ventures, LLC, a Texas entity that, according to the court’s order, entered into an October 30, 2015 “Financial Backer(s) Agreement . . . whereby Mirai agreed to provide funding and patent-prosecution services to Sitting Man in exchange for a portion of any proceeds from the enforcement, sale, or licensing of the patents”. Judge Kernodle’s order comes as the Texas court has been pelted with filings over multiple issues, as a separate portion of the campaign—against HP and ZTE—may also be ramping up in the Northern District of California after a transfer there, and as Cypress has filed a fourth case against Samsung (6:19-cv-00328) in the Eastern District of Texas, this time targeting the Korean parent entity itself.