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.

Secure NFC PTY. LTD. has filed its first lawsuit, accusing Mastercard (3:23-cv-00853) in a new Eastern District of Virginia complaint of infringing a single patent payment patent through the provision of its Masterpass digital payment service. At issue is the service’s Tap on Phone feature, as used to accept payments on an NFC-enabled device from a contactless card or mobile wallet, including functionality that replaces payment card account numbers with unique 16-digit tokens, and the use of “dynamic data (cryptograms) generated using EMV-based cryptography to secure the transaction” (as described on the Masterpass website).