A foreign investment fund that says it paid $44.5 million to a White Plains patent litigation firm is asking Westchester Supreme Court to compel the firm to reveal how much it has won in patent litigation settlements.
Brickell Key Investments LP claims that Realtime Data LLC has paid back only part of its stake in patent litigation cases, according to the April 3 petition. It is asking the court to order “pre-action discovery” so that it can prepare an arbitration claim.
Brickell Key uses funds from a European pension fund to invest in intellectual property lawsuits, such as patent infringement cases. It is based in Guernsey, in the Channel Islands near France, and has an office in Miami.
Realtime Data, of White Plains, owns patents and is controlled by patent lawyers Jerry Padian and Richard Tashjian, according to the petition.
Brickell Key says it invested $44.5 million with Realtime in three deals from 2015 to 2016. The money was to be used for patent litigation against technology giants such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and YouTube.
In return, Brickell Key was entitled to 100% of everything Realtime won until the investment principle was paid, according to the petition, and then to a sliding scale of payments based on the amount of the litigation awards.
Realtime allegedly returned substantial amounts from one of the three deals but only token amounts from the other two deals. Brickell argues that it is entitled to any assets acquired with any part of its investments, including proceeds from future legal actions or settlements.
Brickell Key also claims that Realtime failed to report numerous cases it has prosecuted, and that a new entity in Ireland called Atlantic IP Services Ltd. has been formed, thus creating a concern that Realtime’s patents have been transferred.
Atlantic IP Services uses the same mailing address on Main Street, White Plains, as Realtime, according to a state business record.
Brickell Key’s attorney, Thomas C. Moore, of Irvington, is demanding information on all Realtime’s patent litigation settlements, including the amounts and patents at issue; Â transactions between Realtime and Atlantic IP Services; and details about funds held in an escrow account.
Neither Padian nor Tashjian replied to an email asking for Realtime’s side of the story.
But a July 2024 email included as an exhibit in the lawsuit, sent to a Brickell Key official by an attorney representing Realtime, disputed the obligation.
“Simply put, all monies due [to Brickell] have been paid long ago,” Manhattan attorney Michael J. Volpe wrote, “and now, years later [Brickell] appears to be in ‘Hail Mary’ mode attempting to derive monies it is not entitled to and from an entity, [Realtime], which has no patents of value and which has no ongoing cases.”
