Cases against six prior campaign defendants having apparently been dismissed, Bell Northern Research, LLC has brought Apple (6:21-cv-00833) and Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (6:21-cv-00847) into the fray, filing a suit against each in the Western District of Texas. Subsets of the large portfolio of patents received from Broadcom are again asserted, each defendant targeted over the provision of a range of devices, including products that allegedly operate according to the GSM/EDGE standard (Apple); operate according to the 802.11ac standard (both defendants); include instrumentalities for remotely triggering an alarm (Lenovo); and/or include a heat spreader assembly (both defendants). Contradictory corporate disclosure statements have been filed in Bell Northern's newest cases, but the NPE has confirmed through multiple court filings (including in the Apple case) its connection to the financial services conglomerate Hilco, Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global).
Bell Northern launched its campaign in August 2018 with suits against Huawei, Kyocera, Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies), and ZTE, adding LG Electronics the following December and Samsung in August 2019, after the December 2018 expiration of a prior license agreement with Samsung for eight of the asserted patents. To date, the NPE has asserted 16 US patents across its campaign, alleging infringement through provision of Wi-Fi devices, including cell phones, tablets, laptops, TVs, smart home devices (e.g., refrigerators, washers, and dryers), etc.
The NPE's complaint against Apple, filed on August 11 in the Western District of Texas by McKool Smith, targets various models of Apple TV, Apple Watches, iPads, iPhones, and Mac-branded devices. Apple is accused of infringing seven patents previously litigated by Bell Northern (6,858,930; 6,963,129; 7,039,435; 7,319,889; 7,957,450; 8,204,554; 8,416,862) as well as three patents new to litigation (7,564,914; 8,396,072; RE48,629). (The '629 patent is a reissue of the 7,990,842, which was asserted against prior defendants.) The '435, '554, and '889 patents are broadly directed to battery conservation; the '450, '914, '072, '862, and '629 patents, to wireless communications; and the '129 and '930 patents, to heat assembly.
Filed on August 13 in the Western District of Texas, but this time by Devlin Law, the complaint against Lenovo primarily focuses on smartphones and laptops, asserting the '554, '889, '629, '862, '450, '129, '930, and '435 patents, plus two more: the 6,941,156 patent, claim 1 of which was found indefinite in August 2019; and the 6,696,941 patent, which is new to litigation and concerns a mobile phone alarm that can be remotely activated to deter theft and assist in locating a device.
This campaign has seen a general pattern of gradual dismissal of the patents-in-suit (see "Bell Northern Research Asserts Heat Dissipation Patents in Second Case Against Samsung" (April 2020)) before an eventual settlement and dismissal with prejudice, which has been entered in all but one of the NPE's earlier cases. Of Bell Northern's two suits against Samsung, only one has been dismissed, despite the parties having jointly moved for dismissal of both following a settlement. In the Eastern District of Texas, Judge Rodney Gilstrap granted the parties' motion to dismiss in October 2020; however, no such order appears on the docket of the NPE's Western District of Texas case—which is assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright and remains open as of the publication date of this report.
In California, Bell Northern has filed more than one "Notice of Party with Financial Interest" disclosing three parent entities: Hilco Global (formed in Delaware in June 1986), Hilco Patent Acquisition 56 (formed in Delaware in November 2017), and Hilco IP Merchant Capital, LLC (formed in Delaware in January 2016). Hilco Global is a financial services conglomerate, based in Chicago, owning a wide array of companies.
As noted, conflicting corporate disclosure statements have been filed in Bell Northern's newest cases; in the suit against Lenovo, Bell Northern certifies that it "is a private company with no parent corporation", but in the Apple suit, Hilco Patent Acquisition 56, Hilco IP Merchant Capital, and Hilco are identified as the NPE's parent corporations.
The complaint against Apple provides additional information about the monetization professionals behind this campaign: Bell Northern pleads that Apple's alleged infringement of the patents-in-suit is "knowing, egregious, consciously wrongful, and willful" at least in part based on a letter sent on June 1, 2018, from Afzal Dean, identified as the president of Bell Northern Research, to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
Dean currently serves as the chief licensing officer of Hilco IP Merchant Banking, an IP investment, advisory, and monetization operation under the Hilco Global banner, the website of which identifies Michael Friedman (reporting a former managing director role with Ocean Tomo) as its CEO, John Veschi (formerly Nortel Networks chief IP officer and Rockstar CEO) as its COO, and Gillian McColgan (also reporting past positions with Nortel Networks and Rockstar) as its CTO. In its complaints, Bell Northern pleads that it was formed in 2017 and that "[k]ey figures of [Bell Northern] previously served in leadership roles within the intellectual property departments of Agere, LSI, and Nortel Networks (US and Canadian entities). They continued in similar roles with Rockstar Consortium, the entity created by the winning bidders of Nortel's bankruptcy patent auction, where they managed Nortel's former patent portfolio, a portfolio which many of them had spent years developing and monetizing for Nortel".
In January 2018, three Hilco subsidiaries (Bell Northern Research, as well as Bell Semiconductor, LLC and Hilco Patent Acquisition 56) granted a security interest in over 3,700 patent assets, including the patents now asserted, to unnamed "Secured Parties" through a document signed on behalf of those parties by Cortland Capital Market Services, a Chicago-based investment servicing company (and a subsidiary of global private equity firm Alter Domus). The vast majority of the patent assets covered by that security interest were passed to Bell Semiconductor from Broadcom through multiple assignments, dated December 8, 2017. For information on Bell Semiconductor's ongoing litigation campaign, see here. 8/11, Apple, 8/13, Lenovo, Western District of Texas.
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