Three transfers of US patents recently recorded with the USPTO and made public—one from an optoelectronics company to an entity in a growing family of funded plaintiffs, one from an individual inventor who ended a litigation campaign last September, and one of former NEC assets passing through a Singaporean entity to a potential Delaware plaintiff—all bear watching over the coming months.

Patent transfers recently made public by the USPTO include multiple assignments between NPEs, several of which have litigated previously received assets, but others of which are new and have yet to file suit. They also include a grant to the US Treasury Department of four assets, one of which was “litigated” through this past July, when Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright, on the court’s own motion, brought the campaign to an end.

Wireless Alliance, LLC, an Intellectual Discovery Co., Ltd. plaintiff, has filed its first litigation, suing AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:23-cv-00095), Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (2:23-cv-00096), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) (2:23-cv-00097) over the provision of their respective 4G and/or 5G cellular networking services. Three wireless communications patents are asserted in the Eastern District of Texas complaints. Wireless Alliance pleads that it owns one of those patents and is the exclusive licensee with respect to the other two, which it indicates are owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

Sol IP, LLC has returned to litigation, suing Ford (2:22-cv-00097) in the Eastern District of Texas over five patents that have already appeared in this campaign, begun with suits against wireless carriers AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. Targeted in the complaint are automobiles that incorporate in-vehicle communication systems that support LTE and/or LTE-Advanced connectivity. Despite a recent ruling from the Federal Circuit on the approach, Sol IP pleads jurisdiction and venue based on, among other things, the presence of “authorized dealerships, which act as agents for Ford for the purposes of conducting Ford’s business, including, at least, selling cars (including infringing cars) to consumers and performing warranty services”.

After a purported five years of unsuccessful negotiations, Sol IP, LLC has thrown the patent book at Qualcomm (6:21-cv-00270), accusing the chipmaker of infringing 28 patents, broadly directed to wireless communications, including LTE, 5G, and Wi-Fi technologies. The plaintiff pleads that it is “an intellectual-property licensing company organized and existing as a limited liability company under the laws of Virginia” that “holds an exclusive license to the Asserted Patents from” Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), a South Korean research institution, “which transferred to Sol IP all substantial rights in those patents”.

Throop, LLC, a California entity, has filed its first lawsuits, accusing Alphabet (Google) (2:19-cv-10602), Microsoft (2:19-cv-10604), Seiko (Epson America) (2:19-cv-10597), Sony (2:19-cv-10605), and Vuzix (2:19-cv-10606) of infringing two patents, generally related to wearable devices that can communicate real-time video information. The accused products are the defendants’ augmented reality wearable devices, including the Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, Epson Moverio BT (used with Moverio Assist), Sony EyeGlass, and M100 Smart Glasses, respectively, targeting features that allow for video communications with other users.

The second half of 2018 saw a number of NPEs launch US litigation campaigns asserting patents developed by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), a South Korean research institution. In at least two of those campaigns (including one kicked off by Sol IP, LLC last week), the plaintiffs are purported exclusive licensees of the patents-in-suit—an arrangement that has yielded mixed results for ETRI and its licensees.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw activity in August 2018 involving a variety of frequent litigants. This included petitions for inter partes review (IPR) filed against two NPEs controlled by Fortress Investment Group LLC, INVT SPE LLC and Uniloc 2017 LLC, the latter of which has in recent months cofiled a barrage of lawsuits with subsidiaries of Australian NPE Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited (Uniloc). The PTAB also instituted trial in August for IPRs against Uniloc 2017 and some of its campaign coplaintiffs, and in an IPR against an NPE controlled by patent attorney Brian Yates, whose US litigation has waned as he pursues a new patent licensing initiative through his company iPEL, Inc. Finally, the PTAB issued final decisions in August for IPRs against Uniloc, Empire IP LLC, and Quarterhill Inc.

Sequoia Technology LLC, as exclusive licensee of the patent-in-suit, has launched a litigation campaign, suing Dell (EMC) (1:18-cv-01127), Hitachi (1:18-cv-01129), and HP Enterprise (HPE) (1:18-cv-01128) in Delaware. Currently available USPTO records identify Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) as the assignee of the patent, which is generally related to managing the storage of metadata. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of products and services offering Logical Volume Manager (LVM) dynamic resizing (which allows the dynamic resizing of storage partitions), including certain Linux operating systems and server hardware.