Florida-based NPE FastVDO LLC has filed suit against LG Electronics (LGE) (3:16-cv-02499) in the Southern District of California, asserting a single patent (5,850,482) generally related to error-resilient data encoding through lossless compression. This new case follows the February transfer of another action filed by the NPE against LGE in June 2015, from the Eastern District of Texas to the same district in California. As in that first lawsuit, FastVDO accuses LGE of infringement through products that use Adaptive Multi-Rate audio technology. However, in contrast to the earlier, more general complaint filed last June, the NPE now provides a specific list of devices alleged to infringe the ‘482 patent, including various LGE smartphones and feature phones.

Cases brought separately in the Eastern District of Texas by NPEs GroupChatter LLC and FastVDO LLC can be added to the list of recent transfers to other districts. On February 11, 2016, Magistrate Judge John D. Love granted a motion by Toshiba subsidiary Landis + Gyr (L+G) to the Northern District of Georgia. GroupChatter had filed a suits in Texas against GE, Itron, L+G, and Sensus between September and November 2015, asserting four patents (7,969,959; 8,199,740; 8,588,207; 9,014,659) against each defendant’s “wide area Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) network that enables remote configuration, operation, and monitoring of utility meters”. The patents-in-suit issued to Critical Response Systems, Inc., a Georgia operating company, or to a related entity, Critical Holdings, Inc., and they generally relate to sending alerts to a group of users over a wireless network.

FastVDO LLC launched its second litigation campaign with suits against Apple, AT&T, Dell, Huawei, LGE, NEC, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE. A single patent is asserted in the suits, concerning error resilient data encoding through lossless compression (5,850,482). The patent-in-suit was developed by McDonnell Douglas Corporation, and according to the complaints, FastVDO is the current owner by assignment. FastVDO is accusing defendants’ products that comply with Adaptive Multi-rate (AMR) and Adaptive Multi-rate, Wide-band (AMR-WB) protocols, including smartphones and tablets, of infringing the ‘482 patent.