Impinj and NXP Semiconductors have been locked in multifront patent litigation since Impinj filed a June 2019 case in the Northern District of California alleging that NXP USA infringes patents generally related to RAIN RFID technology. In mid-July 2023, a jury returned a verdict in that case, awarding Impinj $17.79M in lost profits and an additional $1.36M in reasonable royalties, with Impinj subsequently moving both to reconvene the jury to address an apparent inconsistency in the verdict and to impose a permanent injunction against NXP’s infringing sales. This past week, Impinj filed a new complaint, this one in the Western District of Texas against NXP Semiconductors Netherlands (6:23-cv-00586), pleading that once District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers enters judgment in its favor, that judgment will bind the defendant as to additional sales that the court kept out of the Northern California suit. Meanwhile, an earlier Western District of Texas case is fast approaching a late October trial before District Judge Alan D. Albright, all of this after a Western District of Washington jury returned a verdict in Impinj’s favor in a case filed by NXP back in 2019.

In late August, NXP Semiconductors (NXP USA) sued MediaTek in the Eastern District of Texas, targeting the provision of certain Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 chips and naming retailers Amazon and Best Buy as codefendants over the alleged sale of devices incorporating those chips (including certain Linksys and Netgear routers). This past week, NXP hit MediaTek again (8:21-cv-01810), this time with a Central District of California complaint identifying MediaTek as the “Component Supplier Defendant” and codefendants Amazon, Hon Hai Precision Industry (Belkin), and Linksys as the “Downstream Product Defendants”.

NXP Semiconductors (NXP USA) has sued Amazon, Best Buy, and MediaTek in a single Eastern District of Texas complaint (2:21-cv-00318), targeting MediaTek over the provision of Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 chips and Amazon and Best Buy over the provision of devices incorporating those chips (including certain Linksys routers, which are listed as exemplary devices for both retailers). Three wireless communications patents are asserted in the new case, all picked up through NXP’s acquisition of Marvell’s wireless connectivity business unit.