The second week of Castlemorton Wireless, LLC’s new wireless communications campaign has seen multiple new defendants added to the 15 already in suit: Altice (6:20-cv-00038), Mitel Networks (6:20-cv-00049), and Plantronics (6:20-cv-00056) in the Western District of Texas and D-Link (5:20-cv-00010) in the Eastern District of Texas. The last case has been initially assigned to District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III, while the other three have been added to District Judge Alan D. Albright’s docket. As illustrated in RPX’s recent report on patent litigation and the patent marketplace for the fourth quarter of 2019, since Judge Albright’s appointment to the bench, the Western District of Texas has steadily risen in popularity, now to the second most popular district for NPE litigation (jumping ahead of the Eastern District of Texas) and the third most popular district for all patent cases.

As recently predicted by RPX, Delaware plaintiff Castlemorton Wireless, LLC has launched litigation, suing Avaya (1:20-cv-00059), Cox (1:20-cv-00060), Datto (1:20-cv-00058), and Onkyo (Pioneer Electronics) (1:20-cv-00057) in the state of its formation, as well as Arista Networks (6:20-cv-00023), Bose (6:20-cv-00029), Charter Communications (6:20-cv-00024), Comcast (6:20-cv-00034), Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (6:20-cv-00027), Juniper Networks (6:20-cv-00026), Nokia (6:20-cv-00037), SoftBank (Sprint) (6:20-cv-00036), and Verizon (6:20-cv-00035) in the Western District of Texas and Consolidated Communications (5:20-cv-00005) and F-Secure (5:20-cv-00007) in the Eastern District of Texas. A single patent, generally related to the use of radio-frequency (RF) measurement equipment to detect the carrier frequency of a symmetrical, direct-sequence, spread-spectrum (DSSS) signal, is asserted. The NPE’s infringement allegations target a wide range of Wi-Fi-enabled products (including network management systems; access points, routers, gateways, and wireless modules; IP phones and videophones; and AV receivers) that support the detection of a carrier frequency in a DSSS signal through their implementation of the 802.11b and g standards.

A recently recorded assignment from QinetiQ, a multinational defense and security company, to a Delaware NPE, suggests that a new litigation campaign is likely imminent. The assignee now holding QinetiQ patents appears to be associated with two NPEs that collectively hit over 30 defendants in 2018-2019.