Patent Filings Roundup: New Jeffrey Gross-Backed Semiconductor Suits; No Fintiv Denials; Second Beet Superfood Patent Hit with Post Grant Review

It’s the end-of-summer doldrums, as parents ship their kids off to college, back to school, or take that one last vacation before Labor Day; not surprisingly, district court patent filings and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings dipped below average, with just 12 PTAB petitions (one post grant review [PGR] and 11 inter partes review [IPRs], four filed by Lynk Labs against Home Depot) and 52 district court complaints, a few being motion-to-transfer refiles. In district court, there were two new IP Edge entities this week: Burley Licensing LLC [IP Edge] filed against Wal-Mart and Micro-Star International, while Shingletop IP LLC filed against Acer and Sun Cupid Technology, a Hong Kong-based device manufacturer.

No Fintiv denials this week: For the first time in as long as I can remember, no Fintiv denials were issued this week—just one multiple-petition discretionary denial. That is balanced with 15 merits-based denials, including three more Gree, Inc./Supercell OY denials related to the absolutely sprawling League of Legends litigation (which, to be fair, there have been plenty of institutions there—the record between the two is hopelessly muddied). That’s all perhaps notable in that in multiple cases related to the merits-denials there, Fintiv has in the past been invoked.

New Jeffrey Gross Cryptosemiconductor Suit: It seems Jeffrey Gross is the latest patent aggregator to get into the semiconductor assertion game—a portfolio controlled by Gross, Torus Ventures LLC, has filed five suits on the same day in the Western District of Texas, all on a single patent related to methods of recursive encryption (basically, encrypting the encryption).  The accused products include the specialized chips capable of performing the necessary calculations efficiently. That’s in addition to some rolling filings in his unrelated Onscreen Dynamics campaign against automotive OEMs, which added Tesla, Volvo, Mercedez Benz, and others this week.

The Beet Goes On (Trial): In this week’s sole PGR, one superbeets company went after another’s patent—indeed, the Human Power of N Company, who professes to have revolutionized the use of beets to increase nitrous oxide update in bodies for athletic performance—is challenging a recently-issued patent by one of their competitors, the snarkily named Heartbeet Ltd.  It’s not the companies’ first run-in—it’s the second PGR (and there was an earlier reexamination request) filed by Human Power of N, without litigation, in what appears to be proactive freedom-to-operate play. The PGR is PGR2021-00110, and raises prior art grounds based in part on public governmental statements about the health benefits of nitric oxide update, but avoids arguing the claims are invalid under the natural law exception to 101. 

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