This past April, Receptrexx LLC received six former Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) patents from Mind Fusion LLC, the recipient launching litigation over one of them in May. Having sued Extreme Networks, Flex (Wink), Honeywell, HP Enterprise (HPE) (Aruba Networks), Hubitat, Siemens, and TI in separate May complaints, Receptrexx has hit four more defendants in this campaign so far in June, all in the Western District of Texas—Aeotec (6:23-cv-00424), Lumi United Technology (d/b/a Aqara) (6:23-cv-00427), Philips (6:23-cv-00426), and TP-Link (6:23-cv-00428)—and has also begun a second litigation campaign, by suing Xperi (TiVo) (1:23-cv-00586) in the District of Delaware at the end of last month.

The thrust of Receptrexx’s first litigation campaign is the implementation of the Zigbee 3.0 mesh networking protocol. For example, the new June complaints target with a single patent (6,909,706) support for that protocol in smart home hubs (Aeotec, Aqara, and Philips) and mesh Wi-Fi systems (TP-Link). The ‘706 patent issued in June 2005 with estimated priority in May 2001, to Pemstar, which was acquired by Benchmark Electronics in 2006. The next year, the ‘706 patent was assigned to an IV affiliate, where it moved in December 2022 (along with around 20 other assets) to another IV affiliate (Intellectual Ventures Assets 191 LLC (IVA 191)) named according to a convention that suggested a transfer outside of IV was imminent. On February 14, 2023, Mind Fusion recorded a security interest in more than five dozen assets back to IVA 191, although no divestiture from IV to Mind Fusion appears in publicly available USPTO records.

Jim Weisfield signed for Mind Fusion with respect to the assignment to Receptrexx, “by and through its managing member” Ascend Innovation Management, LLC. Ascend Innovation Management itself was formed in Washington on July 14, 2022 by Riad Chummun and James (“Jim”) Weisfield. On social media, Weisfield reports multiple positions, over the course of 15 years through to the present (as “Vice President, Strategic Sales & Asia”), with IV. Chummun (also an IV alum) indicates on social media that he has been the founder and president of Glacier Peak Innovations since November 2021, describing that entity as “exclusively monetizing certain portfolios of over 1000 patent assets”. Together, Chummun and Weisfield also created Ascend IP, LLC in Washington state, in April 2022.

Mind Fusion assigned six patent assets to Receptrexx on April 2, 2023. Receptrexx was formed in Delaware on November 23, 2022. It provides a New York, New York address that has become associated with NPEs under the control of Jeffrey M. Gross. After litigating a patent on which he was a named inventor, Gross appears to have taken to patent monetization more generally through the assertion of acquired patents. Associated NPEs have now launched more than 40 litigation campaigns—13 of them in 2023 alone.

The complaint against Philips introduces a second patent (7,012,652) to this campaign. It generally relates to reducing audio level to “immediately moderate an intermediate level of prevailing sound volume delivered from an entertainment apparatus”, with Philips accused of infringement through the implementation of the Google Assistant and voice commands for controlling the volume level in certain smart TVs. The ‘652 patent issued in March 2006, moving into IV’s hands in November 2007 and then following the same path, through Mind Fusion, to Receptrexx.

The new campaign is, at this point, just a single case, Receptrexx accusing TiVo of infringing a single patent (RE43,392, a reissue of 7,315,886) developed at AOL and generally related to a local proxy server that “spoof[s]” the functionality of other devices on the same local network by advertising certain functions offered by those devices, receives requests for those functions, and then performs those functions in a manner that makes it seem like the proxy server is doing so. It landed in IV’s hands in November 2009, before following the same path to Receptrexx. It is unclear whether the named defendant, TiVo Corporation, remains an active entity, after its merger into Xperi, which then split its licensing business off into publicly traded Adeia Inc., continuing its product business under the Xperi name.

The suit against Aruba Networks lasted one day; the one against Siemens, about two weeks. Given these quick dismissals, against the backdrop of other Gross-associated litigation, the Receptrexx campaigns seem likely to proceed in file-and-dismiss fashion. 5/30, “TiVo”, District of Delaware; 6/7, Aeotec, Aqara, Philips, TP-Link, Western District of Texas.