Patent Litigation Feature

Judge Albright Wrongly Held That Loan Default Caused Standing Defect, Rules Federal Circuit

The apportionment of patent rights can be a tricky business—particularly where a plaintiff has pledged its patents as collateral, as just illustrated by a new precedential decision from the Federal Circuit. In May 2022, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright dismissed a case brought by Intellectual Tech LLC (IT) against Zebra Technologies due to lack of standing, holding that because the plaintiff’s default on a loan gave its lender the option to sell the plaintiff’s patent or assert the patent itself, the plaintiff had been deprived of all substantial rights in that patent. However, the Federal Circuit ruled on May 1 that Judge Albright had fallen into an increasingly familiar trap by confusing the jurisdictional issue of standing, which requires a mere injury; with the issue of whether the plaintiff is a “patentee” as required to bring an infringement suit under 35 USC § 281.

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New Patent Litigation

Apparently Backed by an Unnamed Funder, SoundClear Technologies Launches Litigation

In separate Eastern District of Virginia complaints, SoundClear Technologies LLC has accused Alphabet (Google) (1:24-cv-00729) and Amazon (Amazon Web Services) (1:24-cv-00728) of infringing three patents originally developed at JVCKenwood. The Virginia plaintiff targets the provision of the defendants’ respective voice assistants and related hardware and software products. At issue are features related to noise reduction, speech detection/processing, and volume control.

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Yet Another New Mexico Plaintiff Launches Patent Litigation

New Mexico entity Lab Technology LLC has filed separate Eastern District of Texas cases against Samsung (2:24-cv-00324) and Verizon (2:24-cv-00323). Against Samsung the plaintiff asserts five patents apparently received from TP Lab, Inc., three of which are also in suit against Verizon. One of those three patents asserted against both Samsung and Verizon generally relates to “refreshing” a phone’s display with a location-specific “communication service”. Lab Technology is not the first plaintiff to accuse Samsung of infringing that patent, here targeting provision of the Galaxy Watch6 where the prior lawsuit, dismissed with prejudice in January 2019, focused on Samsung smartphones.

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In DigitalDoors Campaign, IBM Exits Stage Right While Another Raft of Financial Institutions Enter Stage Left

DigitalDoors, Inc. has filed another round of Eastern District of Texas complaints, hitting Cadence Bank National Association (2:24-cv-00311), Cathay General Bancorp (Cathay Bank) (2:24-cv-00312), Cullen/Frost Bankers (Frost Bank) (2:24-cv-00315), First Horizon (First Horizon Bank) and Iberia Bank (2:24-cv-00313), First National Bank of Nebraska (First National Bank (Omaha)) (2:24-cv-00314), Origin Bancorp (Origin Bank) (2:24-cv-00316), PNC Financial Services (PNC Bank National Association) (2:24-cv-00317), Simmons First National (Simmons Bank) (2:24-cv-00319), UMB Financial (UMB Bank NA) (2:24-cv-00320), and Wells Fargo (2:24-cv-00310). The financial institution defendants are targeted over the use of data processing systems compliant with the Sheltered Harbor specification, or those that otherwise “provide substantially equivalent functionality” for “providing data backup of critical customer account data” based on certain content filters, allegedly as claimed in the asserted four patents.

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Memory Portfolio Makes Expected Litigation Debut

Last July, RPX noted that the recordation of the 2021 transfer of a portfolio of memory patents to Innovations In Memory LLC (IIM). Five of those patents have now appeared in litigation, IIM accusing IBM (2:24-cv-00296) of infringing them through the provision of a wide array of memory products, including the IBM Diamondback tape library, IBM SAN Volume Controller products, IBM Storage Virtualize software, Storage Scale System, and more.

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Second Wave Filed in Wireless Communications Campaign

Telsync Technologies LLC has sued Accenture (2:24-cv-00294), AT&T (2:24-cv-00295), Ericsson (2:24-cv-00297), Samsung (2:24-cv-00298), and ZTE (2:24-cv-00299) in separate Eastern District of Texas complaints as well as Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (6:24-cv-00227) in the Western District of Texas. Asserting a single patent generally related to establishing communications between multiple devices over a physical distance, Telsync targets the provision of products that are compliant with 5G networking, including certain 5G networking solutions (Accenture, Ericsson, and Samsung) and 5G telecommunications networks (AT&T and T-Mobile).

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SiOnyx Sues Samsung over Smartphone Image Sensors

SiOnyx, LLC, a provider of night vision cameras and low light image sensors and modules, has filed complaints against Samsung in the Eastern District of Texas (2:24-cv-00291) and before the International Trade Commission (ITC) (337-TA-3744). Samsung is alleged to infringe six patents through the provision of certain smartphones, including the Galaxy S23 Ultra and Galaxy Z Flip5, that include Samsung ISOCELL image sensors, targeting features for isolating pixels that allegedly incorporate light-trapping materials.

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InfoGation Hits Vehicle Navigation System Providers, BMW Again

InfoGation Corporation continues to target vehicle navigation systems in a new round of cases, the plaintiff suing Aisin (2:24-cv-00301) over the provision of the Toyota Lexus Genuine Navigation system, as well as DENSO (DENSO Ten) (2:24-cv-00302) and Panasonic (Panasonic Automotive Systems) (2:24-cv-00303) over their various respective car navigation systems, including for DENSO Ten its ECLIPSE-series products. Toyota is already a defendant in this campaign, as are fellow automakers BMW, Ford, and Honda. The prior BMW case has been stayed to effect service under the Hague Convention, a delay apparently prompting InfoGation to file a new suit, this one naming BMW of North America (2:24-cv-00304) as the defendant.

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Pay As You Go Moves On from Wireless Carriers to Cloudera

The last of its three cases against AT&T, Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile),and Verizon having ended, Pay As You Go, LLC, a plaintiff associated with monetization figure Leigh M. Rothschild, has sued Cloudera (1:24-cv-00463), this time in the Western (rather than the Eastern) District of Texas. The plaintiff describes the sole patent-in-campaign here as generally related to “telecommunications services and methods that enable a user and/or other responsible party to make payments as the user uses the telecommunication services”, with its most recent infringement allegations against focused on the provision of functionality within the “Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) cloud-native services” by which a “customer-user can choose to pay for additional blocks of data using a third-party payment service”.

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Sole Interested Party Artax Sues Samsara

Artax LLC has sued Samsara (1:24-cv-01847) over the provision of various navigation products, including the Samsara Driver app, Samsara Connected Operations Cloud platform, and Samsara GPS Fleet Tracking system. The new complaint was filed in the Northern District of Georgia, which requires litigants to certify “a full and complete list of all other persons, associations, firms, partnerships, or corporations having either a financial interest in or other interest which could be substantially affected by the outcome of” the case. Artax has certified that there are no such interested parties, not even the monetization figure elsewhere identified as its managing member.

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In Case You Missed It

IPR and EPR Rulings Imperil Recent East Texas Verdicts in Favor of G+ Communications

In mid-April, an Eastern District of Texas jury returned a verdict awarding G+ Communications LLC $142M in a damages retrial against Samsung before Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap: $61M for the infringement of one former ZTE patent and $81M of another. Now, in an inter partes review (IPR) triggered by a petition filed by Samsung based on the disclosure of an LG Electronics (LGE) patent, the PTAB has canceled a set of claims from that second patent that includes claim 20, the one found infringed by the East Texas jury. In parallel, the Patent Office, also last week, in an ex parte reexamination (EPR) found the infringed claims of the second patent to be obvious on multiple grounds, including a single-reference challenge based on an application associated with another LGE patent.

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