There were 33 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings (all inter partes reviews [IPRs]), with just 42 new district court patent filings this week. That, coupled with 67 terminations, suggests that either it’s the summer doldrums, or the Western District of Texas/Waco reshuffling order is having an immediate impact on filings, as would-be plaintiffs reassess venue choices—at least in the short term. Of the terminations, a large chunk are IP Edge (per usual); the IPRs represent mostly defendants in litigation challenging claims asserted against them, with a few notable exceptions. In the district courts, a new Jeff Gross entity was the biggest filer, with some other activity highlighted below. One entity, Alidouble, appears to have ties with both Israeli and Hong Kong-based predecessors-in-interests, with Hong Kong-based Keystone Intellectual Property Management recorded.
Missed Serve: In what looks like capitalizing on a major procedural blunder, semiconductor giant Trend Micro filed a declaratory judgment (DJ) action against Taasera Licensing LLC in the Northern District of Texas on at least nine patents that had previously been asserted—but not served—in the Eastern District of Texas’ Marshall division.
According to the complaint, “On November 30, 2021, Taasera filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas against Trend Micro Japan [….] Taasara has not served Trend Micro Japan. While Taasara did not name Trend Micro as a defendant in the Complaint, Taasara’s allegations of infringement as to Trend Micro’s products, which are sold in the United States by Trend Micro, establish a justiciable case or controversy between Taasara and Trend Micro of sufficient immediacy and reality.”
The failure of service has opened the door for DJ jurisdiction elsewhere by other defendants, if necessary, which, in an ostensibly high-stakes semiconductor litigation, has put the would-be plaintiff on the back foot.
Gross Files Aggressive New Campaign, Tests West Texas Order: With yet another new single-patent non-practicing entity (NPE) campaign from Jeffrey Gross, Focus Global Solutions LLC, the aggregator has sued HP, Dell, Solarwinds, Extreme Networks, Cisco, and Broadcom. The suits were filed by Issac Rabicoff in the Western District of Texas and were assigned randomly; Dell went to Judge Montavlo in El Paso, Broadcom went to Judge Pulliam in San Antonio, and Cisco went to Senior Judge Ezra in San Antonio; all three were voluntarily dismissed unilaterally by Rabicoff less than a week later. HP was assigned to Judge Ezra as well, and has yet to be dismissed; Extreme Networks was assigned to Chief Judge Orlando Garcia (also sitting in San Antonio), still pending; and Solar Winds was assigned to Judge David Counts III, in Midland (also still pending). It’s unclear if this was meant more to test the random assignment or if the filings were made without considering the new regime and then quickly dismissed.
Buying the Farm: A western dispute between Farmers Edge and Farmobile LLC spilled into court this week on five patents. Per the complaint, Kansas-based Farmobile LLC sued Manitoba-based Farmers Edge (whose US subsidiary is based in Minnesota) this week in Marshall in the Eastern District, citing extensive sales, employees, and business operations in the state. Accused products include farm information recordation systems, such as, for example, CanPlugs, which are “installed in or on agricultural equipment” and are designed to “record and transmit data during a farming operation, including real-time data generated by the agricultural equipment, as well as the related FarmCommand software platform that the user may access to retrieve and/or view the recorded data using a mobile device, such as a tablet or laptop computer.”
PTAB (33) |
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District Court (42) |
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Image Source: Deposit Photos
Image ID:461955494
Copyright:andrewde
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