Texas plaintiff Greenthread, LLC has sued Dell and Intel (6:22-cv-00105) in a single suit, targeting the provision of Intel's 10th, 11th, and 12th generation of semiconductors (Comet Lake, Tiger Lake, and Alder Lake-series devices), alleged to be incorporated in various Dell laptops (Inspiron, New Inspiron, XPS, New XPS, G15, and Alienware-series products). Greenthread asserts five semiconductor fabrication patents, received from sole named inventor G.R. Mohan Rao, one of the plaintiff's directors. Texas records indicate that this campaign is backed by a funder relatively new to patent monetization.
Greenthread was formed in Texas in October 2004, listing Rao and Philip W. John Jr., of uncertain current professional activities (apart from his position with the plaintiff), as directors. On social media, Rao identifies himself simply as the founder of Greenthread. According to Texas records, John and Rao organized Greenthread together, with exact designations shifting over the years.
Generally related to CMOS semiconductor devices with "graded dopant regions", the asserted patents (8,421,195; 9,190,502; 10,510,842; 10,734,481; 11,121,222) belong to a seven-member family with grant dates ranging from January 2012 through September 2021, all with earliest estimated priority date in September 2021. Currently available assignment records indicate that Rao transferred Greenthread an application generally related to NAND flash memory in 2011 and a separate family of non-volatile memory patents in 2012, before moving this family over to Greenthread in 2015. Prosecution of at least one application in Greenthread's asserted family continues before the USPTO.
Greenthread began this campaign in April 2019 with an Eastern District of Texas lawsuit asserting four patents (the 8,106,481; '195; '502; and 9,647,070 patents) from this family against Samsung. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap handed down an April 2020 claim construction order, a few months before Greenthread dropped its assertion of the '070 patent from the case. The parties engaged in a long tussle over the sufficiency of Samsung's license production but by July 2020 the case was dismissed with prejudice in light of a resolution of their disputes, which included five petitions for inter partes review of the patents-in-suit (two challenging the '070 patent and one challenging each of the other three), which the PTAB terminated in July 2020 in light of settlement.
John is identified as the manager of Vervain, LLC, another Texas entity (formed there in August 2019) that has asserted Rao patents—actually received from Greenthread—in litigation. Last May, Vervain sued Micron Technology (6:21-cv-00487) and Western Digital (6:21-cv-00488) in separate Western District of Texas cases, each asserting four Rao patents (8,891,298; 9,196,385; 9,997,240; 10,950,300) broadly directed to data storage systems. In its complaints, the plaintiff alleges that they claim a "specific implementation of a solution to a problem in the design and fabrication of flash memories". Targeted there is the incorporation of flash translation layers (FTLs) within solid state drives (SSDs) containing "MLC NAND flash technology" (Micron) or "TLC (triple level cell) flash technology" (Western Digital). Just last week District Judge Alan D. Albright issued a claim construction order in those cases, adhering (as he usually does) to the plain and ordinary meanings of the disputed terms.
More than two dozen other Rao patents have also been litigated—by Intellectual Ventures LLC (see here), by an IPValuation Partners LLC (d/b/a IPVal) affiliate (see here), by a former IPVal affiliate now associated with Endpoint IP LLC (see here), and by an NPE controlled by attorney Brian Yates before focusing his monetization efforts on China (see here). That Yates entity passed patents along to yet another NPE Flash-Control, LLC, which asserted them against Intel in mid-2019.
Greenthread granted a security interest in its asserted patents to Empyrean's Patent Capital Funding 2018 – Series 1A, LLC and EC Holdings Series LLC – Series B in January 2019. Empyrean Capital Partners, LP is a multi-billion dollar investment manager that reports advising "institutional investors, pension funds, endowments and foundations, and high-net worth persons". It was founded in 2004 by Amos Meron and Michael Price, both former partners at Goldman Sachs. The firm, which is headquartered in Los Angeles and also has an office in New York City, reports having eight clients and discretionary assets under management of $5.8B. (C. Martin Meekins, Empyrean Capital's COO and general counsel, signed for the two entities holding the security interests, on documents filed with the USPTO.) In 2019, Empyrean appeared relatively new to backing litigation—for details concerning its other activities, as well as those of other new entrants, see "2019 Marketplace Trends: Investors in Recent NPE Litigation Include Less Familiar Faces" (November 2019).
The new case against Dell and Intel has also been assigned to Judge Albright. 1/27, Western District of Texas.
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