The final months of 2020 saw the patent monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) form at least three new NPEs in Texas. One of those NPEs, AML IP LLC, has since hit a dozen defendants over the provision of in-game virtual currency systems. Now, after receiving a portfolio of nearly 30 patents from a small software company earlier this month, another DynaIP NPE has launched its inaugural campaign, this one targeting remote training platforms.

Maxell has filed another lawsuit against Apple (6:21-cv-00158) in the Western District of Texas over its “‘smartphone’ patent portfolio”. In the new complaint, Maxell asserts 12 patents, nine of them litigated for the first time, bringing the total at issue in this campaign, which began back in November 2016, to more than five dozen. An Eastern District of Texas trial in a prior Maxell suit is also scheduled to begin on March 22, with each party filing an opposed motion—one concerning trial timing; the other, the fate of patents not selected for trial—both citing, at least in part, the current COVID-19 pandemic, a circumstance that Maxell concedes is “anything but normal”.

Two Eastern District of Texas jury verdicts of willful infringement and a barrel full of posttrial briefs later, United States Automobile Association (USAA) and Wells Fargo have apprised District Judge Rodney Gilstrap that the parties have reached a settlement. On February 12, a stay was requested, to finalize matters, which will leave unanswered whether the court would have disturbed any of the two juries’ findings—or enhanced the large dollar damages awarded to USAA.

Pineapple34, LLC has begun litigating the portfolio of 40 plus patents that it acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) in May of last year. The Texas NPE has sued Hon Hai Precision Industry (Dynabook) (6:21-cv-00149), Microsoft (6:21-cv-00150), and Sony (6:21-cv-00151) in the Western District of that state; Panasonic (2:21-cv-00053), in the Eastern District. The accused products in the campaign so far include laptops, portable projectors, smartphones, and other devices, with initial infringement allegations targeting a variety of features, including virtual keyboards, computer peripherals, Find My Device software, and certain cellular network functionalities.

Delaware plaintiff Helios Streaming, LLC (as exclusive licensee) and its Korean parent Ideahub, Inc. (as patent owner) have followed up their January case against Fandango (8:21-cv-00211) with a new suit against Comcast (NBC Universal Media, Peacock TV) (8:21-cv-00259). The two cases fall within a media streaming campaign in which the plaintiffs target “the standard for dynamic adaptive streaming delivery of MPEG media over HTTP, ISO/IEC 23009-1:2014, and subsequent versions of this standard” (MPEG-DASH). Both were filed in the Central District of California wing of the campaign, in which District Judge James V. Selna just held a claim construction hearing; a Markman hearing in the Delaware cases is currently scheduled for this May.

Ginegar LLC has filed its first lawsuits, accusing Oracle (6:21-cv-00134) and Slack (1:21-cv-00494) of infringing two separate sets of former IBM patents that the NPE plaintiff received from Daedalus Blue LLC last year. In the first case, filed in the Western District of Texas, Ginegar targets Oracle’s VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Business Process Management (BPM) Suite, while accusing Slack of infringement through the provision of its “communication platform” in the other complaint, filed in the District of Colorado. Ginegar is managed by another NPE that has itself filed recent cases, one last November, against Cisco, and another just last month, against Lexmark.

Last month, Liberty Patents LLC launched a second litigation campaign with suits against Analog Devices, Lattice Semiconductor, and Texas Instruments (TI) over clock generators. The plaintiff has followed those January complaints with another suit against TI (2:21-cv-00050), this one back in its first litigation campaign. The plaintiff asserts four power management patents, three of which are new to litigation, with infringement allegations targeting the provision of the TDA2X System-on-Chip devices. At issue is the incorporation of certain ARM-branded processors and support of the Adaptive Body Bias (ABB) technique. To date, Liberty Patents has asserted eight patents—each received in a portfolio of over 130 assets from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) in December 2019—against a total of over 20 defendants across its two litigation campaigns: the first, launched in September 2020; and the second, in January 2021.

Sued in the District of Delaware last week, Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (1:21-cv-00227) has become the latest defendant added to DigiMedia Tech, LLC’s campaign litigating a trove of patents acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) in November 2019. DigiMedia has been targeting digital cameras and video compression, the NPE again asserting three patents already in suit against Lenovo for its provision of the Moto G7 Power smartphone and VOIP 360 Camera Speaker. A fourth patent, however, is asserted in this latest complaint that departs from that focus: generally related to “automatic information exchange”, that patent is aimed at the Lenovo Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.

On January 13, 2021, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a favorable business review letter at the request of the nascent University Technology Licensing Program (UTLP), indicating that its review has concluded that the proposed UTLP is “unlikely to harm competition” and that the DOJ has “no present intention to challenge the program”. Two days later, the 15 members announced the launch of UTLP's licensing program, outlining the technological areas in which it plans to initially pool patent assets: autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things (IoT), and “Big Data”.  A couple of weeks later, one of the 15 founding UTLP members launched what appears to be the university’s first US litigation campaign in roughly two decades.

IP Edge LLC acquired 30 patents from Siemens in October 2018. In May of last year, the prolific monetization firm moved four of those patents to Q3 Networking LLC, which promptly did something out of the ordinary for IP Edge, filing an International Trade Commission (ITC) complaint asserting those patent against CommScope (ARRIS, Ruckus Wireless), HP (Aruba Networks), and NETGEAR. Q3 Networking pleaded that it would “promptly seek detailed discovery of Siemens’ domestic industry activities and investments related to the Asserted Patents and claimed technology through subpoena or through cooperation”. Cooperation apparently fell through.