I've been told that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit will start a new custom for the In re Volkswagen en banc hearing, which took place this morning—putting oral arguments online. That's great, of course; as soon as it is, they promise to get in touch with me, and I'll have a post on it.
Until then—there's six new names on the docket in L'Affaire Harris, all shell companies that apparently exist to enforce Scott Harris' patents. Fish & Richardson said a few weeks ago they would be adding more entities to this litigation, and it looks like they have, although these names may all sound familiar to close readers of the defunct Patent Troll Tracker blog. These new parties are defendants because Fish is still arguing that they have ownership of Harris' patents, trying to put the genie back in the proverbial bottle. The case is still dubbed Illinois Computer Research v. Google, although Google is no longer a party.
If you're new to this story, you can consult my timeline about this big-firm IP lawyer whose patents got him into a heap o' trouble, as well as ALM coverage. Unfortunately, the most complete source for this story is no longer available.
Tomorrow I'll take a look at the recent twists. But for now, here are the six new parties. All lawsuits listed here have the Niro Scavone firm as plaintiffs' counsel. If nothing else, now we know what their favorite word is… innovative. The patent-holding company doth protest too much, methinks.
1. MEMORY CONTROL ENTERPRISE, LLC: Sued Honda, Oakley, LG Electronics, and U.S. Cellular in Chicago based on Scott Harris' patent 6,704,791.
2. BARTEX RESEARCH, LLC: holding company set up by Florida attorney James B. Parker to hold Scott Harris' patent on bar coding technology; BarTex is suing FedEx in E.D. Texas.
3. INNOVATIVE BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY, LLC: no lawsuits.
4. PARKER INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES, LLC: this company filed a lawsuit against 3COM in South Florida last year after a deal to buy 3Com's patent fell apart (says PIT). Has been quiet since that settled in July.
5. VIRGINIA INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY, LLC: no lawsuits.
6. INNOVATIVE PATENTED TECHNOLOGY, LLC: sued Nokia and Samsung in South Florida and Motorola in Chicago over alleged infringement of four Scott Harris patents. Also sued Icon Health & Fitness in South Florida, alleging infringement of a non-Harris patent. Both suits are ongoing.
And they throw in "any John Doe shell entities" for good measure.
Comments