Patent Filings Roundup: Future Waco Patent Cases Headed to Wheel; Ax Wireless Launches WiFi 6 Campaign; Helsinn Paragraph IV Litigation

This week saw 63 new patent filings in district court, and the typical (these days) 71 terminations, with 34 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings (one post grant review and 33 inter partes reviews). I expect terminations will drop for a bit, as parties do what they can to hold on to venue before Judge Alan Albright in the wake of the Western District’s recent reassignment memorandum directing new filings to be randomly distributed (i.e., be put “on the wheel”) throughout the Western District. In major dismissals, WSOU either settled with or was scared off by always-tough Microsoft in that long-running campaign; the dozen or so dismissals of WSOU’s typical 13 parallel filings make up a chunk of the terminations. The Board filings were dominated by tech-versus-long-running-NPE suits, with a few competitor-competitor challenges (e.g., Vivint v. ADT). In district court, Michigan Motors (and Equitable IP entity) popped up again, this time against BMW here, as well as a few other new campaigns listed below, including a new suit against the big five cellular carriers from Emergency Alerts Innovations, LLC, which has ties to Ironworks and other ongoing campaigns.

Obviously, the dominant news rippling through the patent world is that July 25 Western District of Texas order, effective immediately; only time will tell where future cases get filed, or how the remaining cases on the still-heavy docket get resolved. At the Board, no discretionary denials this week; indeed, in one case, the Google v. Parus Holdings IPR, the Board forwent any analysis of the Fintiv arguments, deciding on the merits not to institute.

WiFi 6 Campaign from Ideahub hits Device Manufacturers: Ax Wireless launched an at least eight-patent campaign against Dell, Lenovo, and HP, accusing various aspects of the WFi 6 standard; this on the heels of the announcement by Sisvel that they have launched, in partnership with Huawei and other licensors, a standard-essential patent pool on WiFi 6. Interestingly, four of the patents accuse the standard itself (as far as I can tell).

Helsinn hit by Indian Generic on Akynzeno®: A new paragraph IV suit has been filed by Helsinn against Gland Pharma, an Indian-based generic company seeking to market a generic version of Helsinn’s Akynzeo® branded drug. The drug, a fosnetupitant chloride hydrochloride / palonosetron hydrochloride formulation, is used primarily to counteract chemotherapy-induced vomiting.  At least seven still-in-force patents are named in the suit.

Image Source: Deposit PHotos
Author lightsource
Image ID: 159708306