As foreshadowed by assignment records made public by the USPTO earlier this year, a second plaintiff tied to Texas monetization firm Empire IP LLC has launched its first litigation in 2023. BT Wearables LLC accuses Dillards (2:23-cv-00343) of infringing five patents through the sale of Citizen Watch watches “and related hardware, software, and functionality that among other features calculates the calories burned by the user and transmits this data to a remote device; includes a user input device for selecting an exercise; includes an accelerometer and heart rate sensor; executes speech commands from the user; couples to a mobile telephone; and identifies the activity of the user”. Last month, Cellular Link Innovations LLC sued Verizon in Empire IP’s first campaign of the year.