Patent Filings Roundup: Board Shirks SAS Institute, Defunct Jawbone Entity Sues Big Tech, and Gaming Industry Targeted in California Court

A normal filing week saw 27 new petitions, all inter partes reviews (IPRs), and 54 district court patent filings, a fair number related to a few new Leigh Rothschild campaigns, some pharma suits, and others. For whatever reason (one would assume, end of the quarter), an unusual number (hundreds) of non-practicing entity (NPE) suits terminated last week, at least against some defendants. More on a handful of cases below.

Board Uses Save-Your-Powder-Discretion: In a case where the Board found that challenges to 18 of the 19 claims presented lacked merit, the Board denied institution under its Section 314(d) discretion, reasoning, as it has done in the past, that moving forward on all 19 claims, as the Supreme Court’s SAS Institute requires, would be a waste of judicial resources. The case, IPR2021-00621, was brought by Helmerich & Payne Int’l Drilling Company against rival Nabors Drilling Technologies USA, Inc. on U.S. Patent 8,823,655. 

Now-Defunct Jawbone, Funded by Obscure Capital, Sues Tech Giants: If you’ll recall, Jawbone was a smart-device company that met with mild success in the early 2010s, before a run of bad quarters and business put it in liquidation starting in 2017. As it underwent liquidation, a stream of private capital companies (some likely VC, others interested in the IP) were added as creditors to their patents, including Fortress Investment and Lionel Capital. It’s unclear if this was a clean sale or if the patents were surrendered in liquidation under security agreements, but they were transferred at the start of liquidation to an acquisition vehicle, then transferred to another entity, and then to Aliph, a company doing business as Jawbone. It’s been giant-hunting, and has sued Apple and Google using frequent Waco plantiff’s attorney Ray Mort on eight patents before Judge Albright. The complaints make it appear the entity is another sham entity created for the purpose of venue; it’s unclear if the original, now-liquidated company had any ties to Texas, either.

Is This a Game?: A new Leigh Rothschild-backed single patent suit against a number of video game companies took off this week, with Integrated Technology Solutions LLC suing Bandai Namco (famous for, among other things, the Soulsborne series of games), Iracing.com, and 505 Games, an Italian games publisher behind hits like Terraria, Death Stranding, Control, and my personal favorite, The Banner Trilogy. The suits are in the Central District of California;  The game industry, based mostly in Silicon Valley or Los Angeles, is as of yet only occasionally targeted by NPEs, though it is a wildly lucrative industry; this particularly single-patent suit is based on racing game products, and the independent claim has an interesting construction; the preamble suggests it is a system “that is at least partially hardware,” and describes four components set to identify tires altering a racing area in “a racing video game.” U.S. Pat. 19,046,241. This particular subsidiary has a Wyoming residence. Another new Rothschild entity this week, Battery Conservation Innovations, LLC, likewise targets the gaming industry.

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