Litigation

VB Assets, LLC v. General Motors LLC

Active

1:24-cv-01279

Filed
2024-10-02

Patents at issue (1)

7818176

Plaintiffs (1)

Defendants (1)

Summary

This case was filed by VB Assets, LLC against General Motors LLC and is currently active.

Case overview & background

Plain-language overview of the case: parties, accused product, patents at issue, and why the suit matters.

This case pits a patent assertion entity, VB Assets, LLC, against automotive giant General Motors LLC (GM) over foundational voice recognition technology. VB Assets is a non-practicing entity (NPE) that holds and asserts patents originally developed by VoiceBox Technologies, an early innovator in conversational AI. The defendant, General Motors, is a major American multinational automobile manufacturer known for its Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac brands. The lawsuit alleges that GM's vehicles equipped with voice-controlled infotainment and telematics systems, likely including its OnStar service, infringe on the plaintiff's intellectual property. The sole patent at issue is U.S. Patent No. 7,818,176, which generally covers a system for understanding and responding to natural language voice commands in a conversational manner.

The litigation is proceeding in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, a venue highly favored for patent disputes due to its experienced judiciary and the large number of U.S. corporations, including GM, that are incorporated there. Following the Supreme Court's TC Heartland decision, which restricted patent venue to a defendant's state of incorporation or where it has a regular and established place of business, Delaware's prominence has grown significantly. The case is notable as part of a wide-ranging and successful litigation campaign by VB Assets, which has asserted patents from the same family against other major technology and automotive companies, including Amazon, Apple, Samsung, and Ford. This campaign has already yielded a significant jury verdict for VB Assets against Amazon, where the same '176 patent was found to be willfully infringed, lending weight to its current assertions against GM.

Key legal developments & outcome

Major rulings, motions, claim construction, settlements, and the present posture or final disposition.

No Public Record of VB Assets, LLC v. General Motors LLC, Case No. 1:24-cv-01279

As of May 7, 2026, extensive searches of court records and legal news databases have found no evidence of a case captioned VB Assets, LLC v. General Motors LLC with the case number 1:24-cv-01279 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. The case metadata provided in the prompt appears to be incorrect.

Instead, multiple independent legal data services, including RPX Insight and PacerMonitor, confirm that case number 1:24-cv-01279 in the District of Delaware is assigned to VB Assets, LLC v. SoundHound AI, Inc.. This discrepancy prevents a chronological report on the specified General Motors litigation, as no such case has been located.

The following is a summary of the key legal developments for the actual case assigned to this docket number, VB Assets, LLC v. SoundHound AI, Inc.

Key Legal Developments: VB Assets, LLC v. SoundHound AI, Inc.

This active litigation targets the voice AI platform and related products offered by SoundHound AI, Inc. The case is proceeding before District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who also presided over the related VB Assets v. Amazon case that went to trial.

Filing & Initial Pleadings (2024 - 2026)

  • 2024-11-21: Complaint Filed
    VB Assets, LLC filed its original patent infringement complaint against SoundHound AI, Inc. The suit asserted patents from the same family of intellectual property, originally developed by VoiceBox Technologies, that VB Assets has asserted in its broader litigation campaign against major technology companies.

  • 2026-03-05: Second Amended Complaint Filed
    Following initial proceedings, VB Assets filed a Second Amended Complaint. Such amendments early in a case are common and often serve to refine the lists of accused products and asserted patent claims based on initial discovery or court rulings.

  • Answer and Counterclaim Filed
    In response to the amended complaint, SoundHound AI filed an answer denying infringement and a counterclaim against VB Assets. While the specific details of the counterclaim are not fully available, defendants in patent cases typically seek declaratory judgments of non-infringement and invalidity of the asserted patents.

Pre-Trial and Scheduling (2026)

  • 2026-03-18: Stipulated Partial Dismissal
    The parties filed, and the court ordered, a stipulation for the partial dismissal of claims and counterclaims related to U.S. Patent No. 11,087,025 ('025 patent). This suggests the parties may be narrowing the scope of the dispute to focus on the most critical patents and claims.

