Late last month, District of Delaware Judge Gregory B. Williams appears to have disposed of all of the many claims that hung over the distribution of a $125M settlement that ended the campaign of ChanBond, LLC in June 2021. The parties to the case include CBV, Inc., the inventor-controlled source of the patents asserted against 13 cable providers from 2015-2017; Deirdre Leane, formerly with IP Navigation Group, LLC (d/b/a IPNav); and IPNav, LLC, a Texas entity that she created in the wake of IPNav’s winddown, but other parties relevant to this complicated dispute also include UnifiedOnline, Inc. (UOI), ChanBond’s parent; the shareholders of UOI, which sought to intervene in the lawsuit; William (“Billy”) Carter, the CEO of UOI; Omni Bridgeway Limited (f/k/a IMF Bentham Limited), the litigation funder here; and Mishcon de Reya, litigation counsel.  

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw activity in a variety of notable campaigns throughout February 2018, with petitions for inter partes review (IPR) filed against publicly traded Quarterhill Inc. as well as Fundamental Innovation Systems International LLC, Intellectual Ventures LLC, Realtime Data LLC, and Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited. The Board also instituted trial in February for IPRs against General Patent Corporation, Oyster Optics, LLC, and Uniloc. In addition, the PTAB issued final decisions throughout February in IPRs against a range of different patent owners, including publicly traded NPEs (Acacia Research Corporation; InterDigital, Inc.; and VirnetX Inc.), an individual inventor (Daniel L. Flamm), and privately held plaintiffs (ChanBond, LLC; Makor Issues & Rights Ltd.; Papst Licensing GmbH & Company Kg; and Personalized Media Communications, LLC).

In the second half of September 2015, RPX saw 10 patent transfers to non-practicing entities (NPEs) recorded with the USPTO. Additionally, in the past month, RPX recorded the assignment of patents from one inventor-controlled company and one university.

ChanBond, LLC initiated its first litigation campaign with 13 suits against a group of cable providers, including Cable One (1:15-cv-00844), Cablevision (1:15-cv-00845), Cequel Communications (1:15-cv-00846), Charter (1:15-cv-00847), Comcast (1:15-cv-00848), Cox (1:15-cv-00849), and Time Warner Cable (1:15-cv-00852). The complaints accuse the defendants’ cable modems, multimedia terminal adaptors, and set-top boxes of infringing three patents (7,941,822, 8,341,679, 8,984,565). According to ChanBond, the patents are directed to improving data transmission in wideband distribution systems.