Acacia Research Corporation released its second quarter financials on August 16, reporting higher year-over-year licensing revenue and a number of settlements across multiple enforcement campaigns. While Acacia has completed fewer patent acquisitions so far this year (as compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020), a Q2 transaction has already given way to a new litigation campaign, begun earlier this month.

Delaware NPE Torus Ventures LLC has launched its first litigation, suing Acer (6:21-cv-00857), Microchip Technology (6:21-cv-00856), Oracle (6:21-cv-00854), Panasonic (6:21-cv-00853), and STMicro (6:21-cv-00858) over the provision of products (i.e., laptops, cryptoprocessors, operating systems, rugged laptops, and security integrated circuits, respectively) that support the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) 2.0 security specification. The plaintiff appears to be connected to a set of NPEs that has been growing steadily over the past several years.

Monterey Research, LLC has filed two additional suits against AMD (6:21-cv-00839, 6:21-cv-00840), one in each of the IPValue Management (d/b/a IPValue) plaintiff’s litigation campaigns. The complaints target a wide spectrum of Athlon, EPYC, Radeon, Ryzen, and/or Zen-branded products, including various chipsets, integrated circuits, semiconductor devices, and more. These cases—the second and third filed by Monterey Research against AMD—follow a similar pair of suits filed against Broadcom earlier this summer.

MicroPairing Technologies LLC has filed separate Middle District of Tennessee suits against Mitsubishi (3:21-cv-00631) and Nissan (3:21-cv-00633), the two automakers joining GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, and Toyota, all of which have active cases against them in this campaign—two each, in fact, for GM and Toyota. In late July, the plaintiff filed additional suits against each of those defendants in the Western District of Texas, asserting three more patents apiece. Ten patents total are now asserted, in overlapping sets, across the campaign’s cases, now filed in Tennessee, as well as California and Texas.

TQ Delta LLC, a Techquity Capital Management, LLC subsidiary, has sued CommScope (ARRIS) (2:21-cv-00310) and Nokia (2:21-cv-00309) over the provision of DSL (digital subscriber line) equipment that complies with various DSL standards, including ADSL2/2+, VDSL2, G.bond, G.inp, G.vector, and G.fast. These Eastern District of Texas cases fall into a campaign that has been litigated before District of Delaware Judge Richard G. Andrews in two batches—one concerning DSL equipment and the other concerning Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) technology, a technology that enables media distribution over existing in-home coaxial cabling—since late 2013. More than 50 patents have been asserted, which Judge Andrews has divided up into multiple families for staged trials, two of which have resulted in jury verdicts favorable to TQ Delta, and which the PTAB has considered through nearly 30 petitions for inter partes review (IPR) filed.

For the first time, IP Edge LLC has asserted in litigation one of the patents received from France Brevets SAS this past March. Through Burley Licensing LLC, the Texas monetization firm has filed separate Western District of Texas suits against Micro-Star International (6:21-cv-00862) and Walmart (6:21-cv-00863), accusing each of infringing a single video quality patent. Targeted is the respective provision of laptops and computer hardware equipped with graphics processing units (GPUs) that support the NVIDIA NVENC encoder.

The Federal Circuit has resolved another skirmish in its ongoing battle with District Judge Alan D. Albright over convenience transfers. On August 13, the appellate court ruled that Judge Albright had once again erred in his application of certain substantive factors in denying DISH’s motion to transfer a case filed against it by Broadband iTV, Inc. to Colorado. The Federal Circuit’s decision is notable in part for its procedural posture, since the court declined to grant DISH’s petition for mandamus review yet still directed Judge Albright to revisit his decision. That basis for granting relief prompted Circuit Judge Jimmie Reyna to fault the Federal Circuit’s rationale in a concurrence, warning that the ruling essentially created a “mandamus light” standard based on a potentially improper reading of underlying precedent.

Years after an unfavorable jury verdict in a case filed against AT&T (AT&T Mobility) and even longer since its favorable jury verdict against Sprint Nextel (subsequently merging with T-Mobile, in 2020), ENOVSYS LLC has targeted the location-based services of a third carrier: Verizon (Verizon Wireless) (2:21-cv-00315). The inventor-controlled plaintiff asserts four patents from the same family, notice of which ENOVSYS pleads began in October 2001.

Collision Communications, Inc. (f/k/a Collision Technology, LLC) has sued Nokia (2:21-cv-00308) in an Eastern District of Texas complaint alleging infringement of five mobile communications patents. The plaintiff targets Nokia over the provision of various 3G and 4G LTE infrastructure products used to build separate 3G and LTE networks for AT&T, Nextlink Internet, T-Mobile/Sprint, and Verizon.

Delaware NPE Comserve Solutions LLC has filed its first litigation, over a family of two patents generally related to upgrading a mainframe computer system’s operating system (OS). The plaintiff accuses Dell (VMware) (1:21-cv-02196) of infringement through the provision of the VMware vSphere server virtualization software, with features for installing OS updates on virtual machines at issue.