Roughly a year after its litigation against Renesas Electronics ended, Xueshan Technologies Inc. has filed suit against Qualcomm (7:25-cv-00083). The plaintiff asserts six from the hundreds of patents that it received from MediaTek, described at the time as broadly concerning “power management integrated circuits, RF integrated circuits, embedded and NFC microcontrollers and image processors”. The plaintiff accuses Qualcomm of infringement through the provision of certain Snapdragon processors—those “employing a LPDDR5/5X memory controller” and/or “dimming control functionality” through the AV1 standard or HDR10+ technology.

Xueshan Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN), received a large portfolio of patents from MediaTek back in December 2020. The recipient litigated some of them, against Renesas Electronics, from May 2022 into early 2024. Now, another entity has picked up a portfolio from the same source, the transacted assets concerning chip configuration and memory devices and including patents that MediaTek asserted in its own litigation, running from February 2019 through August 2022.

Xueshan Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Quarterhill Inc. (f/k/a Wi-LAN Inc.), has filed a second complaint in the Eastern District of Texas against Renesas (2:23-cv-00091). Five patents received from MediaTek are asserted in this complaint, with infringement allegations targeting a wide array of computing products, including converters, memory protection units, microcontrollers, and processors. The fresh litigation from Xueshan Technologies drops as the ice around litigation in one of Quarterhill’s oldest campaigns, dating back to 2007, has thawed.

Xueshan Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of publicly traded Quarterhill Inc. (f/k/a Wi-LAN Inc.), has filed its first litigation, suing Renesas Electronics (2:22-cv-00157) over the provision of various integrated circuits, MCUs, MPUs, semiconductors, and SoCs. Asserted in the new Eastern District of Texas complaint are four patents, one generally related to a “user interface display apparatus” that uses texture mapping, another to a “wake-up circuit module” in an electronic device, and the other two, to a “3D graphics accelerator”. One of those last two patents-in-suit has seen prior litigation, although not filed by Quarterhill.

RPX data and analysis indicate that while approximately 85% of the patent litigation filed each year since 2005 has involved patents that originated with operating companies, the vast majority of defendants in those cases were sued by NPEs. This trend persisted through the first quarter of 2021, with new cases brought by a range of NPEs, including serial filers, a publicly traded NPE, and multiple third-party backed plaintiffs.

Quarterhill Inc. released its Q4 and 2020 financial results this week, reporting decreased year-over-year patent licensing revenue but several new license agreements as well as multiple acquisitions of large operating company portfolios. The company’s slower fourth quarter followed a surge in licensing revenue in Q3, which management characterized at the time as Quarterhill’s “best quarter” in three years.