Since March 2020, WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) has been litigating patents from a large portfolio received from Nokia (including Alcatel-Lucent) in batches of cases filed separately against AMD (Xilinx), Huawei, ZTE, Microsoft, Dell (including EMC and VMware, the latter spun out and then later acquired by Broadcom), Alphabet (Google), HP Enterprise (HPE), Juniper Networks, F5 Networks, NEC, OnePlus, Canon, TP-Link, Arista Networks, Salesforce, Cisco, and NETGEAR—in that rough order. Litigation remains active against Arista, Cisco, Dell, F5, Google, Salesforce, and VMware, WSOU this past week suing Cisco (2:24-cv-00332) for a second time, targeting the provision of various networking products and services, ranging from optical line systems to switching platforms, with five patents.

Last September, District Judge Gregory B. Williams took the federal Delaware bench, alongside Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly and Judges Richard G. Andrews and Maryellen Noreika, after Judge Leonard P. Stark left to join the Federal Circuit. Delaware has long been one of the busiest venues for patent litigation; it is therefore no surprise that six months into his tenure Judge Williams has now faced and resolved a good number of issues arising from the patent portion of his docket. In that time, with several trials on the horizon, he has issued multiple claim construction rulings; considered and resolved multiple Alice challenges; addressed discovery related to a third-party litigation funder; navigated, at least initially, a potential standing issue arising from the international source of patents that the plaintiff purportedly acquired through a receivership; and refused to enter a default judgment because the plaintiff’s pleading in the complaint “can charitably be described as sparse”, too sparse to establish infringement even upon default.

Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly has been at the center of a debate over litigation transparency since he imposed stringent new disclosure requirements in his courtroom last April. However, while patent plaintiffs with suits before Judge Connolly have been dealing with resulting compliance issues for several months, the impact is now being felt outside his district as the result of a multijurisdictional discovery dispute involving the once-prolific litigant WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) (“WSOU”). In January, Salesforce—a defendant in ten WSOU cases brought in the Western District of Texas—filed a Delaware motion asking the court to force two Delaware entities with allegedly “substantial interests” in WSOU to provide information on their ownership and control. WSOU filed a motion to seal much of that material, sought by Salesforce in support of a license defense. Last week, Judge Connolly not only denied that sealing motion but also rolled back all prior redactions in the case—revealing new details on the asserted license, which stems from WSOU’s alleged ties to an individual behind another well-known NPE.

This past week, previously high-volume filer WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) began its first trial, in a set of three cases filed among a dozen against Dell (EMC) and VMware (which spun out of Dell in 2021, with a Broadcom acquisition pending) back in 2020. The disputes whittled down over the course of last year, three dismissed with prejudice in January; three more, in April; and one more, in August. This set of three cases just went to trial, with the remaining two scheduled for a July 2023 trial. District Judge Alan D. Albright directed a verdict in the defendants’ favor at the close of WSOU’s case as to the one remaining patent, after granting summary judgment of no infringement of the other two a few days earlier. WSOU appears to have run afoul of the basic principle that a testifying expert can only present opinions at trial that have been outlined in an expert report, the contents of which must conform to the plaintiff’s operative infringement contentions.

Late last month WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) filed another case against Salesforce (6:23-cv-00046), asserting a patent already in suit between the two parties. That patent generally relates to providing “caller flexibility information of a calling terminal” in a network, with infringement allegations in the new Western District of Texas complaint focused on the provision of the Salesforce Service Cloud and Salesforce Sales Cloud platforms. Two days later, WSOU voluntarily dismissed, without prejudice, its prior suit over the patent, which had targeted the provision of the Salesforce Communities tool. Since March 2020, WSOU has been litigating patents received as part of a large portfolio from Nokia (including Alcatel-Lucent) in batches of cases filed separately against Huawei, ZTE, Microsoft, Dell, Alphabet (Google), HP Enterprise (HPE), Juniper Networks, F5 Networks, AMD (Xilinx), NEC, OnePlus, Canon, TP-Link, Arista Networks, Salesforce, Cisco, and NETGEAR—in that order.

Last month, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright handed down another decision concerning venue, this one expressly holding that one corporate entity, Canon Solutions America (CSA, not a defendant in the litigation), is the alter ego of another, Canon U.S.A., Inc. (CUSA, a defendant), for the purpose of analyzing venue. WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) originally sued just Canon, the ultimate Japanese parent, in the two cases (6:20-cv-00980, 6:20-cv-00981), later adding CUSA by second amended complaints. As required by recent orders from the Federal Circuit not to move on to substantive matters while venue motions remain pending, Judge Albright multiple times postponed a Markman hearing, ultimately leading to a February 14, 2022 order on claim construction, entered a few days after a sealed order denying Canon’s motions to transfer. The public version of the latter order has now been filed, revealing Judge Albright’s alter ego analysis.

A couple of weeks ago, in the context of multiple suits filed by WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) against ZTE, RPX reported on a recent chapter in the tension between Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright’s turn to substantive matters, principally claim construction, and resolution of contested venue issues. ZTE had filed a mandamus petition asking the Federal Circuit to step in and order Judge Albright to transfer those suits to the Northern District of Texas as the West Texas litigation barreled toward a March 3, 2022 Markman hearing, the court having denied ZTE’s motion to await the Federal Circuit’s response. Well, March 3 has come and gone.

WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) has been litigating patents received in a large portfolio from Nokia (including Alcatel-Lucent) since March 2020, typically filing multiple, separate complaints, each hitting one defendant with one of those patents. This month, the plaintiff has added new cases to the roughly 125 already on the books, one against Canon (6:22-cv-00166), one against OnePlus (6:22-cv-00135), and four others against ZTE (6:22-cv-00136, 6:22-cv-00137, 6:22-cv-00138, 6:22-cv-00139), each an existing WSOU defendant, and all filed in the Western District of Texas. Even the limited consideration of WSOU’s litigation provided by this article involves, among other things, third-party complaints; multiple petitions for writs of mandamus concerning hotly contested motions to transfer, as well as an attempt to draw Federal Circuit attention to District Judge Alan D. Albright’s expansive approach to motions to effect alternate service on foreign defendants; and a motion to consolidate and limit discovery of third parties involved in WSOU’s purchase of its patent portfolio from Nokia.

The Federal Circuit has issued a writ of mandamus vacating District Judge Alan D. Albright’s denial of Juniper Network’s motion to transfer a set of cases filed by WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) and ordering Judge Albright to transfer the litigation to the Northern District of California. Since March 2020, WSOU has hit 17 defendants, most with multiple Western District of Texas cases filed in parallel and most asserting a single former Nokia patent per complaint. The writ comes as a US subsidiary of ZTE (3:21-cv-02128) has filed a declaratory judgment action against WSOU in the Northern District of Texas, after ZTE’s motion to dismiss the cases against it in West Texas were granted only as to its US subs.

Following July suits filed against Alphabet (Google), WSOU Investments, LLC (d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development) has targeted HP Enterprise (HPE) with six new Western District of Texas suits (6:20-cv-00725, 6:20-cv-00726, 6:20-cv-00727, 6:20-cv-00728, 6:20-cv-00729, 6:20-cv-00730). As has been its practice, WSOU asserts in each complaint a single patent received from Nokia (including Alcatel-Lucent) since 2017. Together, the six new suits target a range of networking hardware and software provided by HPE, which, in addition to Google, joins Dell (EMC), Huawei, Microsoft, and ZTE as defendants in WSOU’s numerous recent campaigns.