MCM Portfolio LLC

MCM Portfolio LLC is a patent-holding entity, not an operating company. Court and PTO filings place it in the TPL Group orbit: defendant side briefing in the 2008 N.D. Cal. actions lists MCM's counsel alongside Technology Properties Limited (TPL) and Alliacense Limited, and the Federal Circuit identifies Alliacense's Edward P. Heller III as counsel for MCM. Alliacense is based in Los Altos, California. No employee count, revenue figure, or independent ownership disclosure could be verified from public sources, and there is no evidence MCM is publicly traded. On the available record it is best characterized as a licensing/assertion vehicle with no manufacturing or service operations.

Portfolio. MCM is the record owner of the "CORE Flash Portfolio" of flash-memory-card patents, including U.S. Patent 7,162,549, which covers controller-chip and firmware techniques for interfacing flash-memory cards that do or do not carry onboard error-correction controllers. MCM also sits in the ownership chain of the better-known Moore Microprocessor Patent (MMP) portfolio that TPL and Patriot Scientific commercialized through their 50/50 Phoenix Digital Solutions joint venture. Commercialization — claim-charting, license negotiation, and enforcement — was run by Alliacense and later MMP Licensing LLC, not by an operating business.

Litigation posture. The tracked data shows one appearance, as a defendant in ASUSTek Computer, Inc. et al. v. Technology Properties Ltd. et al. (N.D. Cal.). That case is a declaratory-judgment action, i.e., the defensive mirror of the TPL entities' licensing campaign: per the court's ruling, TPL demanded royalty-bearing licenses in 2005–2008 and then filed infringement suits in the Eastern District of Texas in April 2008, prompting ASUS, Acer, and HTC to file DJ actions in California. The court refused to dismiss or transfer. So MCM's single tracked role reflects an NPE-family entity being sued preemptively, not an operating company attacked on its products.

Notable context. The ASUS action settled and was dismissed without prejudice in February 2009. MCM also appears as a plaintiff in the 2014 N.D. Cal. licensing wave and as patent owner in Hewlett-Packard Co. v. MCM Portfolio LLC (IPR2013-00217), where the PTAB invalidated claims of the '549 patent and the Federal Circuit affirmed (2015). Published reports and SEC filings from Patriot Scientific describe TPL's 2013 bankruptcy and the subsequent reconveyance of patent rights, which stripped TPL of standing in related suits.

Sources: N.D. Cal. dockets and orders (Justia/CourtListener); Fed. Cir. 812 F.3d 1284; PTAB IPR2013-00217; Patriot Scientific Corp. SEC filings; Stanford NPE Litigation Database; EE Times.