In August 2022, Daedalus Prime LLC, an entity associated with Daedalus Group LLC, launched its sole litigation campaign with a set of actions, one before the International Trade Commission (ITC) against MediaTek, NXP Semiconductors, certain automakers, and certain automaker suppliers; and three filed in the District of Delaware, one centered around each of MediaTek, NXP, and Qualcomm (but naming as defendants subsets of the proposed ITC respondents). Now, the plaintiff has sued MediaTek (2:24-cv-00235) alone, this time in the Eastern District of Texas. The asserted patents, described in the complaint as "relate[d] to groundbreaking improvements to microprocessor circuitry", are broadly directed to various aspects of computer circuitry and semiconductor fabrication. The defendant is accused of infringement through the provision of devices containing microprocessors and systems-on-chip (SoCs), including certain Dimensity-series SoCs, that are based on the ARMv8.2 architecture and later.
Belonging to various families, the eight patents-in-suit (8,769,316; 8,984,228; 9,887,838; 10,372,197; 10,705,960; 10,725,919; 10,740,281; 11,507,167)—each newly asserted in litigation except the '838, '197, and '960 patents—issued between July 2014 and July 2020 with an earliest estimated priority date in September 2011. The original development work for the patents was conducted at Intel, which assigned a portfolio of over 250 US patent assets to Daedalus Prime from April 2021 through October 2023.
Tied by public records to patent monetization veteran Ed Gomez, Daedalus Prime was formed in Delaware on January 26, 2021, apparently for the purpose of asserting a large portfolio of patents subsequently received from Intel. Gomez is the managing principal for Daedalus Group (which in 2019 received over 500 US patent assets from IBM) and Daedalus Blue LLC (which later received the bulk of that portfolio, some of which it is litigating via two separate campaigns and some of which it has farmed out to other NPEs for assertion). He is also the general counsel for Fullbrite Capital Partners, LLC, an entity associated with litigating NPEs Ocean Semiconductor LLC (asserting former AMD/ATI Technologies patents in an active campaign) and Vantage Micro LLC (a Delaware NPE that litigated a different group of former AMD/ATI patents between October 2019 and December 2020).
As noted, this campaign began with an August 2022 set of complaints including one ITC action and three Delaware affirmative actions. The district court cases were stayed in favor of the ITC investigation—which ended after a withdrawal of the complaint in January 2023—and subsequently dismissed (without prejudice) prior to any substantive litigation.
In September 2022, the plaintiff added two more ITC actions, one targeting Qualcomm and Samsung and the other targeting TSMC and Samsung, together with a trio of new district court cases, each against Samsung (with one complaint naming TSMC as a codefendant). Samsung responded with a barrage of petitions for inter partes review (IPRs) of the patents asserted against it, and in early 2023, a noticed settlement between Daedalus Prime and Samsung began ending the disputes between the two, in complicated fashion in the Eastern Texas case against Samsung and TSMC. For RPX coverage on those suits, see "License Defense in Multifront Dispute Comes into Partial Focus" (March 2023). In each ITC action, a motion to terminate in light of settlement has since been granted.
In December 2022, TSMC filed a declaratory judgment complaint against Daedalus Prime and Intel, with Daedalus Prime having responded with a second Eastern District of Texas complaint against TSMC in June 2023. A settlement ended the dispute between the parties, with Eastern District of Texas Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap posting a heavily redacted order that granted a joint motion to dismiss in the affirmative suit and a joint stipulation ending the declaratory judgment action. For RPX coverage on the litigation between the NPE and TSMC, which involved a dispute over a springing license agreement between Intel and TSMC, see "Multifront Litigation Between Daedalus Prime and TSMC Ends" (November 2023).
The new East Texas complaint has been assigned to Judge Gilstrap. Ward Smith and Hill PLLC represents the plaintiff in litigation. 4/8, Eastern District of Texas.
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