Last month, Mesa Digital LLC hit existing defendants Acer (3:24-cv-02521), Amazon (7:24-cv-00271), Ingenico (1:24-cv-04996), Microsoft (7:24-cv-00255), and Zebra Technologies (4:24-cv-03818) with additional complaints, while associated plaintiff Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) sued new defendant Sharp Imaging (7:24-cv-00271). Meanwhile, briefing in OAC’s appeal of a $117K shift of attorney fees, in an earlier case against VIZIO, appears to have completed. There, OAC argues, among other things, that Northern District of Texas Judge David C. Godbey erred by adding exceptionality onto the previous “sanction” of dismissal with prejudice; by refusing OAC leave to amend to plead compliance with marking requirements, which it contends do not apply to NPEs; and by finding OAC’s litigation of the case unreasonable based on a failure to serve either infringement contentions or discovery requests and on a $149K settlement offer, made in a campaign that has seen myriad other cases dismissed in early stages.

Represented by Ramey LLP in one of the longest running active litigation campaigns, Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) has filed new separate cases against Amazon (Amazon Web Services) (7:24-cv-00215) and Microsoft (7:24-cv-00213). Both defendants have been previously sued in this campaign—Microsoft twice, the previous time over one of the two patents now asserted against both, targeting the respective provision of Amazon Fire TV and Microsoft Miracast. The latter infringement allegation is purportedly spelled out in a chart attached to the new Microsoft complaint, a chart that suggests that the “patent claims analysis” was conducted by HyperInfo Canada Inc. for Dynamic IP Deals LLC.

Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS), through Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC), has sued VIZIO (3:23-cv-00791) in the Northern District of Texas over the support of device pairing functionalities in its SmartCast mobile app. The two asserted patents generally relate to providing data to devices capable of displaying the data transmitted from a wireless device. Since launching this campaign in September 2008, OL Patents—through three controlled entities—has sued over 40 defendants and asserted a total of 23 patents.

Actiontec Electronics (6:23-cv-00139) is the latest defendant to be added to the over decade-long litigation campaign that Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS) has litigated through three controlled entities. In that new Western District of Texas complaint, Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC), the plaintiff and one of those three OL Patents entities, asserts two patents generally related to providing data to devices capable of displaying the data transmitted from a wireless device. Actiontec Electronics is accused of infringement through the provision of the ScreenBeam Mini 2 Wireless Display Receiver, with features related to device pairing and wireless casting at issue.

Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC), an entity associated with Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS), has expanded its over decade-long litigation campaign with suits against Canon (6:21-cv-01177) and Ricoh (6:21-cv-01178) in the Western District of Texas. The sole patent-in-suit generally relates to transmitting data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”. The defendants are accused of infringement through the support of authentication features in the Canon uniFLOW Secure Mobile Printing platform and various Ricoh IM-series printers, respectively. Since launching this litigation campaign in 2008, OL PATENTS—through three controlled entities—has sued over 35 defendants and asserted a total of 16 patents.

Two NPEs associated with Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS)—Mesa Digital LLC and Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC)—have continued their recent practice of filing suits in pairs, Mesa Digital suing Acer (3:20-cv-02337) in the Northern District of California and OAC hitting Hisense (1:20-cv-02193) in the Northern District of Illinois. A different patent from the same family is asserted in each new complaint, Mesa Digital’s generally related to a “multimedia” mobile device and OAC’s, to the transmission of video data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”. Acer joins recent defendants HTC (sued in October 2019) and Zebra Technologies (in December 2019) in the mobile devices wing of this campaign; Hisense joins Panasonic (also in October 2019) and Microsoft (also in December 2019) in the video transmission wing. Issues surrounding service of complaints continue to plague the more recent suits brought by Mesa Digital alone in this long-running campaign.

One of the longest running litigation campaigns continued its sprawl past the decade mark in December, with Mesa Digital LLC filing suit against Zebra Technologies (1:19-cv-08217) and sibling entity Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) hitting Microsoft (1:19-cv-08262), both in the Northern District of Illinois. The new Mesa Digital complaint accuses Zebra Technologies of infringing a single patent, generally related to a “multimedia” mobile device, through the provision of the TC8000, a mobile bar-code-scanning device, targeting its alleged support of cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth networking as well as its touchscreen user interface; Microsoft is accused of infringing a second patent from the same family through the provision of the Miracast Service, a wireless mirroring display standard, this asserted patent broadly concerning the transmission of video data from a wireless device to a “data rendering device”.

In a new District of Delaware suit, Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC (OAC) has accused Panasonic (1:19-cv-01921) of infringing a single “multimedia” mobile device patent from a family of 30-plus members, targeting the mirroring features of the company’s Viera-series televisions. OAC asserted the same patent, together with others from the same family, in an August 2018 case in the same district against Roku, which responded with a quick motion to dismiss under Alice. Delaware District Judge Maryellen Noreika teed that motion up for argument on June 14, 2019—just five days short of the five-year anniversary of the Alice decision itself—in an omnibus hearing that addressed five Section 101 motions filed in cases before her, the others filed by OpenPrint LLC, Sandboxed Software, LLC (d/b/a Sandbox Software, LLC), TrackTime LLC, and EncodiTech LLC. Judge Noreika’s treatment of these motions on a “Section 101 Day” tracks the procedure already used in Delaware a couple of times this year by District Judge Leonard P. Stark. OAC is now suing Panasonic, begging the question: how did that Roku motion fare? More broadly, four months later, how did Judge Noreika’s “Alice day” affect the progress of those other NPE campaigns?

Mesa Digital LLC has filed suit against T-Mobile (1:18-cv-01887) in the District of Delaware over two patents generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices. The complaint calls out T-Mobile’s Coolpad Defiant smartphone; original complaints filed in July against Huawei and ZTE, over the same two patents, make similar identifications (Huawei’s P10 and ZTE’s Axon Elite), but the NPE has since amended the ZTE complaint to swap in AT&T Primetime as the product actually accused of infringement in that case. The patents belong to a family of more than 30, other members of which are held, and have been concurrently asserted by, Mesa Digital affiliate Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC. In September, Alphabet (Google) (3:18-cv-05983) filed a Northern District of California complaint seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of two of those patents, after Ortiz & Associates voluntarily dismissed an earlier affirmative case in the Northern District of Illinois.

On the heels of three voluntary dismissals in cases brought in February of this year, Mesa Digital LLC has filed two new complaints, one each against Huawei (2:18-cv-00285) and ZTE (1:18-cv-04775). The suits assert the same two patents, generally related to “multimedia” mobile devices, seen in the recently dismissed complaints against Amazon (voluntarily dismissed without prejudice), BlackBerry (with prejudice), and Sony (without prejudice). At issue are smartphones, with Huawei’s P10 and ZTE’s Axon Elite called out in each complaint.