With the close of September this past week, plaintiffs apparently associated with IP Edge LLC brought the total number of suits filed for the month by the Texas monetization firm above 50 yet again; however, a notable shift has occurred. From January 2021 through April 2022, when Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly handed down new standing orders heightening disclosure requirements for litigants in his courtroom, the average number of cases filed monthly in Delaware by apparent IP Edge plaintiffs was...

Street Spirit IP LLC, an entity associated with monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP), has filed its first litigation, suing Match Group (6:22-cv-01001). The sole asserted patent generally relates to “identity verification and management” in a social network system, with Match Group accused of infringement through the provision of online dating services that allegedly support certain identity verification tools. Street Spirit IP filed its case in the Western District of Texas, pleading that though formed in Delaware, Match Group “has employees working remotely with company equipment” in West Texas; plaintiffs associated with DynaIP have recently come under scrutiny before Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly—in Delaware.

Bell Semiconductor, LLC (Bell Semic) has expanded its second litigation campaign over patents acquired from Broadcom with suits against Ambarella (3:22-cv-00273), Ampere Computing (3:22-cv-01435), ASMedia Technology (1:22-cv-08166), Lattice Semiconductor (3:22-cv-01437), Phison Electronics (1:22-cv-02485), Rockchip Electronics (4:22-cv-00819), and Sequans Communications (0:22-cv-02344) filed in various districts. The asserted patents generally relate to inserting dummy fill into a circuit design, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of semiconductor devices that are manufactured using certain design tools provided by Cadence, Synopsys, and/or Siemens.

This week, Erso Capital—a commercial litigation fund co-founded by the Thomas Miller Group—announced the launch of a fund dedicated to patent assertion, making “in excess of $500M in capital” available to patent holders and law firms. According Erso, the firm is “also in the market for certain patent purchase opportunities”.

This summer saw the escalation of a long-running fight between Longhorn IP LLC and Micron, with the latter’s July suit accusing the monetization firm of violating a largely untested Idaho law barring bad-faith patent assertion—seeking both damages from Longhorn IP and asking the court to impose a $15M bond against it. Now, as the defendant pushes forward on a motion to dismiss arguing that the law is unconstitutional, the state of Idaho has intervened in the statute’s defense, arguing that the law is narrowly tailored enough to avoid preemption by federal patent law.

Think Products Inc. has voluntarily dismissed, without prejudice, a case that it filed last December against Microsoft, in apparent favor of a new complaint (1:22-cv-05313) in the same district. The old case saw one Think Products patent asserted, while in the new one, Think Products adds allegations concerning a more recent member of the same family, both generally related to laptop computer locking assemblies. These cases are part of a larger litigation effort aimed at ACCO Brands, with Northern District of Illinois Judge Mary M. Rowland having stayed the now-dismissed suit to await the outcome of at least one case between Think Products and ACCO; Think, however, has pleaded in its new complaint a set of allegations concerning an agreement between ACCO and Microsoft that suggest it will try to avoid such a stay this time around.

ALD Social LLC has followed up the mid-September launch of its first patent litigation with a new case filed against Verizon (6:22-cv-01011). The defendants hit earlier in the month are Alert Media, Alphabet (Google), Apple, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), and Verkada, all seven of them now accused of infringing a pair of patents generally related to an “aggregate location dynometer”, an ALD, “in a physical wireless network server”, through the provision of emergency communications solutions (for Verizon, its Wireless Emergency Alerts system). Western District of Texas Judge Fred Biery, by operation of that district’s new case assignment policy, presides over the litigation.

Last fall, Wiesblatt Licensing LLC, an apparent IP Edge LLC plaintiff, kicked off its sole litigation campaign, suing Insight Enterprises, Lenovo, and XFX Technology in separate District of Delaware complaints in which one former Seiko patent, broadly directed to “circuitry for transferring data”, is asserted. By mid-January of this year, each of those complaints had been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice. Over the past month or so, Wiesblatt has resumed litigation, hitting Dynabook (1:22-cv-01155) and Thundercomm (1:22-cv-01154) at the close of August and now OnePlus (3:22-cv-02148), Macnica (2:22-cv-00373), Razer (6:22-cv-00990), SMART Embedded Computing (2:22-cv-01130), and Sony (2:22-cv-00374) at September’s end with the same patent.

District Judge Gregory B. Williams received his judicial commission on September 1, 2022, taking the federal bench in Delaware after Leonard P. Stark left to join the Federal Circuit. Judge Williams joins Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly and Judges Richard G. Andrews and Maryellen Noreika in one of the busiest districts for patent litigation in the country, a look at his initial docket of cases revealing a large number of cases brought by NPEs—in particular, many suits filed by prolific Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC.

Earlier in September, Traxcell Technologies, LLC sued Verizon (Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless) together with Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung as alleged “equipment providers” for its wireless network. Now, the plaintiff has filed two additional Western District of Texas complaints in the same configuration, this time naming Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) as the wireless network provider and the same three “equipment providers” (6:22-cv-00991, 6:22-cv-00992). Traxcell followed those two complaints with a gaggle of others, hitting Maplebear (d/b/a Instacart) (6:22-cv-00999), Shopify (6:22-cv-01000), and Verifone (Curb Mobility) (6:22-cv-00998), also in the Western District of Texas; Helbiz (1:22-cv-08128) in the Southern District of New York; and FlightAware (4:22-cv-03258) in the Southern District of Texas, each over the provision of software products that support features for “connecting customers with merchants".