New and Existing Financial Services NPE Campaigns Dominate a Down Week; Alternative Investment Hedge Fund Sues Chinese Companies in Own Name; Intel and Samsung Clash on Semiconductors

Patent filings continue to be slightly depressed in the district courts and at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) compared to the highs of last year, with 17 new PTAB cases and 38 new district court filings. New filings consist primarily of a few apparently funded cases—a Fortress entity, for instance, sued Amazon, and a Taiwanese entity with no Internet presence has sued Apple and Samsung on wireless charging patents, with some new Jeff Gross entity filings, a slew of Dynapass filings, and some other banking campaigns picking up steam; at the Board, most of the fillings revolved around existing campaigns Robocast and Daedalus Prime, as detailed below. Ericsson continued with challenging some Phillips patents; and there’s even a funder, Element Capital, who has been hit by inter partes reviews (IPRs) after suing in their own name (via a Singapore subsidiary, against Chinese subsidiaries of other companies, including Motorola).

Meta Faces the Music: A patent infringement case brought by walkie-talkie maker Voxer against Meta has finally concluded after appeal, with the Austin court—Judge Yeakel, presiding—closing the case after an unsuccessful appeal by Meta. The final judgment is reported at $174.5 million, and the trial and complaint detailed a long series of meetings and negotiations between the parties prior to the dispute.

“Alternative Investment” Hedge Fund Sues Chinese Subs Via Singapore Entity:  While the case itself isn’t brand new, the Chinese subsidiaries of Motorola and BOE Technology Group have filed IPRs against patents asserted against them in U.S. Courts, on U.S. patents. It’s rare for litigation investment entities to sue in their own name, but Element Capital, which appears to be based in New York but is suing through a Singaporean subsidiary, bills itself as a hedge fund specializing in “alternative investments,” similar to Tecumseh or other smaller players taking riskier bets. The three patents at play concern screen displays (more precisely, “electro-optical devices that include an active-matrix substrate to be implemented in a display”). The IPR filed this week is IPR2023-00605, against U.S. Patent 7,259,736.

Intel-Derived Portfolio and Samsung Clash Over Semiconductors: The Ed Gomez-led Daedalus Prime entity received another IPR against the semiconductor patents (originating from Intel) being asserted in the International Trade Commission (ITC) and district court.  The battle looks like a proxy war between the long-existing U.S. chip manufacturer and the Korean giant, who has been spinning up their own semiconductor business for years. The IPR is 2023-00536, on U.S. Patent 10,700,178

In other news, Lego was pulled into Equitable IP’s Communication Interface Technologies three-patent suit; single-patent suits were filed by Adnexus Incorporated against Ebay, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google for a targeted online advertisement patent, U.S. 8,719,101, which, fittingly, looks pretty abstract on its face.

Jonathan Stroud

Jonathan Stroud is General Counsel at Unified Patents, LLC, where he manages a growing team of talented, diverse attorneys and oversees a docket of administrative challenges, appeals, licensing, pooling, and […see more]

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