This past October, DataQuill Limited filed suit against Alphabet (Google) in the District of Delaware, asserting a single expired patent for past damages. Google has responded (to an amended version of the original complaint) with a motion to dismiss, among other things, the plaintiff’s claims for willfulness and indirect infringement during the damages “18-month window” between the issuance of the patent’s claims from the last reexam proceeding and the date of expiration (in May 2017). A hearing on that motion has been set for May 26 before District Judge Maryellen Noreika; meanwhile, DataQuill has filed an analogous complaint against Amazon (1:22-cv-00610), also in Delaware, also seeking past damages, and also relying on a purported notice letter sent more than a decade ago.

Its June 2021 wave of cases coming to an end, DataQuill Limited has filed suit against Alphabet (Google) (1:21-cv-01438) in the District of Delaware. The plaintiff asserts a single expired patent generally related to “a handheld data entry device that can be used for inventorying, purchasing products, and other data management functions”. The new complaint targets smartphones and tablets, seeking damages “between the period that is six years before the filing date of this complaint and the expiration of the Patent-in-Suit”, which has been in near-continuous litigation since mid-2001.

DataQuill Limited has added three more cases—against DDM Brands, Jose Luis Zreik-Koumi (a/k/a Jose Luis Zreik), Grup Akkar, and Techland (1:21-cv-22273) and Simply (Verykool) (1:21-cv-22275) in the Southern District of Florida and against T-Mobile (1:21-cv-00883) in the District of Delaware—to the litigation campaign that it began over 20 years ago. The NPE continues to assert a single patent generally related to “a handheld data entry device that can be used for inventorying, purchasing products, and other data management functions”, here against the provision of various touchscreen Android smartphones that “enable users to browse and download items such as apps, games, ringtones, music, videos, books, and magazines”. The new filings follow a short gap in the campaign, after a settlement ended the last open case, against TCL (TCT Mobile), in mid-May 2021, DataQuill pleading that it has “obtained over $128 million in licensing revenue”.

The sole litigation campaign of DataQuill Limited threatens to push past the 20-year mark with a new case filed against Acer (6:20-cv-00017) in the Western District of Texas, joining suits filed last year against first TCL (TCT Mobile) in the Central District of California and then separately against ASUSTek and Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies) in the Eastern District of Texas. Several related patents have been at issue over the campaign’s life, but the original, May 2000 patent has been asserted in every case throughout, from the first complaint, filed against Palm predecessor Handspring in 2001, and now against Acer. The accused products, in line with previous accusations, are Acer “smartphones that enable users to browse and download items such as apps, games, ringtones, music, videos, books, and magazines” having “a touch-sensitive screen and the Android operating system”.