K.Mizra LLC has filed its first new campaign since 2021 and its first suit over patents received from Rambus last September. In a new Eastern District of Texas complaint, K.Mizra accuses Silicon Motion (2:24-cv-00101) of infringing six memory circuitry patents through the provision of SSD controllers that support certain Double Data Rate (DDR) (i.e., DDR3, DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR3, and/or LPDDR4) and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) (i.e., PCIe 3.0 or later) standards.

On September 28, 2023, Rambus assigned 98 US patents, six US applications, and a number of foreign counterparts (including in Asia, Europe, and the UK) to K.Mizra. The US assets included in the transacted Rambus portfolio, such as the six patents now in suit against Silicon Motion (8,183,887; 8,693,556; 9,111,608; 9,160,466; 9,437,279; 10,331,379), can be viewed on RPX Insight here. K.Mizra was formed in Delaware in June 2019. In California (where K.Mizra registered to conduct business as a foreign entity), attorney Charles Jourdan Hausman is identified as the NPE's sole managing member.

On social media, "Chuck" Hausman reports as having been the chief licensing officer at K.Mizra since July 2019; the chief licensing officer with Netlist, a company that "designs, manufactures, and sells modular memory subsystems", from October 2018 to June 2019; "President Sisvel US", from October 2015 to 2018; a "World Wide Program Manager" with One Red, "a joint patent licensing pool offered by Sony, Pioneer, LG, and Philips"; and director and senior intellectual property counsel at Philips, from 2006 to 2012.

K.Mizra has characterized itself in complaints as "a patent licensing company run by experienced management" that "focuses on high value, high quality patents with a global reach and owns patent portfolios originating with a wide array of inventors, including portfolios developed by well-known multinationals, such as IBM and ZTE, and from research institutes such as National Chiao Tung University and" Nederlandse Organisatie Voor Toegepast-Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek (TNO), a research organization in the Netherlands.

According to publicly available USPTO assignment records, K.Mizra has indeed acquired patents from multiple sources. In December 2019, it acquired more than a dozen assets from several entities associated with Brian Yates, including Global Innovation Aggregators, LLC (GIA), Network Security Technologies, LLC (NST), and Spectrum Patents, Inc. (Yates is a familiar figure in patent monetization circles, previously very active in the US but later "pivoting to China".) In June 2020, the NPE picked up roughly 30 former IBM patents from Daedalus Blue LLC, through an entity that K.Mizra manages, Ginegar LLC (formed in California in May 2020). Then, in July 2020, K.Mizra added to its holdings just over 30 more patents, these from DataServ Technologies LLC (and originating with TNO). October 2020 saw K.Mizra pick up patents directly from Sharp, and in April 2022, K.Mizra received 11 former Panasonic patents from IP Edge LLC NPE Lily Pathway LLC.

Currently available USPTO records reflect relatively few divestures by Rambus in recent years. In 2021, it assigned 80 US patents to Highlands LLC—an NPE formed by Peter J. Hardigan—which subsequently passed the assets on to Rampart Asset Management LLC, another of Hardigan's NPEs. From there, Rampart sued each of NXP Semiconductors, Renesas, TI, and Silicon Motion (in that order), asserting a total of seven patents described as covering technologies "for coordinating memory operations and providing data patterns for calibration of memory systems". Settlements are referenced in the Silicon Motion and TI cases, and the Renesas case was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice. Last October, Rampart's last open case (which also happened to be its first filed), against NXP, was dismissed with prejudice following a settlement.

Rambus still owns, based on currently available USPTO records, a large portfolio of patent assets, most of them homegrown. Rambus itself has not filed patent litigation in the US for more than a decade, its sole large litigation campaign ending in 2014. K.Mizra alleges willfulness, pleading that Rambus, characterized as its predecessor-in-interest, met with Silicon Motion as early as September 2018, providing notice of infringement of the '477, '279, '887, and '556 patents.

This new campaign over former Rambus assets marks the seventh for K.Mizra For an entry point into litigation that has sprung from some of the NPE's prior received assets, see "K.Mizra Accuses Brother Industries of Infringing Four Former Sharp Patents" (July 2023). Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap has been assigned to preside over the new case. Nelson Bumgardner Conroy PC represents K.Mizra. 2/15, Eastern District of Texas.

Originally published February 17, 2024

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