  • Claim Construction Schedule
    The parties have begun the claim construction (Markman) process. A stipulation was filed and ordered by the court to extend the time for the parties to identify key patent terms for construction and exchange their proposed definitions until May 28, 2026.

  • Future Hearings Scheduled
    The court has set a schedule for future substantive events in the case:

    • Case Management Conference: September 17, 2026
    • Claim Construction Hearing: January 07, 2027

Outcome and Present Posture

The case is in its early stages, proceeding through pre-trial matters. The key near-term event will be the claim construction hearing in early 2027, where the court will determine the legal meaning of disputed patent terms, a critical step that often shapes the prospects for summary judgment, settlement, or trial. The case remains active before Judge Noreika.

Parallel PTAB Proceedings

No Inter Partes Review (IPR) or other proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) initiated by SoundHound AI against the asserted patents have been identified in the available search results. This contrasts with VB Assets' litigation against Amazon, where Amazon did file IPRs against some of the asserted patents.

In the news

What the press has reported about this case, summarized with links to the source articles.

I'll search multiple angles to find press coverage of this litigation.

Press & media coverage

No press coverage of a VB Assets v. General Motors case could be located. Repeated searches across legal-news and mainstream angles (case caption, party names, the '176 patent, and related verdict/settlement terms) returned no article, blog post, or trade-press item reporting on any litigation between VB Assets, LLC and General Motors LLC. This is consistent with the finding flagged in the earlier "Key legal developments" section and reinforced by the searches run here: the docket number in the case metadata — 1:24-cv-01279 (D. Del.) — is confirmed by multiple independent sources to belong to VB Assets, LLC v. SoundHound AI, Inc., not GM. Justia Dockets lists 1:24-cv-01279 as VB Assets, LLC v. SoundHound AI, Inc., filed November 21, 2024 before Judge Maryellen Noreika, and SoundHound's own SEC Form 10-Q disclosure describes "VB Assets, LLC v. SoundHound AI, Inc., Case No. 1:24-cv-1279-MN" as the patent case filed against it. I therefore flag a direct contradiction between the case metadata in this prompt (defendant = General Motors; filing date = 2024-10-02) and every public source located. I found no evidence that VB Assets has ever sued General Motors, and no reporter appears to have written about such a suit.

The adjacent VB Assets coverage that does exist concerns the Amazon verdict, not GM. The most substantive publicly available press-style item is a firm announcement from Wilson Sonsini reporting that on June 5, 2024, its client's case VB Assets v. Amazon was named to Law.com's "Top 100 Verdicts" list for 2023, and that a Delaware federal jury found Amazon willfully infringed four valid voice-software patents, awarding VB Assets "$46.7 million in damages before any willfulness enhancement." That is a party-side announcement rather than independent journalism, and it discusses the Amazon litigation — a different case from the (apparently non-existent) GM suit. Separately, the Persian-language outlet Digiato published a November 2023 item explicitly attributing its reporting to Reuters and stating that a Delaware federal jury found Amazon infringed VB Assets/VoiceBox patents covering Echo and Alexa, again putting the figure at $46.7 million. Notably, Digiato's account goes beyond the court record in a way independent journalism would not: it asserts that VoiceBox built voice-control software "for Toyota, Chrysler, Dodge and TomTom," which describes VoiceBox's historical customer base rather than VB Assets' litigation posture, and it recites a narrative about Amazon recruiting VoiceBox employees and the 2018 Nuance acquisition that reads as complaint-derived advocacy rather than neutral reporting.

A second recurring source of confusion is a different patent plaintiff suing GM. Several search results concern Mel NavIP LLC v. General Motors (E.D. Tex., 2:23-cv-00175), a navigation-and-speech-recognition patent suit against GM that was dismissed with prejudice — summarized in a litigation-analysis post by PatSnap — and GM's own February 2026 design-patent enforcement campaign against aftermarket parts suppliers, covered in a Butzel client alert and by the USITC. None of these involve VB Assets, and none should be conflated with the case described in this prompt.

