Patent Filings Roundup: Uniloc (Fortress) Waves White Flag; IP Edge Files Dozens of Complaints to Start Third Quarter; Joao NPE Sues Texas Border Health Clinic, Withdraws

The third quarter came in like a wrecking ball, with district court patent filings spiking to 121 (roughly double average, driven entirely by a huge 48-complaint dump by IP Edge subsidiaries); Patent Trial and appeal Board (PTAB) filings were steady at 28, all  inter partes reviews (IPRs). A pattern seems to be emerging from IP Edge of a spike in settlements and terminations at the end of a fiscal quarter, followed by another round of filings when the next quarter starts. IP Edge is on pace to break the records it previously held for most complaints by a set of related entities in a calendar year. The Board denied another case under their Section 314(d) Fintiv discretion in light of an International Trade Commission (ITC) case, noting that, as “the ITC is scheduled to complete its investigation approximately seven-and-a-half months before the due date for the final written decision, this factor weighs in favor of exercising our discretion to deny institution.”

Raymond Anthony Joao Subsidiary Sues East Texas Border Clinic: In mid-September Raymond Anthony Joao subsidiary GreatGigz Solutions LLC, a four-patent assertion entity alleging infringement of patents related to recruitment and fulfilling temporary or “gig” economy positions, sued East Texas Border Health Clinic, a non-profit clinic group in Marshall, Texas.  The patents include U.S. 6,662,194, 9,760,864, 10,096,000, and 7,490,086. The clinic, which does business as Genesis Prime Care, has roughly 20 small clinics or practices in Texarkana, Marshall, and Atlanta (Texas), and focuses primarily on family and pediatric medicine.

Uniloc Retires NPE Crown (for now): With the lingering ZTE and LG suits dropped this week, only a handful of some of the 500+ suits Uniloc has filed since 2014 remain active, and those all are seemingly stayed pending appeals or reviews; Uniloc has also been withdrawing appeals. Uniloc, which was once controlled by Craig Etchegoyen, but which several courts have found to have defaulted on debt (though both Uniloc and Fortress have denied this) and transferred some 600+ patents to Fortress IP in 2016, has been winding down the sprawling suits for some time; meanwhile, Etechgoyen and his counsel have moved on to monetize via the WSOU entities, and Fortress seems content to let this wave of litigation die, prosecute all pending applications related to the Pendragon portfolio, and possibly set it up for a sale or later assertion. Either way, it appears the file-first, never-quit entity’s strategy ultimately backfired—or at least was not effective enough to keep the filer afloat.

This article was updated on October 8 to clarify the circumstances surrounding Uniloc’s default.

PTAB (28)

District Court (121)

Image Source: Deposit Photos
Author: gunnar3000
Image ID: 3834376