Patent Filings Roundup: All Nokia Phones Banned in Germany over Fortress Claims; IPR Proceeds over Arigna’s ITC Fintiv Arguments; Hashicorp Unloads on IP Edge Sub Invincible; PacSec Throws Up a Hail Mary

It was a typical week in terms of overall patent filing numbers, with 31 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings, 56 district court complaints, and some 50-odd terminations; continued filings of inter partes reviews (IPRs) against Ericsson by Apple in their sprawling 5G fight; a Raymond Anthony Joao sub brought a 33-patent complaint (mostly expired) on shipping tracking; Fortress entities were on the receiving end of a few IPRs; and in Europe, a Fortress entity secured an injunction against Nokia over all Nokia-branded smartphones in the country, a huge blow for Nokia there. Unrelatedly, there was a hastily-filed errata filed in the Cal Tech opinion at the Federal Circuit with major estoppel implications (that Dennis Crouch has already well-covered).  Let’s get to it. 

Board institutes over Magnetar’s Fintiv ITC arguments: Prolific litigation funder Magnetar Capital’s subsidiary Arigna technologies, who first made headlines for going after Infineon in-dash display chips and has now moved on to suing Qualcomm for smartphone chips in the ITC and the Western District of Texas, now has to face an IPR over arguments that the Board should exercise their discretion over the ITC case there.  The Board was unmoved by the funded entity’s plea, based largely on the merits of the petition being exceptionally strong. See IPR2021-01321.  

Hashicorp goes Ham on IP Edge: It’s not your typical response to an IP Edge case.  The file-and-settle behemoth (who has filed roughly 50 complaints a month for the past three years, almost none reaching Markman) has run into a company, Hashicorp, who despite getting IP Edge to dismiss early without prejudice to avoid a filed 101 motion there has proceeded to file three IPRs on the portfolio.  Seems like they kicked the wrong sleeping bear there—it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Nokia-branded Phones Banned in Germany at Fortress’ Behest: Chalk up another win for the litigation funders: in Germany, the Fortress-backed VoiceAge EVS forced Nokia licensor HMD to stop selling any of their phones there, and they’ve pulled them from all available streams of commerce.  VoiceAge EVS (Fortress) enforced the injunction, as reported by Florian Mueller here, m/2022/02/most-nokia-branded-phones-banned-in.html, in the effort springing from the Manneheim Regional Court.  What’s interesting is that the patents in question are related to a feature that’s important is likely nonessential to the working of most phones—a 3GPP audio codec, which and has been removed from most recent phones—it does result in some degradation of audio quality for streaming audio content (not, as I understand it, phone calls).  Nonetheless the ban was for all phones, and shows that enforcement there happens—particularly impotant given that Avanci licensors have been leaning on Ford and other U.S. automakers hard on 4GLTE patents available through Avanci, and Apple, Ford, and Oppo are currently in the middle of a big trial in Munich against IP Bridge on patents licensed through Avanci.

PTAB (31)

District Court (56)