Patent Filings Roundup: Suits Explode at End of Q2; Fortress 4G LTE Multi-District Litigation Against Auto Industry Goes to Michigan; Rare Derivation Denial

Recession woes, war in Ukraine, and rising inflation have to date had little effect on the patent litigation marketplace—emphasizing the “non-correlated” in “non-correlated asset”—and it was borne out in the courts last week, where litigation exploded, with 135 new patent filings, more than double the average—though this keeps with a trend of seeing filings spike at the ends of annual quarters. That spike is normally, as it is here, driven by dozens of IP Edge filings across various subsidiaries (here, some of them going after local and regional newspapers struggling to stave off bankruptcy). This week also saw 82 denials of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions, with the roughly average number of petitions (2 post grant reviews and 34 inter partes reviews [IPRs]). IPR numbers included a raft of IPRs against a Becton, Dickinson & Co. subsidiary; PDF Solutions, Inc. filed another IPR against a funded Ocean Semiconductor-asserted patent; Purdue Research Foundation filed suit against Google on a single patent directed to detecting power bugs; and notorious Raymond Anthony Joao entity Decapolis Systems LLC sued the University Health System Services of Texas.

Derivation Denial:  You may recall that the America Invents Act (AIA) created a separate new procedure, a derivation action, that was meant to (generally) replace interferences in the first-to-file era.  You don’t see too many filed—they’re not EXACTLY public (though you can locate them if you know where to look), but there are very few filed, and even fewer ruled on.  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a denial of just the second filed in the 2022 fiscal year (i.e. from September). It’s instructive, if largely academic, to look at how high the standards really are to get into a derivation proceeding. The patent is US No. 10,990,265, and it’s DER2022-00002, for those playing at home.

Fortress 4G Multi-District LTE Suit Against Connected Cars Consolidated in Michigan: In late June, the judicial multi-district litigation panel recommended that the many complaints across the nation [in Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio, Texas] brought by Neo Wireless LLC, an entity controlled by Fortress IP, be consolidated into a single trial and moved to the Eastern District of Michigan.  The earlier suits, filed in a constellation of districts nationwide, included early suits against Apple, LG (both now dismissed), Dell, and then a huge swath of the OEM automotive market, including Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Tesla, and Volkswagen. The six patents at issue purport to read on 4G LTE, and do not appear to be offered for license through Avanci; early reports suggest the license fees or damages sought would dwarf an Avanci rate. There is also another similar Intellectual Ventures suit against a similar cohort of automotive OEMs in the background.