Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright has entered judgment based on a jury verdict in favor of plaintiffs Caddo Systems, Inc., as patent owner, and exclusive licensee 511 Technologies, Inc. As widely reported, the damages ask at the trial’s outset was in the $30M neighborhood, but while the jury found all 17 tried claims (from six patents) infringed, the lump sum award against Microchip Technology came to just $235K in the end. A trio of May cases, filed in three other districts against LightInTheBox, Progress Software, and Texas Instruments, remain active in the campaign, as does a June suit against Jetbrains as well as an appeal from a dismissal of a suit against Siemens for lack of personal jurisdiction in the Northern District of Illinois (2022-1623).

Trial is set for early June in the Western District of Texas case brought by Caddo Systems, Inc., as owner of the asserted patents, and exclusive licensee 511 Technologies, Inc. against Microchip Technology. District Judge Alan D. Albright is in receipt of a slew of pretrial motions, a hearing concerning which was held on May 18. Two days later, the plaintiffs filed a new case in the campaign, this one in the Eastern District of Texas against Texas Instruments (4:22-cv-00434), following up a week later with separate suits against LightInTheBox (2:22-cv-00732), in the Western District of Washington, and Progress Software (1:22-cv-10815), in the District of Massachusetts. Asserted are overlapping sets of patents generally directed to hierarchical menu navigation, with infringement allegations again targeting the provision of nested menus on product platforms and/or company websites.

Caddo Systems, Inc., as owner of the asserted patents, and exclusive licensee 511 Technologies, Inc. have filed another round in a litigation campaign over a family of patents generally related to hierarchical menu navigation. The newest defendants are MediaTek (6:20-cv-00241), Microchip (6:20-cv-00245), NXP (6:20-cv-00244), and Siemens (4:20-cv-00255), each accused of infringement through the provision of nested menu systems for navigating product platforms and/or company websites. The plaintiffs began this campaign in 2016, with the last open cases closing in mid-2017.

During June 2017, RPX completed three deals on behalf of its patent risk management network, obtaining rights to the patents involved either to end litigation against its members or to prevent it in the first place. June acquisitions occurred within the Networking and E-Commerce and Software market sectors.

Huawei (2:17-cv-00427), Qualcomm (2:17-cv-00426), and SK Hynix (2:17-cv-00428), are the latest defendants added to the campaign of Caddo Systems, Inc., owner of the asserted patents, and exclusive licensee 511 Technologies, Inc. The two NPEs began litigation in August 2016, targeting the website navigation systems of five defendants—Dassault Systemes, Delta Airlines, Internet Brands, Southwest Airlines, and Tencent (ZAM Network)—that fall with a family of five patents (7,191,411; 7,216,301; 7,640,517; 7,725,836; 8,352,880). The patents generally relate to hierarchical menu navigation, issuing to sole named inventor Armin Moehrle between March 2007 and January 2013 with an estimated priority date in June 2002.

Patent owner Caddo Systems, Inc. and exclusive licensee 511 Innovations, Inc. have filed another round of cases in their joint campaign, suing GE (2:17-cv-00177), Microsoft (2:17-cv-00178), and Oracle (2:17-cv-00179). A family of five patents (7,191,411; 7,216,301; 7,640,517; 7,725,836; 8,352,880), generally related to hierarchical menu navigation, has been at issue in this litigation, with all five now asserted against GE, all but the ‘517 patent asserted against Microsoft, and only the ‘301 and ‘880 patents asserted against Oracle. The defendants’ website navigation systems are accused of infringement.

RPX reported two weeks ago that inventor Alan Loudermilk had joined Caddo Systems, Inc. as a director, in possible preparation to assert the patents of Armin Moehrle. Loudermilk is also one of two named directors for 511 Innovations, Inc., an entity actively engaged in the enforcement of Loudermilk patents, most recently against Apple. Indeed, Caddo Systems and 511 Technologies, Inc.—another entity controlled by Loudermilk—have now teamed up to assert five of those Moehrle patents (7,191,411; 7,216,301; 7,640,517; 7,725,836; 8,352,880), suing Delta Airlines (2:16-cv-00925), Internet Brands(2:16-cv-00927), Southwest Airlines (2:16-cv-00926), and Tencent (Zam Network) (2:16-cv-00928) in the Eastern District of Texas. The defendants’ website navigation systems are accused of infringement.

511 Innovations, Inc., an inventor-controlled NPE, has added a case against Apple (2:16-cv-00868) to the campaign that it began last September by filing three complaints that named one or more mobile phone manufacturers with a semiconductor supplier: HTC with Vishay Intertechnology (2:15-cv-01524); Huawei, Samsung, and ZTE with AMS (2:15-cv-01526); and Microsoft with Avago (2:15-cv-01525). Of the eight optical measurement patents (6,307,629; 6,490,038; 6,915,955; 7,110,096; 7,113,283; 7,397,541; 8,472,012; 8,786,844) that 511 has asserted in the campaign, Apple is accused of infringing five (the ‘629, ‘096, ‘541, ‘012, and ‘844 patents) through the manufacture and sale of mobile phones, with only the iPhone 4 identified specifically.