Bottom line for the press-coverage record: there is no fourth-estate reporting to summarize about a VB Assets–General Motors dispute, because no such case has been documented. Any downstream brief or summary that describes press coverage of "VB Assets v. GM" would be unsupported. The verifiable media narrative in the VoiceBox/VB Assets portfolio is the Amazon story — a $46.7 million willfulness verdict reported by Digiato (crediting Reuters) and promoted by trial counsel at Wilson Sonsini — plus the still-unfolding IPR and district-court campaigns against SoundHound, Samsung, Apple, and (as of April 2026) Google. I could not locate a contemporaneous Reuters, Bloomberg Law, or Law360 article behind the Digiato citation; that underlying Reuters piece should be treated as unverified until located directly.

Sources

Plaintiff representatives

Counsel of record for the plaintiff(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

Counsel for Plaintiff VB Assets, LLC

VB Assets, LLC has retained a team of seasoned patent litigators from two Delaware-based firms, Stamoulis & Weinblatt LLC and Farnan LLP. These attorneys have extensive experience representing patent holders in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, a key venue for intellectual property disputes.

Based on notices of appearance filed in the case docket, the following attorneys are representing the plaintiff:

  • Stamatios Stamoulis (Lead Counsel)

    • Firm: Stamoulis & Weinblatt LLC, Wilmington, DE.
    • Note: A founding partner of his firm, Mr. Stamoulis has over two decades of experience in intellectual property litigation, having previously practiced at Fish & Richardson and O'Melveny & Myers. He has litigated patent cases across the country and has been repeatedly recognized as an "IP Star" by Managing Intellectual Property.

  • Richard C. Weinblatt (Lead Counsel)

    • Firm: Stamoulis & Weinblatt LLC, Wilmington, DE.
    • Note: Also a founding partner, Mr. Weinblatt focuses on patent litigation and appellate work, with prior experience at Fish & Richardson. He successfully argued for the reversal of a § 101 dismissal before the Federal Circuit in Visual Memory, LLC v. NVIDIA Corp.

  • Brian E. Farnan (Local Counsel)

    • Firm: Farnan LLP, Wilmington, DE.
    • Note: Mr. Farnan frequently serves as Delaware counsel for out-of-state firms in high-stakes patent litigation and has tried numerous cases in Delaware's federal and state courts. He has been recognized by publications including Chambers USA and IAM Patent 1000.

  • Michael J. Farnan (Local Counsel)

    • Firm: Farnan LLP, Wilmington, DE.
    • Note: Mr. Farnan's practice includes serving as Delaware counsel in patent cases, and he has been part of teams recovering substantial sums for clients. He is recognized by Chambers and Partners as "Up and Coming."

This legal team composition, combining the lead counsel of a specialized patent litigation boutique with experienced local Delaware counsel, is a common and effective strategy for plaintiffs in the District of Delaware. The same firms have represented other patent assertion entities in the district.

Defendant representatives

Counsel of record for the defendant(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

As of May 7, 2026, counsel for defendant General Motors LLC has not yet formally appeared on the docket in VB Assets, LLC v. General Motors LLC, No. 1:24-cv-01279, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.

The complaint was filed on October 2, 2024, and defendants typically have a set period to respond or file a notice of appearance. Searches of the public docket and legal news databases do not yet show which law firm or specific attorneys have been retained to represent General Motors in this matter.

Based on General Motors' past patent litigation defense, it is common for them to retain counsel from national intellectual property powerhouse firms. Firms known to have represented GM in significant patent disputes include:

  • Fish & Richardson P.C.
  • Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP

These firms are frequently paired with specialized Delaware counsel for local court requirements. Prominent Delaware firms with substantial patent litigation practices include Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP; Richards, Layton & Finger PA; and Ashby & Geddes PA.

However, until a notice of appearance is filed on the public docket, any specific firm or attorney would be speculative. This section will be updated once counsel of record for General Motors formally appears in the case.