Patent Filings Roundup: Heavy District Court Docket Sees Fortress Biotech ANDA Litigation; WePay Expands GUI Design Patent Assertion Against Major Online Payment Systems

It was another heavy week in the district court with over 100 new patent complaints filed, 64 terminated (mostly file-and-settle), and an average 26 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) cases (one post grant review and 25 inter partes reviews). It was also another week with about half of all parties briefing Fintiv, but no denials, begging the question, “Why are parties being forced to brief it in the first place?” Intel and Xilinx combined to cancel a number of litigation-funded chip patents from Arbor Global Strategies and FG SRC LLC [the latter funded by Freeman Capital Partners]; a number of Fortress-funded subsidiaries were challenged; another 29 IP Edge subsidiary suits; some interesting pharmaceutical action; and companies WebRoot and OpenText, inc. have launched a new assertion campaign against Trend Micro, Kapersky Labs, CrowdStrike, and Sophos on cybersecurity products.

Pharmaceutical Investment Vehicle Sub Targets Teva: In terms of interesting financial/funding arrangements that directly affect patent litigation, there’s no story more interesting than that of Fortress Biotech, Inc., a publicly traded funding-and-ownership organization (that seemingly has no relation to Fortress IP, at least as far as public disclosure goes). Since roughly 2014, the well-funded company has arranged, supported, or partnered with subsidiaries and other investments on at least ten subsidiary pharmaceutical companies, some with certain drugs targeting long-felt needs in the marketplace, others creating generic competition; all rather interesting. Many of their subsidiaries are complicated cross-licensing efforts. One subsidiary of theirs, Journey Medical Corporation, markets Qbrexza®, a prescription-strength cloth that is used to deal with excessive underam sweating, among other things. Teva is challenging, via Paragraph IV litigation, a number of patents covering the product.

WePay Expands Design Patent Campaign to Major Online Payment Providers: Entity WePay Global Payments LLC, a litigation vehicle driven by William Grecia, has expanded its curious design patent campaign against electronic payment providers to Walmart and Amazon. It asserts D930702 and D857702 in the Northern District of Illinois; the design patents related to graphical user interfaces.

PTAB

Image Source: Deposit Photos
Image ID:45517555
Copyright:nito103