Posts Tagged: "patent filings roundup"

It was a light week at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and in the courts (relatively speaking), with 49 new district court patent filings and 19 inter partes reviews (IPRs), both a bit less than recent averages. There were another 72 district court dismissals, including a number of WSOU, CallStat [Jeffrey Gross], and other file-and-settle entity dismissals filling up the docket. The Board issued seven new discretionary denials, discussed below, and the Apple/Ericsson 5G dispute continued to spill into the open in venues worldwide, with district court cases, IPRs, ITC, and European disputes filling out the docket. Magnetar filed another campaign in recent weeks and followed up with hitting Apple this week; a number of parties were denied institution against Express Mobile patents (though two of the five patents have been instituted, and more are pending on the others); and Vector Capital’s Monterey Research lost yet another set of claims in a challenge by AMD at the Board.

It was a relatively consistent week in terms of overall patent filings, with 24 inter partes reviews (IPRs) and two post grant reviews (PGRs) and 77 new district court complaints. The district court saw a couple of new higher-profile cases involving Google, one by small company, Flypsi, and another a declaratory judgment (DJ) action against small smart thermostat maker (and aggressive enforcer), Ecofactor.

As we finish up the year, the high district court termination rate continues; 85 terminations this week, including a fair amount of transfers, rounded out a normal PTAB week (29 filed) and a slightly depressed litigation week (with 50 new complaints). 

Another 82 district court terminations this week was again high, though careful analysis has revealed that many of those cases were terminated voluntarily and refiled elsewhere. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw just 22 inter partes reviews (IPRs) this week; a few parties walked away from their patents, including Litl LLC [TRI Ventures, Inc.], after a challenge by Microsoft. District court was up this week to 94 patent filings, and the year looks poised to end with filings up substantially over years past. The Board again exercised its Fintiv muscles in an IPR with a case pending in the International Trade Commission (ITC), this one an entity funded by Techquity Captial Management. Other semiconductor patents asserted by NPEs went down on Final Written Decision in IPR, including one of the patents asserted by Vector Capital’s Monterey Research; it’s worth noting that the semiconductor companies have collectively spent a lot of time before the Board this year after the increase in NPE suits there this year.

With the Thanksgiving holiday, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) (18) filings were down, but district court patent filings held steady at 62, with (again) an astounding number of closed or terminated cases (almost 100), many voluntarily dismissed without prejudice. As reported last week, in Google LLC v. EcoFactor, Inc. IPR, IPR2021-00982, the Board originally denied the petition, citing Fintiv and the statutory timing of International Trade Commission (ITC) investigations. Subsequently, though, the Board was made aware that the patent had been dropped from the ITC case, and reversed its earlier discretionary denial, thus instituting the case. It’s the first time I’m aware of that the Board has reversed a denial of institution, not on request for rehearing, but sua sponte after the discretionary reasons for denial evaporated (as they often do).

Happy Holidays! Thanksgiving has come and gone. A light week last week headed into the holidays saw 20 Patent Trial and Appeal Board filings (two more against MemoryWeb, and a lot of one-offs, including one by gaming company Zynga against IGT). District courts saw 58 patent filings, with a whopping 115 terminations again this week—at least a few attributable to transfers, but many, many more attributable to file-and-settle settlements headed into the end of a very lucrative year in monetization, as quarterly statement-minded licensing entities look to wrap things up before the holidays.

District court patent filings this week remained slightly elevated, at 78, with a fair number of Rothschild, Raymond Anthony Joao, and Jeffrey Gross entities filings complaints; but oddly—after their explosion of new litigations the past two weeks—there was not a single IP Edge case to speak of. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), for its part, was up slightly too, with 37 new petitions (one post grant review and 36 inter partes reviews). Speaking of Jeffrey Gross, though it consists of two patents issued in 2013, the Jeffrey Gross-run Auth Token LLC appears to have waited until the sunset of covered business method (CBM) petitions to turn around and slap virtually all of the nation’s banks, credit card companies, and some financiers with a lawsuit over two pretty identical point-of-sale authentication patents. The cases now include Mastercard, Visa, M&T Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, TD Bank, Trust Financial, and US Bancorp (US Bank), among the 32 defendants thus far.  But the real action was between the Federal Circuit and Judge Albright, as the words and rulings of each become increasingly confrontational toward the other.

