New Mexico plaintiff NetMomentum LLC has filed its first litigation, launching two campaigns by suing ASUSTek (2:24-cv-00841) over a patent entitled “Semi-transparent RFID tags” in one campaign and in the other, Panasonic (2:24-cv-00844), VTech Holdings (2:24-cv-00843), and Yealink Network Technology (2:24-cv-00846), each over a single patent generally related to a base station that handles both mobile and landline telephone calls. Against ASUSTek, NetMomentum targets the provision of the Zenfone 9 smartphone, focusing in the other three complaints on the provision of telephones with a base unit and a wireless handset. All four complaints have been filed in the Eastern District of Texas.

Bell Semiconductor, LLC (Bell Semic) has filed a new Eastern District of Texas complaint against Cisco (4:24-cv-00937), this time adding allegations as to a second patent and shifting away from the last highlighted accused product (“the Cisco CATALYST C9200L system board with the Cisco 80-1069-02 semiconductor IC package”) to a different one (“the Cisco 08-1072-03 semiconductor integrated package and the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card 1457 system board” allegedly containing it). Bell Semic’s widespread litigation, having hit numerous defendants, now remains active only as to Cisco, NXP Semiconductors, and TI, although a stay has been imposed in the case against TI in light of the parties’ representation that they have reached a resolution.

A second Eastern District of Texas jury has weighed the damages appropriate to award plaintiffs Pantech Corporation and Pantech Wireless, LLC for the infringement, found by a first jury, of three standard essential patents ($739.7K) and one non-standard essential patent ($260.3K). The two figures come to exactly $1M, down from the $10.4M previously awarded. In mid-August 2024, District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III ordered a new trial after the first verdict, the court granting OnePlus judgment as a matter of law of no infringement of a fifth patent (not retried) and rejecting a request to impose a remittitur as to damages for the other four.

A plaintiff calling itself “Querytron-Heggem LLC” has filed separate lawsuits against Alibaba (2:24-cv-00848) and Fiverr (2:24-cv-00850) in the Eastern District of Texas, as well as a complaint against Redfin (6:24-cv-00558) in the Western District of Texas. All three concern a single patent generally related to refining Internet search results, with infringement allegations targeting the defendants’ platforms, as advertised for facilitating business-to-business (B2B) purchasing. Records in the plaintiff’s identified state of formation apparently do not contain an entity named “Querytron-Heggem LLC” but do contain a “Querytron LLC”.

One well-established monetization operation has announced the acquisition of a portfolio of patents from Innolux, while another is the recipient of yet another batch of patents assembled and divested from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV). Meanwhile, a newer monetization team has picked up a set of patents from an operating company in a move suggesting that litigation over the received assets is coming.

In a second Northern District of California complaint, LookSmart Group, Inc. has accused Alphabet (Google) (4:24-cv-07147) of infringing a single patent generally related to creating a ranked database of webpages by examining the “probability of visitors viewing a particular page”, as well as content related to a “selected word”. Targeted is the support of features such as “pre-query indexing” and “content-weighted ranking systems” within the Google Search service. LookSmart sued Microsoft in the same district over the same patent in litigation that ended back in October 2019.

Palisade Technologies, LLP has filed its first litigation, suing Micron Technology (7:24-cv-00262) over the provision of solid-state storage devices and memory modules, including LPDDR5 memory integrated circuits (ICs) and solid state drives (SSDs). At issue is the incorporation of 3D NAND, USB-C ports, and voltage regulators. Five patents are asserted in the new Western District of Texas complaint, Palisade having received its patent assets in transfers a few weeks ago from Western Digital and its SanDisk subsidiaries.

Little has happened since Calypso IP LLC sued Samsung this past July, until last week when the plaintiff filed an amended complaint that, among other things, added allegations of indirect infringement to the original Eastern District of Texas complaint. This past week Calypso IP also filed a second complaint, accusing LG Electronics (LGE) (2:24-cv-00839) of infringing the same wireless communications patent, through the provision of smartphones and tablets running Android version 5.1 or later. At issue is the support for the Smart Settings feature, which allows users to enable or disable connections to a Wi-Fi Access Point based on the device’s proximity to an automatically detected or user-defined location.

Last week, in long-running litigation, a Central District of California jury returned a verdict in favor of funded plaintiff SPEX Technologies, Inc., finding that Western Digital infringed a single claim from one patent generally related to securing a peripheral computing device. The jury apportioned damages for the provision of two accused hard disk drives, roughly $194M for the My Book and roughly $122M for the Ultrastar He10. The eight-year run of this case included two stays, a trip up to the Federal Circuit, and the decimation of SPEX’s planned damages case, forcing the plaintiff to present a facts-only theory without the benefit of expert opinion.

In September 2020, Philips filed a raft of district court complaints—one against each of Dell (1:20-cv-01240), HP (1:20-cv-01241), Intel (1:20-cv-01243), Lenovo (1:20-cv-01242), LG Electronics (LGE) (1:20-cv-01244), MediaTek (1:20-cv-01246), and Realtek Semiconductor (1:20-cv-01247) in the District of Delaware, as well as one against Qingdao China Prosperity State-Owned Capital Investment Operation Group (Hisense) (2:20-cv-08546) in the Central District of California—within one day of filing a complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC) naming these defendants as proposed respondents. The ITC action ended in no violation established, prompting a subsequent lift of the customary district court stays; however, in July 2024, Philips transferred the asserted patents to Media Content Protection LLC, an entity managed by experienced patent monetization professionals and backed by a prominent litigation funder. The dust has almost entirely settled on the plaintiff swap here, Media Content Protection for Philips.