Plaintiff
6 cases as plaintiff.
Company overview. Smart Lock, LLC is a Texas entity that court filings and press coverage place in Tyler, Texas. I could not verify a corporate website, founding year, employee count, revenue, or any public ticker; no parent is identified in the corporate disclosure statements filed in its cases. It is not a publicly traded operating company as far as public records show. A similarly named but distinct entity, Smart Locking Technologies LLC, ran a separate 2019 Delaware campaign asserting two former Intellectual Ventures patents (6,300,873; 6,696,918) against Schlage, August Home, igloohome, and LockState — RPX described that entity as a newly formed NPE.
Products / operations. Smart Lock, LLC is best characterized as a patent-holding enforcement vehicle rather than a manufacturer. Its asserted asset is U.S. Patent No. 7,012,503, "Electronic Key Device, a System and a Method of Managing Electronic Key Information" (issued March 14, 2006), described in its complaints as covering electronic key devices that store and transmit user-editable access codes to a lock control unit (Southeast Texas Record). The patent family traces to Computerized Security Systems, Inc. of Troy, Michigan. The only product-facing activity in the record is its Northern District of Illinois "Schedule A" suits against unnamed online sellers, where it asserted design-patent infringement and obtained a temporary restraining order — consistent with policing a "Smart Lock" branded electronic door lock sold through e-commerce, though I could not verify a storefront or sales figures.
Patent-litigation posture. The case data show 6 plaintiff-side suits and 0 defendant-side suits, which places it firmly on the asserting side of smart-lock patent litigation rather than as an operating company defending against NPEs. The cases cluster in the plaintiff-friendly Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas before Judge Rodney Gilstrap (2016, 2020), with later filings in D. Colo. and N.D. Ill. Counsel has included Larry D. Thompson Jr. (Antonelli, Harrington & Thompson, Houston), Stafford Grigsby Helm Davis, and Hao Ni (Ni, Wang & Massand, Dallas).
Notable cases. The 2016 Marshall campaign named August Home, Spectrum Brands/Kwikset and UniKey, Master Lock/Fortune Brands, and Schlage Lock. Later targets include LockState (D. Colo., 2020), Alfred International (E.D. Tex., 2020), and LH Licensed Products (dismissed with prejudice in 2020). Industry context: August Home was acquired by ASSA ABLOY in 2017 and later merged into Master Lock, so several defendants consolidated over time. I have not verified outcomes for most of these suits.
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Smart Lock, LLC sued LockState, Inc. in the District of Colorado, asserting US 7,012,503. The case was pending as of the last docket update seen in July 2020, with Magistrate Judge Nina Y. Wang and an answer extension to August 17, 2020.
Smart Lock, LLC filed suit against Master Lock Company LLC et al. in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, asserting US 7,012,503 and seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial. Final disposition was not confirmed.
Smart Lock, LLC filed suit against Schlage Lock Company LLC in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, asserting US 7,012,503. Final disposition was not confirmed.
Smart Lock, LLC sued August Home, Inc. in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, asserting US 7,012,503. The docket status is Closed; the narrative notes it was reported as settled/dismissed but not independently confirmed.
A companion case to 2:16-cv-00690 filed in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, involving US 7,012,503. The defendant identity and disposition were not confirmed in the narrative.
Smart Lock, LLC filed a Schedule A case in the Northern District of Illinois, docket 1:21-cv-05281, involving US 7,012,503. Defendant identities and disposition were not confirmed in the narrative; a design-patent discrepancy was noted for the N.D. Ill. Schedule A cases.