For the latest round of suits in its oldest litigation campaign, American Patents LLC has turned-as many other NPEs recently have-to the Western District of Texas, filing one suit against each of Arista Networks (6:20-cv-00740), Extreme Networks (6:20-cv-00741), and Roku (6:20-cv-00742) there. Four patents, acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) and already at issue in the campaign, are asserted against the defendants over their provision of devices that support certain Wi-Fi standards: for Arista, the provision of C-260, C-250, and C-130 access points; for Extreme Networks, the AP 510i/e, 505i, and AP460C access points; and for Roku, the Ultra, Ultra LT, and Streaming Stick streaming devices.
The same four patents (6,847,803; 7,088,782; 7,310,304; 7,706,458), generally related to interactions between smart devices and communication networks, are asserted in all three new complaints, the campaign now having seen 11 of the more than two dozen US assets acquired from IV on June 29, 2018 via five separate assignments. (The deal also included a number of foreign counterparts in Asia and Europe.) Each of the patents-in-campaign was developed at AT&T Mobility (7,373,655; 7,934,090), BAE Systems (the '304 patent), Georgia Institute of Technology (the '782 and '458 patents), International Game Technology (IGT) (8,668,584; 9,116,543; 9,606,674), Nokia (the '803 patent) or Oracle (Sun Microsystems) (6,004,049; 6,301,626), with grant dates ranging from December 1999 (the '049 patent, originating with Sun Microsystems) to March 2017 (the '674 patent, developed by IGT).
American Patents was formed in Texas in April 2018, changing its name from "Aculutus Innovations LLC" that May; Texas public records identify Jon Rowan as its manager. Rowan, a Texas patent attorney with a solo practice, is the manager of Plectrum LLC, which ran a networking campaign in 2017 that hit 16 companies over patents acquired from HP Enterprise (HPE), and Snyders Heart Valve LLC, which has an ongoing medical devices campaign. He is also the current manager of Dynamic Hosting Company LLC, which litigated two patents originating with Connect One (a fabless semiconductor company) against more than 30 defendants in 2014-2015. Texas public records suggest that control of Dynamic Hosting Company shifted from the Piney Woods Patent Group LLC, (an entity controlled by Texas attorney Michael J. Collins), to Rowan's Samoa Investments, LP sometime last year. Collins and Rowan are connected to additional Texas monetization entities-e.g., East Texas Patent Management LLC, formed in January 2014 by Collins with Rowan identified as its agent, which originally controlled at least one litigating NPE (Better Mouse Company, LLC) before apparently ceding authority to others.
American Patents has launched three litigation campaigns from its portfolio of former IV patents. This one began in late 2018, with cases filed that year against Acer, ASUSTek, Best Buy, BBK Electronics (OnePlus Technology), BlackBerry, Government of the People's Republic of China (TPV), Hisense, Hon Hai d/b/a Foxconn (Sharp), HP, Huawei, LG Electronics (LGE), Panasonic, Samsung, TCL, and ZTE. Each of those suits ended at some point in 2019, with the longest, the case against ASUSTek, persisting to late last December. Meanwhile, in October and November 2019, the NPE added cases against D-Link, Fortinet, HPE, Juniper Networks, Shenzhen Tenda Technology, Shenzhen Tenda Technology, Sophos, TP-Link, Tsinghua Tongfang, Unizyx (ZyXEL), and Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies, among other subs).
2020 has seen dismissals of the 2019 suits against Sophos in February (after a settlement), Fortinet in March (after a settlement), Foxconn in April (after a resolution), Tsinghua Tongfang in May (after a settlement), Juniper in late July (after a resolution), and first TP-Link and then HPE so far in August (after separate settlements). American Patents is pursuing a default judgment against Tenda Technology, while Coolpad has answered, ZyXEL has moved for a transfer from the Eastern District of Texas to the Central District of California, and a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction over D-Link in the Eastern District of Texas has been denied.
Since its announcement last year that it was moving away from actively acquiring patents and refocusing its efforts on monetizing its existing portfolio, IV has completed a number of notable deals with NPEs, many of which have resulted in new litigation. A slew of NPEs controlled by Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC used to lead that pack, through the acquisition of several large portfolios from IV, but toward the end of 2019 a set of entities associated with Georgia monetization firm IPInvestments Group LLC (d/b/a IPinvestments Group) took over the top spot, picking up thousands of former IV assets. Litigation arising from both of those large divestitures-see here for recent suits filed by Dominion's Vista Peak Ventures LLC (over flat panel display patents originating with NEC) and here for a new case filed by 21ST CENTURY GARAGE LLC (over automotive technology patents of disparate origins). A comprehensive look at IV divestitures, and key campaigns resulting from them, can be downloaded from RPX Insight.
Each of the new American Patents cases has been assigned to District Judge Alan D. Albright in the Western District of Texas. A former patent litigator himself, Judge Albright has recently expressed a jaundiced view toward the application of claim preclusion to any patent eligibility analysis (see here), a reluctance to dispose of cases on early Alice challenges at all (see here), and an apparent hesitance to transfer cases out of his court on convenience grounds (see here). Indeed, Apple has challenged that unwillingness to grant convenience transfers, with the Federal Circuit separately taking recent issue with Judge Albright's approach to such motions.
The other two campaigns of American Patents, each beginning in late 2018 and ending in mid-December 2019, targeted chipmakers over on-chip testing (here) and variable-length media processing (here), respectively. Further treatment of early events in this, American's mobile devices campaign, can be found on RPX Insight here. 8/14, Western District of Texas.
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