Another week, another dearth of any Fintiv denials, which sort of begs the question, if the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has effectively walked back their reliance on the Fintiv factors, does that order’s precedential status merit walking back? In terms of district court and PTAB filings, subdued is the word; just 19 PTAB petitions (all inter partes reviews) with four being apparent joinders by LG Electronics against Gesture Technology Partners, LLC [a Tim Pryor entity] well prior to institution, seeking to join Apple petitions. Previous Pryor entities include Motion Games LLC, PSTP Ttechnologies, Tactile Feedback Technology, LMI Technologies Inc., and Great Lakes Intellectual Property, Ltd]. Gil Hyatt filed yet another suit this week (and has filed one a week, it seems, for some time).

A slightly above-average week in filings saw 38 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions (one post grant review and 37 inter partes reviews) and 71 district court complaints, with another massive wave of district court terminations—likely due at least in part to parties voluntarily dismissing cases and refiling them based on recent venue rulings, though it’s hard to capture, as many are simple voluntary dismissals. There also appears to have been an RPX settlement of Proven Networks (based on conjecture given the public dockets and en masse terminations); a batch of new non-practicing entity (NPE) campaigns (many spun out from Intellectual Ventures-licensed patents), including Buffalo Patents, a new single-patent DynaIP retail suit, LINFO IP, LLC, against CVS, Sears, Costco, and Target, among others; and while it isn’t captured here, Intellectual Ventures just yesterday itself launched its first major suit in years on IV Funds I and II; more on that next week.

The third quarter came in like a wrecking ball, with district court patent filings spiking to 121 (roughly double average, driven entirely by a huge 48-complaint dump by IP Edge subsidiaries); Patent Trial and appeal Board (PTAB) filings were steady at 28, all  inter partes reviews (IPRs). A pattern seems to be emerging from IP Edge of a spike in settlements and terminations at the end of a fiscal quarter, followed by another round of filings when the next quarter starts. IP Edge is on pace to break the records it previously held for most complaints by a set of related entities in a calendar year. The Board denied another case under their Section 314(d) Fintiv discretion in light of an International Trade Commission (ITC) case, noting that, as “the ITC is scheduled to complete its investigation approximately seven-and-a-half months before the due date for the final written decision, this factor weighs in favor of exercising our discretion to deny institution.”

A light Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and busy district court week for patent filings marked the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the America Invents Act, with 18 petitions (two post grant reviews [PGRs] and 16 inter partes reviews [IPRs]) and 78 district court complaints filed. A handful of those IPRs are semiconductor cases carried over from previous fights already reported here;

An average week saw 54 district court patent filings and 30 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions, the majority of the latter being associated with semiconductor litigation. A surprising number of settlements and dismissals in the district court likely presages the end of the third quarter and patent aggregators feeling the pressure to earn sufficient returns for the quarter—or it could just be another aberration based on the thousands of pending complaints nationwide.  

It was a heavy week for patent filings, with 78 new district court complaints and 41 new Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions, all inter partes reviews (IPRs). IP Edge and Leigh Rothschild entities made up the bulk of those district court filings, while on the Board front, a number of long-running campaigns saw patents challenged, including the wide-ranging Express Mobile suits, some Divx [Fortress] challenges, and a number of challenges against the Xerox-owned Palo Alto Research Center.

A banner week saw the district court roaring back to life with 93 new patent filings and over 50 closed cases, including all of the remanded Section 101 rulings in Realtime Data, LLC. Recall that the Federal Circuit remanded that order to Judge Connolly for including insufficient reasoning under step one and step two of the Alice/Mayo inquiry. The order is still sealed, but as it closes the cases again, one must assume it provides additional reasoning and again cancels Realtime’s patents under 101. That particularly litigious entity had sued 134 defendants, and the case has been up and back, as noted.

Weekly patent filings have settled into a roughly 60-complaint, 30-petition trend this year, and this week was no different; the district courts saw a handful of new LLCs sharing the same Delaware address, a slew of additions to existing campaigns, and another Acacia campaign launched – Atlas Global Technologies LLC. The Hilco entities, Rothschild entities, and DynaIP have all added a number of new defendants. Take a look.