United States: F2VS Technologies Hits The Lights This Holiday Season

F2VS Technologies, Inc. has added two cases to the campaign that it began this past June, suing Acuity Brands (Acuity Brands Lighting) (1:17-cv-04774) and Daintree Networks (1:17-cv-01713). The accused products in these new complaints are the defendants' networked lighting control systems, while the June complaints, which asserted the same three patents in separate Delaware cases, targeted various Wi-Fi networking products (i.e., access points and controllers) of Brocade (Ruckus Wireless), HP Enterprises (HPE) (Aruba Networks), and Qualcomm. This litigation campaign is not the first over these patents.

F2VS Technologies appears to be controlled by Franciscus Diaba, the former CEO of Endeavor IP, Inc., a publicly traded NPE that, prior to ceasing operations, ran a campaign asserting the three patents (7,379,981; 8,700,749; 8,855,019) against over 20 defendants. F2VS was formed in Delaware in October 2016. In a patent assignment agreement between Endeavor IP and F2VS, Diaba is listed as the latter entity's managing member; however, Diaba otherwise holds himself out as a senior attorney dealing with technology transactions at Johnson & Johnson.

Beginning in 2013, Endeavor, through its subsidiary Endeavor MeshTech, Inc., litigated the '981, '749, and '019 in a campaign targeting companies that provide energy grids or manufacture components of such grids. Most of the NPE's cases terminated within six months of filing. During the course of the campaign, Endeavor announced that it had signed settlement and license agreements with a number of defendants, including Eaton, FreeWave Technologies, Mueller Systems, Schneider Electric, and Synapse Wireless.

Endeavor IP acquired the patents-in-campaign, together with a fourth family member (8,019,836), from Mesh Comm, LLC, a Delaware company established in November 2008 by one of the named inventors Kenneth W. Garrard to hold and assert them. In June 2009, Mesh Comm initiated its own campaign, asserting the '981 and '836 patents in litigation against local energy companies, as well as eventual Toshiba-subsidiary Landis + Gyr. An order construing 24 claim terms issued in a Maryland case against PEPCO Energy Services and Silver Spring Networks. The parties subsequently asked the court to vacate the claim construction order to facilitate settlement, which the court did, dismissing the case in August 2011. All other cases ended after only few months, sometimes weeks, of litigation.

Mesh Comm transferred the asserted portfolio in May 2013 to Endeavor, which in turn assigned the patents to F2VS in November 2016. In response to F2VS's June complaints, both Aruba and Ruckus Wireless attacked the sufficiency of the plaintiff's allegations, of both direct and indirect infringement, prompting F2VS to file amended complaints in each case. Aruba and Ruckus Wireless have renewed their attacks on those amended pleadings, contending that the allegations again fail to meet the federal pleading standards outlined in Iqbal/Twombly. Qualcomm has yet to answer, or otherwise respond to, the June complaint filed against it.

Diaba was the CEO and general counsel of Endeavor IP until approximately August 2016, when he resigned from all positions he held at the company (although remaining on the Board of Directors) "to pursue another opportunity". Further information about Endeavor IP's struggles, and eventual transformation into a new company called Nanolife Health, Inc., led by James B. Hovis can be found at "F2VS Technologies Revives Endeavor IP's Smart Grid Campaign" (June 2017). Hovis himself has a troubled executive past, having been sanctioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his leadership, with his wife, of another company, called Phlo.

For more information on FV2S and for the latest information on patent litigation campaigns, visit RPX Insight.

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