Patent Filings Roundup: New NPE Solid-State Drive Suit Against Micron, Western Digital; Redfin Indemnitee Files IPR on Virtual Reality Tour Patents

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) had the usual 30 or so petitions this week (32, to be exact), with a fair number of procedural denials of concurrently filed petitions (i.e., the one-petition rule from the July 2019 updated Trial Practice Guide). District court patent filings sat at 71, with a significant number of Leigh Rothschild suits adding new defendants. A pretty standard week, it included the following:

You’re So Vervain: A newly minted Western-District of Texas non-practicing entity (NPE), Vervain, LLC, flush with what appears to be some ongoing litigation financing, has asserted four Solid-State Drive (SSD) Patents against longtime market leaders Micron and Western Digital.  Corporate records reveal the entity is run by Dallas-based Phillip John Jr., a former Marine and semiconductor salesman and apparent current professional patent assertor; the patents were acquired from either Greenthread, LLC, of which he is listed as the current President, or the inventor, G.R. Mohan Rao; Greenthread, in turn, asserted semiconductor patents from the same inventor, Rao, against Samsung in 2019, provoking IPRs that were dismissed prior to settlement.  Both Greenthread and Vervain seem to be backed in forms by “Patent Capital Funding 2018 – Series 1A,” a Delaware entity of uncertain origin.

Rao’s patents have been split up and oft-asserted by the likes of Intellectual Ventures, IPValuation Partners LLC, Endpoint IP, and an old Brian Yates entity, among others, and are a further examples of the rise of semiconductor/memory patents being bought by NPEs purely for assertion-grade licensing.

VR Realtor Patents Challenged: After Redfin was sued by Appliance Computing III months ago, I predicted they would end up challenging the patents; this week, their apparent indemnitee (discussed at length in the complaint) filed challenges on the patents asserted against Redfin, U.S. Patent 10/510,111, 9,836,855, and 10,102,673, all for VR tours of real spaces (hence the usefulness and use by Redfin.  The IPRs from this week are IPR2021-00937, IPR2021-00936, and IPR2021-00939.

Google IPRs strike out against Concert Technology Group: Google lost at institution on at least four inter partes reviews (IPRs) it had filed against Ikorongo Technology, LLC, a Concert Technology Group subsidiary, all on a failure to prove up prior art.

PTAB (32)

District Court (71)

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