Citing Traxcell Technologies, LLC's accusations in a case filed against AT&T in the same jurisdiction last October, Telenav has asked the Eastern District of Texas for a declaratory judgment that it does not infringe one of the four patents earlier asserted. Telenav notes that the NPE accused the AT&T Navigator app of infringing the patent, which generally relates to a system for maintaining the expected performance of a wireless network based on the location of mobile devices. AT&T Navigator is a Telenav product, prompting AT&T to seek indemnification. Traxcell has filed this campaign in two waves, one in January 2017 against device makers and the other in October 2017 against wireless carriers, the former resulting in extensive motion practice over the sufficiency of Traxcell's infringement contentions that led to sanctions against the plaintiff.
In light of Traxcell's failure to comply with local rules concerning those contentions, both before and after multiple orders requiring it to do so, the court allowed Traxcell one last chance to serve sufficient contentions but barred assertion of any of the patents' dependent claims and ordered Traxcell to pay roughly $20K to Alcatel-Lucent, roughly $18.6K to Huawei, and exactly $25K to Nokia—each of these sums to cover the costs incurred by the respective defendant for its emergency motion to strike and impose sanctions. It was Samsung that led the charge against Traxcell's infringement contentions; a motion to dismiss Samsung without prejudice was granted in January 2018, shortly after the court's order imposing sanctions. The cases against the other three continue, as do the cases filed in October against AT&T, Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), SoftBank Group (Sprint), and Verizon.
The four patents asserted in the newer, wireless carrier complaints (8,977,284; 9,510,320; 9,549,388; 9,642,024) issued between March 2015 and May 2017, with estimated priority date in October 2001, based on the filing of multiple provisional applications. Traxcell's original complaints in the first round assert the '284 and '320 patents, adding the '024 patent by amended complaint after it issued in May. All of the patents name Mark Reed as an inventor, with all but the '284 patent also naming Stephen Palik. Telenav seeks a declaratory judgment that it does not infringe the '388 patent only.
Traxcell was created in Texas in April 2015, receiving the patents-in-suit from its earlier Arizona counterpart, Traxcell Technologies LLC (no comma), in October 2016. It has identified its litigation counsel (Hicks Thomas, LLP and Ramey & Schwaller, LLP) as having an interest in the outcome of the cases throughout the campaign. Additional information about Traxcell's campaign is available on RPX Insight.
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