- within Litigation and Mediation & Arbitration topic(s)
USTA Technology, LLC has filed separate Eastern District of Texas suits against Charter Communications (4:25-cv-00818), Comcast (4:25-cv-00819), and Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (4:25-cv-00820) over the provision of a variety of 802.11ac-compliant devices, including routers, router/modem combos, gateways, extenders, hotspots, and access points, as well as security cameras and related hardware—targeting their support of the "wideband channel access features of the 802.11ac standard". A single reissue patent has been asserted across this campaign since its late 2022 start.
That patent (RE47,720) belongs to a family of five. It issued to USTA Technology in November 2019 with an estimated priority date in October 2002. Per USTA Technology, it relates "to technologies for radio frequency spectrum management in a wireless local area network system. Such technologies are a required part of the very-high throughput ('VHT') beamforming protocols of the 802.11ac standard, subsequently incorporated into 802.11-2016. Accordingly, devices supporting the 802.11ac standard necessarily meet the claim limitations of the '720 patent".
The original development work for the '720 patent's family was conducted at RaytheonBBN Technologies (prior to its acquisition by Raytheon in 2009, before which it was known as Bolt Beranek and Newman), which assigned the patent in a portfolio of 12 to Mirai Ventures, LLC in May 2017. Mirai Ventures—a Texas entity formed by Texas attorney Patrick E. Caldwell in September 2014—assigned nine of those assets to USTA Technology in January 2018.
Mirai Ventures also assigned three of its former Raytheon assets to InnoBrilliance, LLC in April 2018. While USPTO assignment records have yet to reflect an assignment of the three assets away from InnoBrilliance, Nodal Technologies LLC, an NPE associated with patent monetization professional Jeffrey M. Gross, litigated two of those patents against Ericsson and T-Mobile in its own campaign that ran from May 2022 through March 2024. See "Two Former BBN Technologies Patents Asserted in Eastern District of Texas" (May 2022) for more on that campaign.
USTA Technology was formed in Delaware on January 19, 2018, with little to no information on its personnel or management publicly available. In court disclosures, the NPE states that it has no parent corporation and that no publicly held corporation owns 10% or more of its stock. Its certificate of interested parties, filed as required in connection a case filed last October against Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), identifies only one nonparty on a complete list of those (including persons) financially interested in the outcome of the case: litigation counsel, Devlin Law Firm LLC.
Oddly, after its first case, filed against Alphabet (Google) in November 2022, was transferred to the Northern District of California (which also imposes heightened disclosure requirements on litigants), USTA Technology identified no nonparties with a financial interest in the outcome of that case. While a connection remains unclear, USTA Technology does provide a Longview, Texas address that has been associated with California monetization firm Oso IP, LLC and its many litigating entities, including Azure Networks, LLC; Balther Technologies, LLC; Jenam Tech, LLC; Power Mesh Networks, LLC; Stragent, LLC; and more. Additional background for this campaign can be found at "Its Last Case Transferred Out of the Western District of Texas, USTA Technology Turns to the Eastern District" (June 2024).
As noted, USTA Technology started this campaign with that November 2022 suit filed against Google in the Western Texas of Texas. It then turned to the Eastern District of Texas, where the plaintiff then hit ASUSTek, AT&T (AT&T Mobility), Lenovo, LG Electronics (LGE), and Samsung, last June. (The plaintiff filed the Northern District of Texas case against Motorola Mobility last October—it has since been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.) Lenovo has contested venue in East Texas, prompting a period of jurisdictional discovery and leading to a sealed opposition brief from USTA, filed on July 31, 2025.
Answers have been filed in the cases against ASUSTek and AT&T Mobility, while the suits against LGE (without prejudice) and Samsung (with prejudice) were dismissed before an answer (or other response) to the operative complaint became due. A claim construction hearing in the ASUSTek and AT&T Mobility cases, originally scheduled for March 2025, has been postponed until December 2025. District Judge Sean D. Jordan presides.
Charter is accused of infringement through the provision of various Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, and Wi-Fi 7 routers, gateways, and router/modem combos, including various ARRIS, Cisco, Hitron, NETGEAR, Spectrum, and "Techniclor/Thompson/ RCA" [sic] devices. (Note that the Charter claim chart and complaint use the more recent numbered Wi-Fi branding, including "Wi-Fi 5" for 802.11ac, whereas the other charts/complaints do not break down the accused products by generation.) Comcast is accused of infringement through the provision of various 802.11ac-compliant routers, router/modem combos, gateways, Wi-Fi extenders, security cameras and related power adapters, including Xfinity/xFi, ARRIS, and NETGEAR devices; T-Mobile, of various 802.11ac-compliant 5G gateways, hotspots, routers, access points and mesh access points, and Wi-Fi extenders, including devices from T-Mobile, Sagemcom, Arcadyan, Nokia, Askey, Cradlepoint, Inseego, and Cisco Meraki (listed in that order).
Judge Jordan has been assigned to the new cases (filed by Devlin Law Firm) as well. 7/29, Eastern District of Texas.
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