Patent Filings Roundup: Light Week at PTAB; Acacia Campaigns Heat Up; Board Institutes Koss IPRs

It was another really light week at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), with just 14 new patent filings (two post grant reviews [PGRs] and 12 inter partes reviews [IPRs]). The district court filings kept their usual clip with 65. Four of those IPRs were Micron’s barrage against an Acacia-backed semiconductor non-practicing entity (NPE), and two were Intel filing against a semiconductor entity, Demaray LLC.  New York University filed a new complaint against ResMed; Volkswagen was hit on relatively generic wireless communications patents by Corydoras Technologies (run by Anubias Techs, LLC) on their “SOS” call help buttons in certain Audi and other top-line models. An earlier suit run by Corydoras (or Anubias, all seemingly run by prolific inventor-assertor Iwao Fujisaki, a Japanese citizen) has filed against over a dozen companies, including Amazon, BestBuy, ASUSTek, Sony, ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Apple, and Samsung on a portfolio numbering over 150 U.S. patents.

PTAB Institutes Koss IPR Despite Western District of Texas Trial Date: The Board bucked the trend of denying petitions within seven or so months of trial, instituting IPRs against headphone patent plaintiff Koss Corporation.  See IPR2021-00305.

In the same week, they discretionarily denied an IPR against long-known NPE Oyster Optic in light of a scheduled November 1 Eastern District trial date. See IPR2021-00238, Paper 10.  Oyster is owned and controlled by Tequity Capital Management, TQ Gamma LLC; it is worth noting that the Eastern District of Texas, despite lockdowns, and a COVID outbreak, has been more likely to meet or come near to scheduled trial dates than the Waco division of the Western District has, to date, since Judge Albright instituted his aggressive trial schedule standing order.  The patent and many related patents have seen a fair number of lawsuits and challenges to date, including IPR2018-00259, IPR2017-02173, IPR2017-01871, IPR2017- 01882, IPR2017-02146, IPR2017-01874, IPR2018-00257, IPR2018-00070, IPR2017-01870, IPR2017-01881, and IPR2018-00146.  Oyster has since 2008 sued AT&T, ZTE Corp., Huawei, Nokia, NEC, BT Group, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Discovery Semiconductor, and others.

The entire dispute has been overshadowed by the earlier settlements that have extended to products not thought covered by the earlier settlements, and a tricky licensing landscape; certainly it shows no sign of stopping, and the relatively successful Oyster Optic has had enough success licensing that they show no signs of slowing down, despite the complex picture and issues facing the funded portfolio.

Acacia Cases Heat Up: Acacia-backed Unification Technologies LLC had filed against Texas-based Micron Semiconductor; Micron hit back this week with three challenges.  See IPRs2021-00941, -942, 943. In a separate campaign, Acacia (as Stingray IP Solutions, LLC) moved on to round two against Amazon, Ring, Immedia Semiconductor, Legrand, and Somfy, asserting patents allegedly reading on Internet-of-Things wireless standards Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and Z-Wave protocol.  See Stingray IP Solutions v. Amazon.com et al, No. 2:21-cv-00193 (E.D. Tex. Filed June 1, 2021) (asserting U.S. Patents 6,961,310, 6,958,986, 6,980,537, 7,027,426). The earlier suit against Samsung settled, but the Signify and TP-Link suits continue.  In a third campaign, R2 Solutions, Acacia also added defendants Roku and iHeartMedia based on their use of open-source software related to Apache Hadoop.