This past November, District of Colorado Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter ordered William P. Ramey III of Ramey LLP to show cause in writing “why he should not be referred to the Court’s Committee on Conduct for his neglectful behavior in this case, including his failure to appear at a scheduling conference and his failure to serve any discovery”. Ramey’s response was to address five specific pieces of information “relevant to the issues of whether Mr. Ramey and his firm are spread too thin to provide competent representation”. Ramey filed his response—the contents of which have pulled back the curtain on a broad patent monetization operation, including arguably improper legal work, numerous inaccurate certificates of interested parties, and third-party litigation funding lurking in the shadows.

So far this month, inventor-backed M4siz Limited has sued retailers Best Buy (6:22-cv-00169), Macy’s (6:22-cv-00170), Staples (6:22-cv-00172), Target (6:22-cv-00173), and Walmart (6:22-cv-00174) in separate Western District of Texas suits. The sole asserted patent generally relates to a search engine that “triggers parsing” of a “request string” when an error is detected before returning results, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of their respective e-commerce websites. At issue are features for identifying and correcting misspelled search terms before returning results.

M4siz Limited has initiated litigation over a single patent generally related to a search engine that “triggers parsing” of a “request string” when an error is detected before returning results, suing Costco (6:21-cv-00760), Home Depot (6:21-cv-00763), Kohl’s (6:21-cv-00764), Penney OpCo (d/b/a JCPenney) (6:21-cv-00765) and Walgreens (6:21-cv-00747) in the Western District of Texas. The complaints accuse each defendant of infringement through the provision of features within the search option on its e-commerce website for identifying and correcting misspelled search terms before returning results.