NEC Corporation filed NEC Corporation v. Anker Innovations Technology Co., Ltd. and Anker Innovations Ltd. d/b/a eufy, No. 2:26-cv-00847, in the Eastern District of Texas (Marshall) on September 18, 2026. The defendants are Anker Innovations Technology Co., Ltd. (PRC) and Anker Innovations Ltd., doing business as eufy (Hong Kong). NEC demands a jury.

Patents and asserted claims

The complaint asserts six patents and identifies specific claim sets on every count:

  • U.S. Patent 12,423,985 (issued September 23, 2025), Information processing apparatus, control method, and program - asserted claims 1-30.
  • U.S. Patent 10,223,619 (issued March 5, 2019), Video monitoring apparatus, control apparatus, control method, and non-transitory readable storage medium - asserted claims 1, 7-11, 15, and 16.
  • U.S. Patent 12,641,315 (issued May 26, 2026), Image processing system, image processing method, and program - asserted claims 1-18.
  • U.S. Patent 10,706,336 (issued July 7, 2020), Recognition in unlabeled videos with domain adversarial learning and knowledge distillation - asserted claims 1, 9, 11, 12, 15, 19, and 20.
  • U.S. Patent 10,552,713 (issued February 4, 2020), Image analysis system, image analysis method, and storage medium - asserted claims 1-6 and 11.
  • U.S. Patent 11,144,776 (issued October 12, 2021), Mobile surveillance apparatus, program, and control method - asserted claims 1-16.

Accused products

Across the six counts, the complaint lists a representative eufy ecosystem as accused, including eufyCam S3 and S4 cameras and kits; SoloCam models C120, C210, S220, S230, and S340; Indoor Cam models C120, E220, E30, and S350; Floodlight Cam / Camera models E30, E340, and S330; Video Doorbell models E340, S330, C210, S220, C31, and 2K; HomeBase 3, HomeBase S380, and HomeBase Professional; Smart Lock models C210, C220, and S230; Video Smart Lock S330; FamiLock S3 Max; Smart Display E10; 4G LTE Cam S330; 4K NVR and PoE NVR kits; the BionicMind AI Service; the eufy Security Application; and eufy servers. Willfulness is pleaded on all six counts.

What the patents cover

The summaries below restate issued claim language for the lead patents. They are not findings that any accused product practices a claim.

U.S. Patent 12,423,985

U.S. Patent 12,423,985 covers video methods that treat a detected stationary object as a target, then look for a nearby person across later video segments so the system can decide whether the object looks abandoned. Asserted claims: 1-30.

Claim 1 covers an information-processing method that detects a target object in a first video segment, outputs an image that includes at least part of that object, later detects a person in a second video segment within a vicinity region, and outputs an image that includes at least part of the object and the person, with the second segment occurring after the first.

U.S. Patent 10,223,619

U.S. Patent 10,223,619 covers video-monitoring gear that lets an operator define two detection conditions and a logical operator, then fires when the designated relationship between those events is satisfied. Asserted claims: 1, 7-11, 15, and 16.

Claim 1 covers a video monitoring apparatus with storage for a first condition and a second condition, input circuits for those conditions and for a conditional operator, and an output circuit that signals when a designated logical relationship between the two detected events is satisfied.

U.S. Patent 10,706,336

U.S. Patent 10,706,336 covers object recognition that starts from labeled still images, adapts the model into video with domain-adversarial learning and knowledge distillation, and then recognizes objects in unlabeled video. Asserted claims: 1, 9, 11, 12, 15, 19, and 20.

Claim 1 covers an object recognition system that captures unlabeled testing video, pre-trains a CNN recognition engine on labeled still images, adapts that engine across still-image, synthetically degraded, and unlabeled-video domains, recognizes objects in the captured video, and displays the recognized objects.

The remaining asserted patents

U.S. Patent 12,641,315 covers multi-camera video surveillance that surfaces person detections with thumbnails and time information, notifies when another camera detects a second person while the first person is displayed, and lets the operator select cameras to refresh the image set. Asserted claims: 1-18.

U.S. Patent 10,552,713 covers an image-analysis system that builds appearance records of when and where an object showed up in camera images, treats a continuous appearance as one event, and flags a monitored object when timing and location patterns match preset rules. Asserted claims: 1-6 and 11.

U.S. Patent 11,144,776 covers a mobile surveillance device with a touch panel: a slide sets an event-detection region or changes the display range, and a multi-touch sequence in a set order switches from the display-range mode into the event-region mode. Asserted claims: 1-16.

What the lawsuit is about

NEC frames this as a second Eastern District of Texas case against the same Anker / eufy defendants after No. 2:24-cv-00720. The earlier case is at the trial stage: a March 27, 2025 docket control order set jury selection for August 31, 2026 before Judge Rodney Gilstrap (Dkt. 30), and the docket records a final pretrial conference on August 28, 2026 (Dkt. 227). The new complaint ties the six patents to the consumer eufy security stack - cameras, doorbells, hubs, locks, AI service, app, and servers - and seeks damages and willfulness findings under 35 U.S.C. section 284.

Why it matters

The six patents reach different layers of the eufy stack: left-object detection, multi-event logical monitoring, unlabeled-video recognition, multi-camera person tracking, appearance patterning, and touch-driven mobile surveillance UI. Counsel on either side will need early claim-construction and product-mapping work across hardware, on-device software, cloud AI, and the companion app.

What to watch next

Watch the defendants' answers and any Rule 12 motions after service, early claim-construction proposals on the six claim sets, and whether the court coordinates this case with No. 2:24-cv-00720.