Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Trolls Roundup: Microsoft's Intellectual Ventures, Blue Spike, and KAIST

Hublink, LLC, a Dominion Harbor subsidiary
Hublink, LLC, a Dominion Harbor subsidiary, is based in Texas and is part of a cryptic network of shells (Dominion Harbor receives its patents from Microsoft's patent troll, Intellectual Ventures)



Summary: Another quick look at actions of patent trolls, especially in the Eastern District of Texas where courts are notoriously trolls- and/or plaintiffs-friendly

EARLIER today (this morning) we wrote about Microsoft and Intellectual Ventures, which Microsoft uses to pursue patent litigation 'by proxy' (Intellectual Ventures has thousands of obscure satellite firms/shells).



Here goes -- yet again -- Microsoft's patent troll, filing patent lawsuits against companies that use Android (Linux) or at least attempting to shake these down using patents (threats of lawsuits). That's why the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) got involved. Remember that Intellectual Ventures is feeding patent trolls near and around the Eastern District of Texas, but sometimes (in more recent years in particular) it files lawsuits directly. In a case dated May 29th, according to today's short post, an inter partes review (IPR) dealt with a patent of "Intellectual Ventures I LLC" (there are many variants of "Intellectual Ventures"). To quote:

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s conclusion following inter partes review that a cellular communications patent directed to frequency hopping owned by Intellectual Ventures I LLC was invalid and anticipated was not supported by substantial evidence, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had held. Among other things, the Board erred in invalidating independent claim 1 based on irrelevant disclosures in the specification.


This actually reached the Federal Circuit, which can be expensive. The large patent troll Dominion Harbor (connected to Microsoft through Intellectual Ventures) barely even gets this far.

What we see here is ongoing abuse from Intellectual Ventures, which is losing a lot of money (that money comes -- in the form of big investments -- from Microsoft itself).

Speaking of Texas, Blue Spike is a patent troll or "lawsuits factory" [1, 2, 3] based in Tyler, Texas (yes, think Eastern District of Texas) and it is suing once again, this time demanding $210,000,000 from Frontier. So far a couple of news reports about it [1, 2] could be in this niche's media/sites. To quote:



US operator Frontier Communication is being sued by data patent holder Blue Spike in Texas for over USD 210 million, Law360 reported. Blue Spike claims the operator’s FiOS TV service infringes 11 patents related to watermark embedding technologies. Blue Spike also alleges violation of a 12th patent, related to Frontier’s business Wi-Fi service.

Blue Spike, based in Tyler, Texas, holds more than 100 patents for forensic watermarking, signal abstracts, data security, software watermarks, product license keys, ASLR and deep packet inspection, FierceCable reported.


Blue Spike does absolutely nothing but lawsuits. It'a an anvil or a yoke to the economy.

Staying down there in Texas, a Korean university known as KAIST (acronym) has a trolling entity in the US and it's still acting like a classic patent troll in the Eastern District of Texas (where else?), as Kaist IP US LLC v Samsung Electronics Co. serves to show. The latest twist in this case was covered yesterday as follows:

The court denied plaintiff's motion to strike portions of the rebuttal report of defendants' damages expert because his theory capping the value of a patent-in-suit based on prior licensing negotiations was not unreliable.


KAIST is one of those very few Korean entities which are litigious. It does a lot of that in the US, not in Korea, where software patents for example are difficult to pursue (compared to Texas).

Earlier today we saw Velocity bragging about a new patent in Japan and Canada. The patent alludes to "software providing aggregated application metadata that reveals emerging patterns, performance issues, human productivity insights..."

Courts in Japan and Canada, however, would likely not permit such software (and thus seemingly abstract) patents. It sounds totally bunk, abstract, at least based on the press release. Those countries -- unlike China -- don't quite tolerate such patents. China's SIPO is ranked very low for patent quality and this new Chinese patent boasted about by BioMarker might actually endure scrutiny (but only in China, which is like the 'new' Eastern District of Texas). It's very rare to see English press releases in which companies brag about Chinese patents. Seeing the fast-changing litigation climate in the US, perhaps they have plans in the far east.

Recent Techrights' Posts

More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
 
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025