Patent Filings Roundup: Magentar Launches Tenth and Eleventh Campaign; Joao Entity Hits State Healthcare; Board Terminates Eight Petitions Pre-Institution Over Patent Owner Objections

A normal week at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and a heavy week in the district courts saw 100 new patent complaints filed and 30 petitions before the Board; there were 79 district court terminations as well, as cases settled quickly and a number of withdrawals or refilings continue in and out of the Western District of Texas. Intellectual Ventures—hearing footsteps from the Federal Circuit’s mandamus of Judge Albright transferring automotive cases out of his jurisdiction for lack of venue over car companies—has refiled Eastern District of Texas complaints against car companies in the Northern District of Texas, presumably because those companies have factories or some other serious presence there.

Texas Instruments and LG added to the defendants challenging Magentar Capital-funded patents before the Board, this time under ersatz entity Sonrai Memory Ltd.; more joinder motions were filed in the sprawling five-patent Express Mobile case, as one set of IPRs, the Facebook IPRs, were instituted and defendants rushed to join those matters, including Expedia, Squarespace, Homeaway.com, Pinterest, and Atlassian.  A few mystery entities like Village Green have popped up, and the rest is the usual end-of-month glut from IP Edge and similarly situated file-and-settle entities.

Tenth and Eleventh Magentar Capital Campaigns Pop Up: Litigation funder Magnetar Capital has had quite a run these past two years, and has now launched their eleventh and twelfth litigation campaigns from Ireland (through manager Atlantic IP Services).  These suits—Lionra Technologies Ltd. and Togail—go after their two favorite and most-sued targets, Samsung and Apple, respectively. The funder’s patents have been the subject of numerous PTAB challenges since the fund’s inception years previous.  These suits have matured to the point where they have used both the ITC and single-patent Texas campaigns to exert pressure on the handset giants, typically while approaching smaller down-market players with letters and licensing demands.

They also seem to have spun out additional funding shops, as Atlantic alum-led Key Patent Innovations has launched a suit under the sub Valtrus Innovations against Google (and again presumably against the remainder of the industry via letter) on roughly 800 former HPE patents sold through Ocean Tomo.

Joao Entities Continue to Harass State Health Care Providers: As is not untypical of his entities, Raymond Anthony Joao entity Decapolis Systems LLC continued to chase health care companies, this week suing HCA Health Services of Tennessee and HCA Health Services of Texas, bringing the campaign to 21 defendants that run the gamut from small local pediatrics practices to university healthcare systems, most based in Texas.

Board Terminates Eight Cases Pre-Institution Over Patent Owner’s Objections: It’s uncommon—but not unheard of—for a patent owner to oppose a unilateral motion to withdraw or terminate a petition prior to the Board moving forward with an institution decision. It’s hard to see why the agency wouldn’t just allow the petitioner to withdraw such requests 100% of the time, and to my knowledge, that’s what they’ve done. Here, eight earlier IPR challenges were all denied on the merits. The petitioner then moved to withdraw the remaining eight, and the patent owner actually opposed, arguing that eight more institution decisions—for which the writing was most certainly on the wall—would be a deterrent effect for them against future parties and the petitioner and, regardless of lack of estoppel effect for a denial of institution, would be in the best interest of the patent owner. The Board, considering both arguments, decided to allow the withdrawal, and pointed to General Plastics and other Board cases as preventing any future serial abuse.

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