As the USPTO continues to release assignment records, the announced acquisition by Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC of a “diverse, high quality patent portfolio” from Dolby Laboratories has taken further shape, with a notable asterisk. Those records also contain transfers to a new apparent Fortress Investment Group LLC entity and to a second Texas entity formed over the past couple of months by a figure formerly much more active in the patent monetization space.

Eastern District of Virginia Judge M. Hannah Lauck has remanded back to state court a case filed there by VLSI Technology LLC, a Fortress Investment Group LLC plaintiff, against Patent Quality Assurance (PQA). PQA had removed the suit to federal court, but Judge Lauck has agreed with VLSI Technology that none of its claims raise a federal question, much less a substantial federal question. The remand back to state court moots several pending motions before Judge Lauck, including a PQA motion to file under seal its corporate disclosure, a document that would have (finally) identified its “owners or members”.

Recorded patent assignments recently made public reveal a new Texas entity operated by a familiar and funded monetization team picking up a semiconductor portfolio; a networking entity previously backed by Fortress Investment Group LLC moving a traffic management portfolio onto the market; an IoT provider transferring all of its US patent assets during a “controlled recapitalization”; a Texas entity tied to an now-established operation topping off a prior acquisition, here with a video communications patent and a network collaboration patent; and the continued Delaware-to-Texas flow of patents by a named inventor awaiting the lift of a Northern District of California stay, that lift increasingly likely given a long list of inter partes reviews (IPRs) and ex parte reexaminations (EPR) seeming to draw to an end.

Radian Memory Systems LLC (RMS), a plaintiff tied to Fortress Investment Group LLC, has sued Samsung (2:24-cv-01073) over the provision of solid state drives and related products that support Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) technology. In the new Eastern District of Texas complaint, RMS asserts seven memory technology patents developed at Radian Memory Systems Inc. (RMSI), which it characterizes as having “pioneered a new paradigm for managing flash storage media that it called Cooperative Flash Management (‘CFM’)” but as having been “cast out by the industry”.

Eastern District of Virginia Judge M. Hannah Lauck ordered Patent Quality Assurance (PQA) to comply fully with a local rule requiring “non-publicly traded entities such as LLCs” to identify its “owners or members”. By the December 17 deadline, PQA filed an updated disclosure, unredacted for the court but with redactions occluding its “owners or members” from public view, filing a concurrent motion to seal its disclosure, not only keeping it permanently from the public, but also asking the court to deny VLSI Technology LLC, the Fortress Investment Group LLC plaintiff in the case, access to who is behind PQA.

Many federal courts adopt local rules imposing, through plain language, strict disclosure requirements on litigants, but those courts often refuse to enforce those rules. Now one has. Eastern District of Virginia Judge M. Hannah Lauck has ordered Patent Quality Assurance (PQA) to comply fully with a local rule requiring “non-publicly traded entities such as LLCs” to identify its “owners or members”. PQA had argued that the rule only required disclosure of “entities”, not “individuals”, because the possibility of a judicial conflict arising with an “individual” is “vanishingly slim”. The court disagreed, ruling that the rule’s text is “clear and unambiguous”. The court-ordered disclosure of who is behind PQA comes in the campaign of VLSI Technology LLC, a Fortress Investment Group LLC plaintiff that, per a new order from Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright, will finally face a trial over defendant Intel’s license defense, in May 2025.

In October 2022, DivX, LLC filed two complaints against Amazon and VIZIO, one before the International Trade Commission (ITC) and the other in the Eastern District of Virginia. The latter was stayed in customary fashion to await the outcome of the ITC investigation, which resulted in a May 2024 finding in favor of Amazon (VIZIO having been terminated from the ITC investigation along the way), based on, among other things, noninfringement. Last week, DivX voluntarily dismissed that parallel stayed case, doing so on the same day that it filed a new complaint in the same district against Amazon (3:24-cv-00818), this one asserting six different patents.

Entropic Communications, LLC has filed separate Eastern District of Texas cases against Ubee Interactive (2:24-cv-00911) and Vantiva (f/k/a Technicolor) (2:24-cv-00912), targeting the provision of cable modems and gateways, with Vantiva further targeted over television set-top boxes, that “include or are based on the Broadcom BCM3390, BCM33843, or BCM3384 [systems-on-chip (SoCs)]”. The new cases have been assigned to District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III, but Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap presided over the earlier litigation in this district from Entropic, against Charter Communications. There, most recently, briefing has completed in an appeal that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed after the district court denial of its motion to intervene, following settlement, to seek the unsealing of the parties’ briefing (and evidence) regarding “a nationally important, precedent-setting case-dispositive defense”.

Last week, Intel filed a motion to show cause why VLSI Technology LLC’s recent statements (here and here) have not violated the standing orders of Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly related to corporate disclosure and third-party litigation funding. VLSI filed those statements concurrently with its own motion to dismiss, stay or transfer Intel’s Delaware declaratory judgment action to the Western District of Texas, where District Judge Alan D. Albright is considering the same parties’ submissions concerning whether Intel’s license defense (allegedly arising after Fortress Investment Group LLC acquired Finjan, Inc. in 2020) to VLSI’s patent infringement claims involves any issue for presentation to a jury. Intel argues that VLSI’s motion to dismiss, stay, or transfer should be denied without prejudice while the court focuses instead on compliance with its standing orders.

In its long-running attempt to litigate whether an earlier license agreement with Finjan, Inc. provides a defense in the multidistrict campaign of VLSI Technology LLC against it, Intel has opened another chapter. After Northern District of California Judge Beth Labson Freeman dismissed Intel’s license counterclaim this past April, Intel has filed a complaint in the District of Delaware seeking a declaratory judgment that it is licensed to VLSI Technology’s entire portfolio (1:24-cv-00803). Last week, both Intel and VLSI Technology apprised Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright of the new complaint, in advance of a July 15, 2024 status conference in one of the three cases before him that have each ben tried to a jury.