Another ex parte reexamination of a patent asserted in litigation by IXI IP, LLC and IXI Mobile (R&D) Ltd. (collectively, IXI) has resulted in the issuance of both amended and new claims, prompting Apple (5:20-cv-04050) and Samsung (5:20-cv-04047) to file another set of declaratory judgment complaints against IXI. The venue is again the Northern District of California, where District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. has been presiding over litigation between these parties for years, including over cases that Apple and Samsung filed last October seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement and invalidity of claims from another patent, held unpatentable through inter partes reviews (IPRs) but arising somewhat anew through ex parte reexam.

Apple (4:19-cv-06769) and Samsung (4:19-cv-06773) have each filed an analogous complaint in the Northern District of California seeking declaratory judgments of claim preclusion, noninfringement, and invalidity of claims added by IXI IP, LLC and IXI Mobile (R&D) Ltd. (collectively, IXI) to a patent already held invalid. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) cancelled the patent’s claims through a final written decision in an inter partes review (IPR), a decision later affirmed by the Federal Circuit. Litigation over that particular patent nevertheless persisted. Why?

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has cancelled multiple claims from three wireless hotspot patents (7,016,648; 7,039,033; 7,295,532) asserted by IXI Mobile Inc. (IXI) against Apple and Samsung. In four December 21 final decisions, issued in response to inter partes reviews (IPR) jointly filed by the two companies, the Board ruled that all but one of the claims litigated by IXI are invalid in light of prior art. The PTAB held that nearly all challenged claims from the ‘532 patent—apart from claim 10, which the Board declined to review—are obvious over prior art (IPR2015-01443). In addition, it found that all challenged claims from the ‘033 are obvious over other references (IPR2015-01444) and that all challenged claims from the ‘648 patent were either anticipated by (IPR2015-01445) or obvious over (IPR2015-01446) prior art.

Google has filed a declaratory judgment action against IXI IP, LLC and IXI Mobile (R&D) Ltd., seeking a judgment that neither Google nor its customers infringe a single patent (7,552,124) generally related to parsing natural language into executable code (3:16-cv-04173). This lawsuit comes after the two NPEs, both subsidiaries of IXI Mobile Inc. (collectively “IXI”), asserted the same patent against BlackBerry (2:15-cv-01883), HTC (2:15-cv-01884), Samsung (2:15-cv-01885), and ZTE (2:15-cv-01886) in November 2015 for offering mobile devices with various Google voice search apps, as well as servers designed to enable these features. Samsung was further targeted for manufacturing Google’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Google’s complaint includes a detailed rebuttal of IXI’s infringement contentions, arguing step by step how the accused products purportedly do not fall within the language of the asserted claims of the ‘124 patent.

IXI Mobile (R&D) Ltd. (as exclusive licensee) and IXI IP, LLC (as patent owner) have launched a second mobile devices campaign, this time in the Eastern District of Texas. The two NPEs together have asserted a single patent (7,552,124) generally related to parsing natural language code to produce related executable code, accusing BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, and ZTE of infringement through the sale of their smartphones and tablet computers.

IXI IP, along with IXI Mobile (R&D), continued its litigation campaign with a suit against Apple. The suit asserts the same four patents used in the entities’ previous litigation (7,016,648, 7,039,033, 7,295,532, 7,426,398), which relate to remote control of mobile devices and mobile tethering. Apple’s mobile phones, tablets, and smartwatch are accused of infringing the patents-in-suit through the wireless hotspot and remote control features in the products.