In mid-August, Bell Northern Research, LLC hit Apple and Lenovo with separate Western District of Texas lawsuits over overlapping subsets of the large portfolio of patents received from Broadcom. Now, Bell Northern has added a suit in the same district against Dell (6:21-cv-00909). Targeted is the provision of laptops and workstations, including various Alienware, G, Inspiron, Latitude, and XPS-series laptops, as well as Precision-series workstations, with a focus on the devices' compliance with various 802.11 networking standards or the alleged incorporation of heat spreaders and multi-chip packages.
The connections between Bell Northern and financial services conglomerate Hilco, Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global) is covered in last month's "Bell Northern Research Keeps Its Mobile Devices Campaign Alive with Suits Against Apple, Lenovo" on RPX Insight, which also provides an overview of the conduct of this campaign. Huawei, Kyocera, LG Electronics, Samsung, Yulong Computer Communications (Coolpad Technologies), and ZTE have all seen cases filed followed by the gradual dismissal of the patents-in-suit before an eventual settlement and dismissal with prejudice
The patents asserted against Dell (6,858,930; 6,963,129; 7,564,914; 8,416,862; RE48,629) are broadly directed to wireless communications ('914, '862, and '629) and heat spreader assembly ('129 and '930). 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 in litigation, 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.
The case against Dell has been assigned to District Judge Alan D. Albright. 9/1, Western District of Texas.
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