- within Litigation and Mediation & Arbitration topic(s)
BH Innovations LLC, a Delaware entity, has filed a complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC) (337-TA-3845) over the alleged infringement of two former Seiko Epson patents. According to the complaint, one of those patents is currently held by 138 East LCD Advancements Limited, an IPValue Management (d/b/a IPValue) entity, for which BH Innovations pleads that it is the exclusive licensee. The other patent, also held by 138 East LCD, has apparently been assigned to BH Innovations. The proposed respondents are various HKC entities and Hisense, LG Electronics (LGE), TCL, VIZIO, and Westinghouse (which are alleged to incorporate certain HKC panels into their products). The complainant pleads that a domestic industry exists based on the licensees of 138 East LCD, calling out the US investments of Innolux in the complaint.
The two asserted patents (7,570,334; 7,705,948) generally relate to liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Seiko Epson assigned them to 138 East, the '334 patent as part of a large divestiture in July 2019 and the '948 patent as part of an even larger divestiture in April 2018. Those transfers were part of a larger stream of patents flowing from Seiko Epson to both 138 East (beginning in 2018) and Lumitek Display Technology Limited (beginning in 2023), both IPValue vehicles. (IPValue is owned by Vector Capital.) Currently available USPTO assignment records suggest that 138 East now holds over 1,000 such patent assets (many of which have expired); Lumitek Display, around 100.
BH Innovations pleads that it is the owner of the '334 patent and the exclusive licensee of the '948 patent. (No assignment of the '334 patent away from 138 East appears in currently available USPTO records. BH Innovations attaches proof of that assignment to its complaint, doing so under seal.) Its complaint focuses on claim 1 of the '334 patent and claims 1-3 and 5 of the '948 patent; characterizes the technology as generally related to "LCDs composed of two glass substrates sandwiching a layer of liquid crystal pixels and the associated circuitry for controlling the amount of light passing through those pixels"; and targets the provision of various LCD devices.
The complainant represents that the '334 patent has not been previously litigated but points the ITC to separate cases that Longitude Licensing Limited, another IPValue entity, filed against BOE Technology and Hon Hai Precision Industry (Sharp) in the Eastern District of Texas, both of which involve the '948 patent. The case against Sharp came first, in April 2023, but lasted only about three months. There, Longitude attempted to serve Sharp via the Texas Secretary of State but then (after Sharp contested the effectiveness of that service) sought a long extension of the deadline for Sharp to respond to the complaint (into December 2023) and asked District Judge Rodney Gilstrap to take a late June 2023 scheduling conference off calendar. The court granted the extension of the deadline to respond to the complaint but kept the scheduling conference date. Longitude promptly dismissed the case without prejudice.
Longitude then turned to BOE, that November, asserting the '948 patent, together with five other former Seiko Epson patents held by 138 East—and for which Longitude Licensing was identified as the exclusive licensee. That case is open and targets the provision of certain LCD panels and modules, which are alleged to be incorporated in third party devices such as "smartphones, tablet PCs, laptops, monitors, TVs, and vehicle infotainment displays" from HP and LG. BOE Technology initially contested service and standing, both of which hurdles Longitude cleared, the latter by filing an amended complaint that added 138 East as a coplaintiff. This past February, Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne handed down a claim construction order, in which the court, among other things, provided constructions for "rubbing direction" and "the projecting portion being located at a distal end of the second curved portion" (turning away an indefiniteness challenge to the latter term) and left "wherein the second curved portion includes a projecting portion" to a plain and ordinary meaning, all three terms from claim 1 of the '948 patent.
Trial was set for August 2025. The parties began flooding the court with pretrial motions, most of them filed under seal, Judge Gilstrap adopted the claim construction order (over objections), but then, on July 24, 2025, Judge Payne ordered that trial be moved to the "earliest practicable date", allowing the plaintiffs time to review recently produced discovery from BOE and allowing BOE to file an amended answer. The court outlined the planned procedure from there with respect to the new counterclaims: "After [the proposed amended complaint] is filed, the Court will sever the new counterclaims into a separate action to proceed forward after the trial of the current case". Among the other pretrial orders is one denying BOE's motion to dismiss claims of indirect and willful infringement claims based on a lack of pretrial notice; the court did not accept the argument that BOE's prior license with Epson, a portfolio-wide agreement that had lapsed, did not provide BOE specific notice of the patents-in-suit. No new trial date has been set, no amended answer has been filed, and no new action has been created through severance.
