Techno View IP Inc. has voluntarily dismissed its Delaware case against Sony in favor of a new complaint (8:17-cv-01268) filed in the Central District of California. Neither complaint named the Japanese parent (Sony Corporation), both naming Sony Corporation of America (formed in New York) and Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE, formed in California), while the new complaint also names Sony Active Entertainment Inc. (a Delaware corporation) and Sony Interactive Entertainment America LLC (formed in California). Venue is alleged to be proper in California based on alleged acts of infringement in the Central District, as well as SIE’s “substantial physical presence” in Orange County, related to the alleged infringing activity through “development and sales of its Sony PlayStation 4”. Like the earlier complaint filed in Delaware, the California action explicitly asserts two patents (7,666,096; 8,206,218), while reserving the right to amend to add infringement allegations as to a third (9,503,742).

Techno View IP Inc. has filed a second case asserting a three-dimensional video game patent (7,666,096) at issue in the case the NPE brought against Facebook subsidiary Oculus VR last month. The new complaint accuses Sony (1:17-cv-00569) of infringing the ‘096 patent, as well as its later-issuing family member (8,206,218), through provision of its PlayStation 4. Techno View IP’s pleading also introduces a third patent (9,503,742), not related by prosecution to the other two, claim 1 of which the NPE alleges reads on certain video coding and display standards (H.264 and ISO/IEC 14496-10 specifications). The complaint does not assert the ‘742 patent but reserves the right to amend to add the patent after Techno View IP offers Sony a license under FRAND (“fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms. The NPE also pleads that it has determined that various TDVision foreign patents “read on the H.264 and ISO/IEC 14496-10 specifications, including issued patents in China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong”.

California-based NPE Techno View IP Inc. has filed its first infringement litigation, accusing Facebook subsidiary Oculus VR (1:17-cv-00386) of infringing a single patent (7,666,096) through its Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) headset and related systems. The complaint characterizes the ‘096 patent as related to a system for creating and controlling a 3D image in a video game system that can be used in a head-mounted display. Oculus is alleged to infringe through the Rift’s use of certain VR processing techniques, including the use of two separate memory buffers for storing part of a 3D image for each eye, the tracking of virtual camera positions for each eye, and features for correcting distortion.