Patent Filings Roundup: PTAB Denies Verizon in Favor of Huawei; ‘Patent Paycheck Program’; Rock of AGIS

District court patent filings exploded this week with 126, while Patent Trial and Appeal Board filings were down substantially, with just 11 inter partes reviews (IPRs) and two post grant reviews (PGRs) filed. The district courts saw the return of serial filer WSOU (this time against F5 Networks) as well as a new round of suits in AGIS Software Development LLC (discussed below), a surprising (even for them) number of new IP Edge suits, and a fair number of new defendants added to existing non-practicing entity (NPE) suits. Raymond Anthony Joao continues to add defendants quickly to various subsidiaries, and Leigh Rothschild had a few new cases, in a week dominated by NPE filings.

PTAB Hangs Up On Verizon: In one of the more closely watched international disputes, Huawei (who ran afoul of the U.S. government in both mobile handsets and then Internet infrastructure) had approached Verizon demanding $1 billion in licensing fees, leading to Huawei suing the internet service provider in U.S. district court and sparking political outrage (and even a Marco Rubio Tweet calling Huawei a “patent troll” – pictured below right).

Nonetheless, the Board refused to consider challenges to the patents asserted against Verizon by the Chinese-government-controlled Huawei, reasoning under Fintiv that the scheduled patent trial (which it now appears has been put on pause for private mediation) was too close for them to consider the four petitions. It’s an interesting outcome when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is refusing to consider petitions by U.S. companies against foreign ones based on U.S. patents being asserted against them in U.S. courts.

Rock of AGIS: The ongoing, wide-ranging litigation brought by AGIS Software Development in the Eastern District of Texas and before the Board opened a new front against new defendants just months after the Board denied institution of at least 18 petitions by various defendants, including Samsung, ZTE, and Google. Earlier IPRs by Apple had been partially successful, and partially failed on the merits; the later IPRs were denied in November of 2020 under Fintiv based on the April trial schedule. However, Judge Gilstrap paused all in-person trials through the end of February, pushing back the queue on in-person trials, and a briefing this week suggests he is staying fact discovery to consider motions to dismiss and transfer, making the April date unclear.  Compounding the complicated nature of the case, AGIS went ahead and added Uber, Lyft, AT&T, and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) to the suit, highlighting that, even where a particular defendant’s trial may not materialize, the likelihood that follow-on trials may be affected by denials of institution based on Fintiv remains high. [Note that the earlier iteration of the 20-patent entity lost big in a 2014-initiated campaign against Life360, where Life360 got fees after a trial showed no infringement of any of the asserted patents, but also no invalidity proven].

“Patent Paycheck Program”: There is some activity this week related to NPEs who received money through the U.S. government’s “Paycheck Protection Program”—it’s worth noting that Parkervision and Dominion Harbor, as well as Implicit LLC, Parus Holdings, Infogation Corp., and Omnitek Partners all received funds amounting to roughly $1.5 million in total interest-free government loans. As reported here, Implicit LLC’s application and receipt of $150,000-$350,000 was to save one job for two and a half months.

It wouldn’t be surprising if some of those fees ended up defending those assets before the Board: Parkervision (which was itself underwritten by Brickell Key financing) recently had a few petitions instituted.  Oddly, I suppose that makes the U.S. government an investor in the entity that owns the patents it now will review. The IPRs are IPR2020-01302 and IPR2020-01265, on patents 7539474 and 7110444; those patents have been asserted in the ITC and against at least 13 defendants over the years.

Image Source: Deposit Photos
Image ID:45517555
Copyright:nito103