Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Company overview. ARRIS International plc (styled ARRIS; NASDAQ: ARRS) was a telecommunications equipment maker. It was incorporated in England and Wales in 1995 as Arris Interactive, a joint venture between Nortel Networks and Antec Corp., and later maintained its operational headquarters in Suwanee, Georgia. It became a public company and, per its own SEC filings, reported roughly 7,000 employees around 2017 and net sales of about $6.7 billion for 2018. On November 8, 2018, CommScope Holding Company agreed to acquire ARRIS in an all-cash transaction valued at roughly $7.4 billion including debt; the deal closed April 4, 2019, ARRIS stock was delisted, and ARRIS became a CommScope brand and subsidiary.
Products / operations. ARRIS was a large operating company, not an NPE. It operated in three segments: Customer Premises Equipment (broadband modems, gateways and routers, video set-tops and gateways); Network & Cloud (broadband access infrastructure such as CMTS/CCAP platforms, video distribution systems, and cloud software); and Enterprise Networks, comprising the Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch businesses acquired from Broadcom in 2017. Customers were primarily cable and telecommunications operators. Earlier acquisitions included BigBand Networks (2011), Motorola Home (2013) and Pace (2016).
Litigation posture. The case data show ARRIS as a defendant in one tracked case and as a plaintiff in none — the profile of an operating company being sued, not an asserter. The suit was brought by XR Communications, LLC d/b/a Vivato Technologies, a well-known patent-assertion entity that asserted wireless MIMO/adaptive-antenna-array patents against numerous networking vendors.
Notable case. XR Communications, LLC v. ARRIS International plc et al., No. 8:18-cv-00192 (C.D. Cal., filed Feb. 2, 2018), naming ARRIS International, Arris Group, Arris Solutions and Ruckus Networks, and asserting the ’231 adaptive antenna array patent among others. A related XR Communications suit against ARRIS Solutions was filed in N.D. Cal. (3:18-cv-02736) and stayed pending inter partes reviews filed by ARRIS, Ruckus, Netgear and Belkin. Both matters were filed in California, not the Eastern District of Texas.
2018 Central District of California case related to the N.D. Cal. Ruckus matter and involving the '231 patent. It was resolved via appeal Nos. 22-1125/22-1141.