Judge John Love has recommended granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss in Rothschild Location Technologies v Geotab. The judge ruled the asserted claims of Rothschild’s global positioning system patent encompassed unpatentable subject matter.
Rothschild Location Technologies filed complaints against multiple defendants between July 14 and October 15 last year. The court consolidated these actions into the lead case with Geotab, GoFleet, Iler Group, Life360, Limo Anywhere and Skypatrol as defendants.
The 8,606,503 patent is entitled “Device, System and Method for Remotely Entering, Storing, and Sharing Addresses for a Positional Information Device”.
Rothschild argued that ruling on patent eligibility is premature because there are genuine issues of material fact and claim construction is necessary. The defendants countered that the patent is invalid on its face.
“The parties have not sufficiently identified any claim dispute or factual issue. Accordingly, there is no reason to delay a § 101 ruling and require the parties to expend additional resources that ultimately will not impact or aid the patent-eligibility determination,” said the judge. “To avoid unnecessary delay in adjudicating the § 101 issue and for purposes of the present motion, the court will construe claims in a manner most favourable to Rothschild.”
Michael Smith, a partner in the Marshall, Texas office of Siebman Burg Phillips & Smith, said that, although Love recommended granting the motion to dismiss rather than categorically granting it, the order will likely have the same effect.
“Although termed a report and recommendation, Judge Love's order notes that some of the remaining defendants have consented to him for trial (the plaintiff had), so I assume the report will actually operate as an order granting the motion to dismiss in those actions. The plaintiff would have the option of filing objections to the report with Judge Schroeder as to the remaining defendants,” Smith said on his blog.
Rothschild Location Technologies is represented by Dykema Gossett and Ni Wang & Massand.
It has so far filed 55 patent cases – 22 in Delaware in 2014 and 33 in the Eastern District of Texas in 2015. “It does not appear that the 2014 Delaware cases have resulted in a determination on the merits of its patents,” said Smith.
Top 10 NPEs by campaign defendants added |
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Rank |
NPE |
Defendants |
1 |
Leigh M Rothschild |
139 |
2 |
eDekka |
102 |
3 |
IPNav |
96 |
4 |
Empire IP |
81 |
5 |
Wi-LAN |
75 |
6 |
CryptoPeak Solutions |
65 |
7 |
Shipping & Transit |
65 |
8 |
Hawk Technology Systems |
59 |
9 |
Olivistar |
57 |
10 |
Acacia Research Corporation |
56 |
Source: RPX's 2015 NPE Activity report |
Defensive patent aggregator RPX lists the company as a subsidiary of Leigh M Rothschild. In its 2015 NPE Activity report, RPX reported Leigh M Rothschild was the top non-practicing entity by campaigns defendants added in 2015. Its 139 defendants placed it ahead of eDekka, in second with 102.
This latest recommendation of a motion to dismiss follows fellow Eastern District of Texas judge Rodney Gilstrap – who has the nation’s biggest patent docket – granting a motion to dismiss under section 101 against eDekka in September last year. This effectively threw out more than 200 cases. Gilstrap went even further in December by ordering eDekka to pay attorney fees in the case.
It had previously been rare to have a Section 101 motion granted in the district.