Earlier this year, the final dust settled on 2013 cases that Parallel Networks Licensing, LLC filed against IBM and Microsoft, after the Federal Circuit ruled on an appeal from an award of costs to Microsoft (20-1669). Now, litigation has ginned back up, the plaintiff suing Arrow Electronics (4:21-cv-00714) in the Eastern District of Texas and Artisan Infrastructure (6:21-cv-00951), SHI International (6:21-cv-00953), and Transtelco (Neutrona Networks International) (6:21-cv-00952) in the Western District, alleging infringement of the same two dynamic webpage creation patents that have been in suit in this campaign since 2005. At issue in these latest complaints is the use of various hardware and software products (i.e., Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs), load balancers, firewalls, and router management software, respectively) that feature a “least-connected load balancing” mode—products provided by nonparties A10 Networks (as to Arrow), Kemp Technologies (Artisan), Barracuda Networks (SHI), and Juniper Networks (Neutrona).

Parallel Networks LLC has infused the largest of its five litigation campaigns with fresh life, transferring the sole patent-in-suit to a managed subsidiary, Dynamic Applet Technologies, LLC, for assertion in new cases filed against Haverty Furniture (4:17-cv-00861), Mattress Firm and Sleepy’s (4:17-cv-00860), Petsmart (4:17-cv-00861), and Urban Outfitters (4:17-cv-00862). The patent generally relates to client-server communications, with the defendants accused of infringement through the operation of their retail websites. Parallel Networks asserted the same patent against over 120 different companies, beginning in 2009; just last month, one of several appeals to the Federal Circuit finally ended the last open litigation.

A Delaware jury has returned a noninfringement verdict for Microsoft (1:13-cv-02073) in a long-running campaign waged by Parallel Networks Licensing LLC and related entities. On March 11, the jury found that Microsoft had not infringed two patents (5,894,554; 6,415,335) generally related to dynamic webpage creation through various server and web hosting products. That finding comes less than a month after a victory in this campaign for IBM (1:13-cv-02072), which on April 27 was dismissed after winning summary judgment of no direct or indirect infringement of the same two patents.

Parallel Networks has filed more than 25 litigations this year and the newest one targets Cisco, asserting two patents against the company. The asserted patents relate to communicating data stored in a cache over a network connection (7571217; 8352570). They are part of an ongoing campaign that Parallel launched in August of this year against a number of networking companies, including Barracuda, Citrix, and SAP. In the new suit, Cisco’s networking products that automatically cache dynamic content and re-write URLs to manage network activity are accused of infringing the asserted patents. A day later, Parallel launched a new campaign with newly-created subsidiary Parallel Networks Licensing as the plaintiff. Two suits were filed, against IBM and Microsoft asserting two patents related to managing dynamic web page generation requests (5894554; 6415335). The defendants are alleged to infringe the patents-in-suit by selling products that manage network traffic. Parallel has been filing litigation for almost a decade but 2013 has been its most active year in terms of new filings. The entity has asserted a number of patents related to data caching and dynamic web pages in its almost 50 litigations. Many of those patents, including the two patents-in-suit, originated with Epic Realm and were transferred to Parallel in 2009. 12/19, District of Delaware, 1:13cv02051, 12/20, District of Delaware,1:13cv02072, 1:13cv02073

Parallel Networks [NPE] filed suit against Borders over a patent related to web sites, 2/28, 6:2011cv00098. This is the ninth suit filed by Parallel related to the patent-in-suit. Parallel has sued nearly 150 companies to date.