Patent fights over data-centre cooling gear: a status check

The US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on 7 August 2026 gathered in the Eastern District of Texas the patent suits in which Valtrus Innovations accuses data-centre operators of infringing its patents by running cooling gear from Vertiv and other makers. The cases now form MDL No. 3190 and go to a single judge for pretrial proceedings.

Valtrus says on its website that it holds a large portfolio of patents that came from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and that its business is licensing them. Valtrus and Key Patent Innovations asked the panel to centralise the cases. Vertiv opposed, as did ten data-centre operators, who asked in the alternative that the suits against them go to the Northern District of Illinois.

The order covers eleven actions in four districts, plus a related action in a fifth. In them Valtrus asserts varying pairings of three patents, '287, '682 and '277, against operators, while Vertiv, in two declaratory actions, seeks rulings that its equipment cannot infringe either the '287 or the '682 patent, and that both are invalid. The list attached to the order names Valtrus suits against CoreSite, Netrality Properties and NTT Global Data Centers Americas in Illinois; Lumen Technologies in Louisiana; Cologix, H5 Data Centers and Iron Mountain Data Centers in New Jersey; and NTT Data Services, EvoDC and Stack Infrastructure in Texas.

The panel said the overlapping patents give the cases common questions of claim construction and validity, and that Valtrus's infringement theories turn on how the cooling equipment is built and works rather than on changes any single operator made. It rejected the argument from Vertiv and the operators that gear from several makers, set up differently at each site, left too little in common. It added that several earlier Valtrus suits against operators, since dismissed, had been joined to one of Vertiv's declaratory cases and had run smoothly.

The cases went to Judge James Rodney Gilstrap, who already hears the Texas actions; the earliest of them, against NTT Data Services, had been pending there for over two years. The panel said centralisation does not disturb deadlines he had already set, among them the September trial in Vertiv's first declaratory case. As the receiving judge, Gilstrap may decide how far the cases are consolidated or coordinated.