Recently formed New Mexico plaintiff ContactWave LLC has filed its first litigation, suing Best Buy (2:24-cv-00991), Macy's (2:24-cv-00989), Nordstrom (2:24-cv-00993), Walgreens (2:24-cv-00994), and Walmart (2:24-cv-00995), all in the Eastern District of Texas. The sole asserted patent is broadly directed to sending messages from vendors to "mobile communication addresses of mobile users" after verifying that the user has provided "acceptance information", with the defendants accused of infringement through their respective digital advertisement systems. At issue are features related to collecting user information and delivering personalized advertisements.
Belonging to a family of 12, the sole patent-in-suit (9,531,665) issued in December 2016 with an estimated priority date in November 2005. USPTO assignment records have yet to reflect an assignment of the patent away from Mira Advanced Technology Systems, Inc. (MATS)—an NPE controlled by sole inventor Nitesh Ratnakar that previously litigated three different patents from the 12-member family against Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft between February 2020 and February 2024 (see here for more on those suits)—but the plaintiff pleads it is the "assignee of all right, title and interest" in the patent, including "all rights to enforce and prosecute actions for infringement and to collect damages for all relevant times against infringers of the Patent-in-Suit".
ContactWave was formed in New Mexico on October 18, 2024, with little to no information on its management or personnel publicly available. The plaintiff's complaints, filed by Rabicoff Law LLC, conforms to a familiar boilerplate, fitting a pattern that has been developing over the course of 2024 of recently formed New Mexico plaintiffs launching litigation over patents received shortly after formation (as confirmed by assignment records later made public) and through the representation of Rabicoff Law.
For other examples of plaintiff's with new campaigns that fit this pattern, see RPX's coverage of new campaigns initiated by CelluPlex LLC, Data Resonance LLC, e-Beacon LLC, Encelion LLC, Navog LLC, Payvox LLC, Peregrine Data LLC, Pointwise Ventures LLC, and Querytron Heggem LLC. Recently filed cases from Pointwise Ventures in the District of Delaware have provided insight into the ownership of at least that New Mexico entity; for details, see "Judge Connolly's Standing Orders Unveil Figure Behind at Least One New Mexico Plaintiff" (June 2024).
The new East Texas cases have been assigned to District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III. 12/2, Eastern District of Texas.
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