Patent filings started choosing up once more this week after a sluggish begin within the new yr in each the Patent Trial and Attraction Board (PTAB) and district courts. The PTAB had a busy week with 31 new filings—one Put up Grant Evaluation (PGR) and the remainder Inter Partes Evaluations (IPRs).
Practically half of all new PTAB filings got here from simply two entities: Apple and Neurent Medical. Apple filed 4 IPRs towards three THL Holding Firm, LLC patents, usually associated to location monitoring, all of which had been asserted towards Apple by THL in February of final yr. Apple additionally filed two IPRs towards Carbyne LLC / Carbyne Biometrics LLC [both associated with Bjorn Markus Jakobsson] patents (mentioned beneath). Eight IPRs had been filed towards eight of inventor-controlled Proxense, LLC’s biometric authentication patents (three by Google and two by Microsoft), which goal the supply of common platform password-less structure. One other eight filings got here from Neurent Medical, difficult eight Aerin Medical / The Foundry, LLC patents referring to medical gadget remedies for nasal airways.
The PTAB was additionally busy issuing 27 establishment choices (21 instituted and 6 not instituted). Six IPRs (filed by a number of automobile corporations, together with Mercedes-Benz USA LLC, Porsche Automobiles North America Inc., Volkswagen Group of America Inc.) had been instituted towards two Yechezkal Evan Spero Patents, that are asserted by the apparently-funded Torchlight Applied sciences (mentioned additional beneath), whereas one IPR was procedurally denied based mostly on joinder. 4 Sony IPRs had been instituted difficult two Jawbone Improvements LLC Patents [funding unknown].
The district court docket filings additionally picked up, with 49 new filings, almost 1/3 of which had been new filings by Hyperice Inc. Different new district court docket filings primarily concerned continuations of earlier and current NPE campaigns together with new circumstances filed by Aml IP LLC [Dnyamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP)], Synkloud [SY Ventures], Datacloud [IP Investments Group LLC], and Consolidated Transaction Processing [Equitable IP Corporation].
Inventor-controlled Songbird Tech, LLC revived its marketing campaign that targets voice assistant platforms, submitting two new fits towards LC Electronics and ASUSTeK whereas Led Apogee [Jeffrey M. Gross] continued its newly began single-patent marketing campaign (three new filings final week and two new filings this week) asserting a single patent associated to LED driver know-how towards STMicroelectronics, MediaTek, NXP, Microchip Expertise, and Analog Units. Issue 2 Multimedia Techniques, LLC launched a brand new marketing campaign this week, asserting person verification patents towards TickTok and ByteDance.
Torchlight Applied sciences’ Mild Dimmed
The apparently-funded Torchlight Applied sciences LLC filed go well with towards Common Motors (in a primary grievance) and Mercedes-Benz [f/k/a Daimler], Audi, Porsche, and Volkswagen (in a second grievance) in June of 2022, asserting three patents usually referring to headlight techniques. Defendants have filed various IPRs difficult every of the asserted patents. This week six IPRs had been instituted, whereas a seventh was procedurally denied based mostly on joinder.
The complaints point out that Torchlight is the unique licensee of the patents. Nonetheless, the circumstances had been stayed in early 2023 to facilitate jurisdictional discovery referring to standing. Throughout this time, the events have been engaged in discovery disputes referring to the contents of a schedule connected to an Task and Assumption Settlement and a time period sheet between a patent advisory agency and a litigation funder dated earlier than Torchlight itself was even shaped. In September of final yr, Decide Williams ordered Torchlight to provide to full, unredacted variations of those paperwork to defendants.
Apple Launches IPR marketing campaign towards Safety Researcher Patents
This week, Apple filed two IPRs, difficult two patents asserted by Carbyne Biometrics, LLC [Bjorn Markus Jakobsson]. Carbyne Biometrics filed go well with towards Apple in March of 2023 asserting six patents, together with the 2 challenged patents, concentrating on authentication capabilities offered by Apple’s merchandise. These patents had been initially assigned to RightQuestion LLC and moved to Carbyne LLC after which from Carbyne to Carbyne Biometrics, LLC simply final week. One among these patents was additionally beforehand asserted by RightQuestion LLC towards Samsung within the Jap District of Texas in 2021. That case settled in 2022. Bjorn Markus Jakobsson, a safety researcher and former professional witness, is the named inventor on the asserted patents and has been related to a number of NPEs since a minimum of 2016.
Ravgen Receives One other Favorable Jury Verdict For Genetic Check Patent
Ravgen launched a wide-spread marketing campaign in 2020, asserting its prenatal check patents towards well-known corporations within the testing enterprise, together with Labcorp, Quest Diagnostics, PerkinElmer, Myriad, and Illumina. In 2022, Ravgen was awarded $375.5 million from Labcorp, after a jury verdict and a choose’s order for punitive damages. Following this win, different defendants settled for undisclosed sums. This week a jury awarded Ravgen one other win—this time $57 million—towards the genetic testing firm Natera, although this was considerably lower than the $410 million sought by Ravgen. Litigation towards different defendants, together with Roche, and Biora stays ongoing.
Hyperlinks to the circumstances mentioned above and extra can be found within the Weekly UP, which can be found here.
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Writer: iodrakon
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