Jonathan Stroud

It was another slow week for patent filings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and a typical week in district courts, with 52 district court complaints filed and 22 new PTAB petitions. There was a new discretionary denial, a bunch of litigation-provoked high-profile PTAB challenges, and some notable new litigations. There was another Fintiv discretionary denial this week: here, a Chinese patent owner, Ningde Amperex Technology Ltd., benefited from the Board’s discretionary denial rules in a petition brought by another Chinese battery company. The case, IPR2023-00585, leaves unaddressed the questions raised about the validity of U.S. Patent 11329352.

It was another low patent-filing week at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), with just 12 new petitions (about half of last year’s average); district court filings were average with 47 new filings. Acacia subsidiary Atlas Global received more petitions on patents that are part of its broad assertion campaign; some Centripetal patents were instituted by a defendant in that going campaign; Intellectual Ventures appears to have settled the latest round of automotive litigation before Judge Albright, ending that case; and IP Edge continues to not file new cases and settle old ones, in the wake of the end of the year discovery battles. Zillow was instituted on patents IBM had asserted or threatened; and the Vidal administration is the latest recipient of yet another Gil Hyatt suit.

There was a slight uptick in district court filings last week after a slow January and February, with 43 new patent filings, including a design patent battle involving tumblers and multiple filings indicating an association with high-volume plaintiffs such as Jeffrey Gross and Leigh Rothschild. It was a busy week at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), with over 32 new challenges last week, with only one procedural denial on an institution decision—but that was not based on discretionary denial, which remains often briefed but rarely successful for the time being. Of course, the big news this week was that the Federal Circuit has revived an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) challenge to the Fintiv decision on discretionary denial itself as arbitrary agency action that skirted proper procedure and had an outsized impact on a broad swath of cases.

Patent filings continue to be slightly depressed in the district courts and at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) compared to the highs of last year, with 17 new PTAB cases and 38 new district court filings. New filings consist primarily of a few apparently funded cases—a Fortress entity, for instance, sued Amazon, and a Taiwanese entity with no Internet presence has sued Apple and Samsung on wireless charging patents, with some new Jeff Gross entity filings, a slew of Dynapass filings, and some other banking campaigns picking up steam; at the Board, most of the fillings revolved around existing campaigns Robocast and Daedalus Prime, as detailed below. Ericsson continued with challenging some Phillips patents; and there’s even a funder, Element Capital, who has been hit by inter partes reviews (IPRs) after suing in their own name (via a Singapore subsidiary, against Chinese subsidiaries of other companies, including Motorola).

It was a rather light district court week for patent filings, with just 24 new cases filed last week—we are starting to see the effects of a depressed rate of filing from IP Edge in the overall numbers (link behind paywall). The week also saw an average number of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings, all inter partes reviews (IPRs). A number of IP Edge pending disputes settled last week; it looks like the Bell Semiconductor/Hilco Capital suit against seemingly the entire semiconductor industry has started to settle out, with some big names dismissing cases pursuant to settlement, including Kioxia, Nvidia, Micron, and many others—whether pursuant to a bulk license through RPX or some other mechanism is unknown, but it’s likely to be some group deal for so many parties to settle at the same general time in such a far-ranging dispute.