On December 7, 2021, administrative law judge David P. Shaw issued a final initial determination, not yet made public but served on the parties, in the International Trade Commission (ITC) action brought by Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC against CommScope, HP Enterprise (HPE) (Aruba Networks), and NETGEAR. In a departure from its typical litigation practices, IP Edge filed the ITC complaint, through Q3 Networking LLC, in September 2020 over several patents acquired from Siemens. Several months after a summer evidentiary hearing, ALJ Shaw has determined that no violation of Section 337 occurred.

Q3 Networking launched its campaign last September with roughly concurrent District of Delaware cases and the ITC complaint (337-TA-1227), asserting four former Siemens patents (7,457,627; 7,609,677; 7,895,305; 8,797,853) against the defendants. In November 2020, the district court actions were stayed to await the ITC outcome of the district court actions. Per the agency’s notice, “the administrative law judge determined that a violation of section 337 has not occurred with respect to” the ‘305, ‘677, and ‘853 patents (the ‘627 patent having been dropped from the action earlier). A public version of the final initial determination is due within 30 days.

The most prominent and prolific NPE over the past five years, IP Edge typically proceeds in file-and-settle fashion, from which the ITC filing by Q3 Networking was a notable departure. Prior top monetization firm IP Navigation Group, LLC (d/b/a IPNav) wound down operations when founder Erich Spangenberg “moved off” into 2014 to “do other things” thereafter (details here). Having been the director and vice president of Asia for IPNav in 2012-2013, Lillian Woung created IP Edge in the wake of that move, with fellow Texas attorney Sanjay Pant and Illinois attorney Gautham (Gau) Bodepudi, first in Nevada and later merging into Texas. The firm has been the top filer of NPE cases over the years since, having initiated over 170 litigation campaigns in total, both right before and of course after its move to Texas and hitting thousands of defendants in the process.

IP Edge litigation typically names a longtime Texas resident—other than Bodepudi, Pant, or Woung—as the manager, managing member, or member of each of its litigating LLCs. However, several other entities have been directly formed by the IP Edge trio of principals: Q3 Networking, as well as two other entities, which appear also to have departed from established IP Edge practices: Bishop Display Tech LLC, which hit Samsung with a large number of former IP Bridge, Inc. patents across two concurrently filed Eastern District of Texas suits; and US Innovation Fund LLC, which does not appear to have received any patents, according to currently available USPTO records, but is curiously named.

The Q3 Networking campaign is not IP Edge’s first to assert patents sourced from Siemens. As recently as August 2021, the firm expanded one of its many campaigns over such patents, via plaintiff Wave Linx LLC, which has proceeded in file-and-settle fashion, as have the other IP Edge plaintiffs to sue over former Siemens patents (received in October 2018): Rainey Circuit LLC (beginning that November); Pinek IP LLC, Raven Licensing LLC, and Wave Linx (in February 2019); Blueprint IP Solutions LLC and Cassiopeia IP LLC (in March 2019); Valyrian IP LLC and Sonohm Licensing LLC (in August 2019); CyndaTek LLC and Pivital IP LLC (in November 2019); and Fairway IP LLC (in July 2020).

The parties have yet to notify Delaware District Judge Richard G. Andrews of ALJ Shaw’s final initial determination.