Since late 2019, Apple and Intel have pursued claims against Fortress Investment Group LLC and a variety of affiliated NPEs, arguing in part that they have violated antitrust and unfair competition laws by aggregating and asserting a “massive but obscured” patent portfolio in order to charge supracompetitive royalty rates. The plaintiffs have now filed a second amended complaint (SAC) in that case, addressing certain pleading deficiencies flagged earlier this year by Northern District of California Judge Edward Chen but also adding a variety of additional facts providing context for the defendants’ alleged anticompetitive “scheme”. Perhaps the most significant newly disclosed information pertains to the 2018 deal in which Fortress acquired the assets and monetization business of Australian NPE Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited—including key financial terms that Fortress and Uniloc had previously fought to keep under seal in other litigation.

Following the withdrawal of its October suit against Fortress Investment Group LLC, Intel has filed a second antitrust case against Fortress, this time joining Apple as a coplaintiff and targeting a wider set of defendants—including, among others, Inventergy Global, Inc.; IXI IP, LLC; and two subsidiaries of Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited. Building on Intel’s original complaint (in-depth coverage of which is available here), the new suit alleges that Fortress reached agreements with various parties that have resulted in inflated royalties, increased prices, and reduced innovation and quality for electronic devices.

Another wave of defendants has been added to the messaging apps campaign of Uniloc (Uniloc Luxembourg S.A. as patent owner and Uniloc USA, Inc. as exclusive licensee). The new complaints assert four (7,535,890; 8,199,747; 8,724,622; 8,995,433) of the five (8,243,723) patents already at issue in the campaign, against each of HTC (2:16-cv-00989), Huawei (2:16-cv-00994), Kyocera (2:16-cv-00990), LG Electronics (LGE) (2:16-cv-00991), Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (2:16-cv-00992), and ZTE (2:16-cv-00993). The accused products are the defendants’ Android smartphones with messaging apps.