Ocean Semiconductor LLC (“Ocean Semi”) has filed a second District of Massachusetts case against Analog Devices (1:24-cv-11759), the new suit appearing to arise from an imperiled case that Ocean Semi filed against the same defendant at the end of 2020. In late June 2024, District Judge Patti B. Saris denied Ocean Semi’s motion to amend its infringement contentions there, with the court scheduling an early August hearing on a motion to dismiss the case in its entirety, that entirety whittled down to the alleged infringement of two claims from a single patent (out of nine originally asserted). The new complaint appears designed to restart the litigation over those two claims, as to most of the proposed amended infringement contentions not permitted in the first suit.

Since December 2020, Ocean Semiconductor LLC has been litigating ten patents from the more than 90-asset portfolio that its parent entity, Fullbrite Capital Partners, LLC, received from AMD/ATI Technologies, in multiple transactions, between 2017-2020. Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright handed down a claim construction order in the cases underway there against MediaTek, NVIDIA, NXP Semiconductors, Renesas, Silicon Laboratories, STMicro, and Western Digital late last year, with Eastern District of Texas Judge Amos L. Mazzant earlier this month issuing a Markman order in a concurrent case against Huawei, the orders covering overlapping ground. In the wake of those rulings, Ocean Semiconductor has now filed another case against one of the West Texas defendants, NVIDIA (6:22-cv-00200), asserting three more patents from the same source but moved to Fullbrite more recently, in October 2021.

Over the holidays, the recorded assignment of a second set of former AMD/ATI Technologies patents from Fullbrite Capital Partners, LLC to Ocean Semiconductor LLC, brought the latter’s holdings to ten US patents. As RPX reported in early November, the movement of the transacted assets—which broadly concern semiconductor fabrication technology, automated manufacturing environments, and integrated circuit packaging—likely signaled an assertion campaign. That predicted litigation has now begun, against ten defendants across three federal courts.

The launch of a new semiconductor campaign looks imminent, with USPTO records reflecting the recent assignment of former AMD/ATI Technologies patents to an NPE. Similar movement of an AMD/ATI portfolio last year—from the same assignee, Fullbrite Capital Partners, LLC, to a Delaware entity—was a precursor to NPE Vantage Micro LLC’s campaign, which to date has hit nine defendants over the provision of a wide range of controllers, integrated circuits, and processors.

RPX completed a number of deals in April 2020 on behalf of its patent risk management network. The acquisitions occurred within the E-Commerce and Software; Media Content and Distribution; and Semiconductors market sectors.

STMicro (3:19-cv-02858), one of the defendants hit in early October 2019 in Vantage Micro LLC’s new litigation campaign, has filed a complaint seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of the same four patents—originally developed by either AMD or ATI Technologies (which AMD acquired in 2006)—asserted against it earlier. Vantage Micro sued nine defendants, three in the Eastern District of Texas and six in the Western District of Texas, STMicro in that latter group. STMicro’s new complaint—filed in the Northern District of Texas—alleges personal jurisdiction over Vantage Micro there based in part on a revealing assertion letter that STMicro attached for the court’s consideration.