Meanwhile, this past April, 138 East and Longitude Licensing filed a pair of new complaints, both in the Eastern District of Texas. The first targets with two patents BOE Technology and Hisense in a single complaint; for BOE, over LCD panels and/or modules; and for Hisense, over TVs that incorporate the accused BOE LCD panels. (The plaintiffs allege that the infringement was willful, pleading that 138 East sent a notice letter to BOE as early as January 2020.) The second targets BOE and LGE: again, BOE, over the provision of LCD panels and/or modules; and LGE, over monitors and TVs that incorporate the accused BOE LCD panels. (The plaintiffs allege that the above infringement was willful, pleading that 138 East had sent a notice letter to BOE as early as January 2020, and that the plaintiffs sent LGE an infringement notice in September 2023.) Not much has happened since, beyond the consolidation of the two suits under a single case number.
Longitude Licensing has led several other litigation campaigns for IPValue, over other large received portfolios, one from Elpida (on its own, Longitude Licensing billed earlier as a company "founded in 2013 to acquire and commercialize a significant patent portfolio from Elpida"); one from SanDisk (with coplaintiff Longitude Flash Memory Solutions Ltd.); and one from UMC (with coplaintiff Marlin Semiconductor Limited). Two other Longitude efforts have focused on the former Seiko Epson portfolio. In June 2023, it filed separate cases against Alphabet (Google) and HKC. The first case ended in an Alice invalidation (affirmed on appeal) from Northern District of California Judge Vince Chhabria, the patents held ineligibly directed to the abstract idea of "improving image quality by adjusting various aspects of an image based on features of the main object in the image".
The case against HKC was filed in the Eastern District of Texas by yet another plaintiff, Crystal Leap Zrt, which was formed in Hungary in September 2022. There, HKC responded to the original complaint with a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, arguing, among other things, that Crystal Leap's pleading did not establish that it had sufficient rights to the patents-in-suit to litigate them. Crystal Leap filed amended complaints in October 2022, adding willful infringement claims, and in June 2023, adding Longitude as a coplaintiff, the latter complaint identifying Longitude as holding "all substantial rights" in the asserted patents and as having given Crystal Leap exclusive exclusionary rights to enforce them.
In December 2023, Seiko Epson assigned more than 75 US assets directly to Crystal Leap. Balazs Szolgyemy signed for Crystal Leap, as its managing director. A Balazs Szolgyemy identifies himself on social media as having been a partner with Ernst & Young since 2001, the "Head of the International Tax group" since 2007. At the time, RPX reported in more detail on this direct transfer to Crystal Leap. The case against HKC was dismissed without prejudice in April 2024, just ahead of a claim construction hearing.
It is against these various litigation efforts that BH Innovations enters the fray. It pleads that it is "a private limited liability company organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, having a principal place of business at" at an Upper East Side condominium in New York City. (Property records suggest that is owned by two medical doctors with Manhattan practices.) The complainant pleads that it is the exclusive licensee "of certain patents", including the '948 and '334 patents, without explanation as to how that status might affect the ongoing case against BOE in Texas (still to be reset for trial at the "earliest practicable date"). It also pleads that it "derives revenue from enforcing its intellectual property rights in the United States" and that, "[c]oncurrently with the filing of the instant ITC complaint, [it] is also filing a complaint against the Proposed Respondents in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas alleging infringement of the Asserted Patents".
As noted, BH Innovations claims a domestic industry based on US activities of licensee Innolux. It identifies Innolux "model panels" incorporated into "Amazon brand tablets" (for the '948 patent) and into "Lenovo brand tablets" (for the '334 patent). More broadly, per complaint, "Innolux LCD panels are essential components of many electronics products in the United States. They are sold and supported in the United States to such companies as Hewlett Packard ('HP'), Dell, Amazon, and VIZIO".
Merchant & Gould P.C. filed the complaint for BH Innovations. 8/29, ITC.
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