This past November, District of Colorado Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter ordered William P. Ramey III of Ramey LLP to show cause in writing “why he should not be referred to the Court’s Committee on Conduct for his neglectful behavior in this case, including his failure to appear at a scheduling conference and his failure to serve any discovery”. Ramey’s response was to address five specific pieces of information “relevant to the issues of whether Mr. Ramey and his firm are spread too thin to provide competent representation”. Ramey filed his response—the contents of which have pulled back the curtain on a broad patent monetization operation, including arguably improper legal work, numerous inaccurate certificates of interested parties, and third-party litigation funding lurking in the shadows.

As recently reported by RPX in its Q4 in Review, NPE litigation targeting the Financial Services sector rose in 2021, with double the number of defendants added to litigation compared to 2020. The plaintiffs active in this sector today include several inventor-controlled NPEs, a publicly traded patent assertion entity, two Texas-based monetization firms, and multiple prolific litigants.

Ward Participations BV has expanded its sole litigation campaign, begun with a Western District of Texas suit filed against Samsung in August 2021, with new cases, filed separately in the same district, against American Express (6:21-cv-01190), Bank of America (6:21-cv-01191), Citigroup (6:21-cv-01194), JPMorgan Chase (6:21-cv-01193), and Wells Fargo (6:21-cv-01195). The inventor-controlled plaintiff targets the provision of payment cards (all but Wells Fargo) and mobile apps (all JPMorgan Chase) as used with or compatible with Samsung Pay.

Inventor-controlled Ward Participations BV has sued Samsung (6:21-cv-00806) in the Western District of Texas, targeting the provision of devices that support the Samsung Knox Security framework with two patents broadly directed to “performing an electronic transaction” with an electronic device equipped with authentication software. The plaintiff seeks an injunction and alleges that Samsung’s infringement was willful, pleading that the defendant knew that its products infringed the patent “since at least December 2019 based on Plaintiff’s patent litigation in Europe”.