Entangled Media v. Dropbox: cloud-file-system patents survive to summary judgment
2022 onward
Entangled Media sued Dropbox over two patents on cloud-based file systems; the patent office declined to review the patents, and in 2025 the court issued a mixed summary-judgment ruling, leaving the dispute contested rather than resolved.
What happened
Entangled Media, LLC sued Dropbox on 16 December 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asserting U.S. Patent Nos. 8,296,338 and 8,484,260, which relate to cloud-based file systems. On Dropbox's motion, the case was transferred in June 2023 to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Entangled Media, LLC v. Dropbox, Inc., No. 5:23-cv-03264).
Dropbox petitioned the Patent Trial and Appeal Board for inter partes review of both patents (IPR2024-00284 and IPR2024-00285) in December 2023, but the patent office issued notices declining to institute review, so the patents were not invalidated at the agency level and the litigation continued in court. On 13 August 2025 Judge P. Casey Pitts signed an order granting in part both sides' motions for summary judgment and granting Dropbox's motions to strike certain new infringement theories and exclude testimony.
The allegations remain unproven; the mixed summary-judgment ruling narrowed but did not end the case, and there is no finding of liability against Dropbox of record here.
Impact
Entangled Media is among Dropbox's more durable patent adversaries: because the IPR petitions were not instituted, Dropbox could not knock the patents out at the patent office and instead had to litigate the merits in district court. The partial summary-judgment ruling shows the dispute proceeding through the costly later stages of patent litigation, and it remains a live exposure tied to Dropbox's core cloud-file functionality.