Byteweavr, LLC, an Ascend Innovation Management, LLC plaintiff, has filed its first litigation, suing Cloudera ( 1:24-cv-00261) in the Western District of Texas and Databricks ( 2:24-cv-00162) in the Eastern District of Texas over the provision of their various data management and analytics products, including the Cloudera Data Platform and Databricks Lakehouse platform, respectively. The asserted patents, of disparate origins, arrived indirectly in the plaintiff's possession from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV).
Cloudera is accused of infringing eight patents, described as "cover[ing] various aspects of network systems extensible by users as subscribers to a network service". Two of the patents (6,839,733; 7,949,752), broadly directed to networking, originated with General Magic; two others (6,965,897; RE42,153), to data compression, with AT&T and United Devices, respectively; two others (7,082,474; 8,275,827), to a "distributed processing system", with United Devices as well; another (6,862,488), to a "validation" processing and workflow management system, with individual inventor Amany Mansour-Awad; and the last (6,999,961), to an "information content" aggregator, with individual inventor Mark Hall. The '961 patent is not asserted against Databricks, but the others are.
Byteweavr was formed in Texas in June 2023. Its managing member is Mind Fusion LLC, an entity that Riad Chummun and James Weisfield established in Washington early in February 2023, identifying both Ascend Innovation Management and Weisfield as its governors. Ascend Innovation Management is an entity that Chummun and Weisfield, both of whom report past licensing positions at IV, created in Washington state in July 2022. Also in February 2023, Intellectual Ventures Assets 186 LLC (IVA 186) assigned 529 patent assets to Mind Fusion at the same time that Intellectual Ventures Assets 191 LLC (IVA 191) assigned 352 to the NPE.
Note, also, that on the day of that transfer, February 14, Mind Fusion also granted back to IVA 186 and IVA 191 a set of security interests in the received assets designating the transferred patents and "all Net Revenue (as such term is defined in the [Patent Sale Agreement, dated as of February 14, 2023])" as "Collateral" in which the security interest rests. However, the Net Revenue portion of the Collateral excludes "any Net Revenue that is properly distributed to either Sellers or any of Sellers' Affiliates or Purchaser and or its Affiliates in accordance with the terms and conditions of the PSA". Therefore, IVA 186 and IVA 191 hold these interests as assets as well.
Byteweavr is one of several Texas entities formed under Mind Fusion in the May-July 2023 time period: Accessify, LLC (roughly 90 assets); Byteweavr (about 45 assets); Crystal Mountain Communications, LLC (about 45 assets); Illumafinity, LLC (nearly 20 patents); and ThinkLogix, LLC (just shy of 100 assets). From June-October 2023, Mind Fusion doled out the indicated number of its former IV assets to the five Texas NPEs, also passing more than 60 of them to Musicqubed Innovations, LLC a Texas entity for which Ascend Innovation is directly identified as managing member. All this entity creation and patent spreading leaves Mind Fusion with around 480 of the nearly 1,000 assets that it originally picked up from IV.
As RPX previously reported, last October two IV entities assigned a combined 145 patent assets to AI-CORE TECHNOLOGIES, LLC, yet another Texas NPE managed by Ascend Innovation. Those patents are now on the move again, AI-CORE moving 21 assets to Byteweavr on February 28, 2024 and a single patent to Illumafinity on March 4. The following is a snapshot of the web of entities that Chummun and Westfield are known to have created (with blue indicating an entity yet to file suit, orange signaling a traditional NPE plaintiff, and gray identifying Illumafinity as a plaintiff in an "e-seller" type of case):
Illufaminity did file a more traditional patent case, against Eski, in December; it lasted one week. Chummun and Weisfield also formed Big Wheel Investments, LLC in Washington state in July 2022. It is not clear what connection, if any, that entity might have to this monetization enterprise.
Texas entity Slyde Analytics LLC received in December 2022 two sets of patents generally concerning wearables: a portfolio of 13 US assets (plus foreign counterparts) from Myotest SA, a Swiss software company that describes itself as "a pioneer in the capture, analysis and interpretation of biomechanical metrics"; and a portfolio of four US patents (plus foreign counterparts) from Smart Communications SA. The original assignee for at least some of the patents divested by Smart Communications is Slyde Watch SA, a Swiss start-up ("a revolutionary watchmaking experiment combining a high-technology product and an internet platform") that appears to have gone bankrupt circa 2015. In February 2023, Slyde Analytics (with confirmed funding from Longford Capital Management) sued Samsung over a subset of its received assets, adding a case against Zepp Health last April.
Thus, Chummun and Weisfield are not simply in the business of monetizing patents acquired from IV. For coverage of their growing of web of entities, as they have developed through time, see "Another Batch of Patents Leaves Intellectual Ventures" (December 2023), with an update on Crystal Mountain Communications's even more recent campaign provided here. As suggested by the above chart, this pair's entity creation has not stopped. On March 7, 2024, Fintegraph, LLC was formed in Texas, identifying Mind Fusion as its managing member. As yet, public USPTO records do not reflect the move of patent assets into Fintegraph's hands.
Three of the patents that Byteweavr asserts against Cloudera and Databricks have appeared previously in litigation. In its oldest campaign, active since 2011 against over 40 defendants, IV has asserted roughly 125 total patents, including the '752, '827, and '153 patents. Broadcom and Tokio Marine Holdings (HCC Insurance) filed petitions for inter partes review (IPR) of the '752 patent; trial was instituted, but the proceedings were terminated in light of settlements. Dell (EMC), Lenovo, and NetApp filed petitions for IPR of the '827 patent; trial was instituted, after which claims 1, 3-9, 13, 15-18, and 18-21 (all challenged claims) were found unpatentable. In its new complaints, Byteweavr focuses on claims 2 and 14 of the '827 patent. Finally, HP Enterprise (HPE) filed an ex parte reexam of the '153 patent, which led to a September 2022 certificate confirming the patentability of all claims considered (1-4, 7, 18-20, and 51).
Bragalone Olejko Saad PC filed the new complaints for Byteweavr. The Cloudera suit has yet to be assigned to a judge; Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap will preside over the Databricks case. 3/8, Cloudera, Western District of Texas; 3/8, Databricks, Eastern District of Texas.
Originally published March 9, 2024.
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