October saw Blue Spike LLC file two new cases in its digital watermarking campaign, pushing its defendant count to over 170. On October 11, the NPE sued electronics manufacturers Contixo, MTM Trading, Proexpress Distributor, TCL, and Visual Land (6:16-cv-01220), accusing the companies of infringing two patents through the provision of various mobile devices. The following week, it filed suit against several members of the Kudelski Group (2:16-cv-01191), alleging infringement of ten patents through watermarking technology used to secure video content. These latest cases straddled a loss in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the NPE (16-1054). On October 14, the Federal Circuit affirmed a 2015 district court ruling that invalidated five of Blue Spike’s patents-in-campaign under Alice.

A week after Blue Spike LLC’s case against Audible Magic and 20 of its customers was dismissed, the NPE turned its attention to its newest litigation campaign, suing ZTE (6:16-cv-01020) over a group of six patents generally related to packet watermarking (7,287,275; 8,224,705; 8,473,746; 8,706,570; RE44,222; RE44,307). The complaint filed on July 15 accuses ZTE of infringement through provision of routers and switches. This case is the second filed in a campaign that Blue Spike initiated in February of this year; the first case, lodged against Huawei (6:16-cv-00048), is active in initial pleadings.

Despite an unfavorable Alice ruling late last year, Blue Spike LLC’s digital watermark campaign, initiated in April 2004 by Blue Spike Inc., continues to grow. On April 1, Blue Spike filed four separate suits against ASUS (6:16-cv-00273), BLU Products (6:16-cv-00271), Lenovo (6:16-cv-00272), and Verimatrix (2:16-cv-00329). The complaints against ASUS, BLU, and Lenovo assert two patents (5,745,569; 8,930,719) previously asserted in a number of Blue Spike’s over 120 cases filed to date. Blue Spike alleges that the companies infringe the ‘569 and ‘719 patents through their mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. The NPE’s complaint against Verimatrix accuses the company of infringing a group of ten patents (5,889,868; 7,770,017; 7,877,609; 7,913,087; 7,953,981; 8,121,343; 8,161,286; 8,175,330; 8,225,099; 8,307,213) through its digital watermarking technologies, including the defendant’s VideoMark and StreamMark products. (Blue Spike has filed only one other suit asserting the same ten patents, against The Nielsen Company (6:16-cv-00042) in February 2016; the case was dismissed with prejudice last week.)