RPX data and analysis indicate that while approximately 85% of the patent litigation filed each year since 2005 has involved patents that originated with operating companies, the vast majority of defendants in those cases were sued by NPEs. This trend persisted through the first quarter of 2021, with new cases brought by a range of NPEs, including serial filers, a publicly traded NPE, and multiple third-party backed plaintiffs.

Viewpoint IP LLC, an IP Edge LLC plaintiff, has doubled the number of defendants in one of the two campaigns begun this year over patents from a second portfolio acquired from Monterey Research, LLC, last November. The NPE accuses DENSO (1:21-cv-00270), Infinera (1:21-cv-00271), Renesas (6:21-cv-00369), and Semtech (1:21-cv-00269) of infringing a single patent, generally related to fabricating a transistor using a “sacrificial emitter”, through the provision of certain bipolar transistors (Renesas) or products that allegedly incorporate them, including radar sensors (DENSO), network aggregators (Infinera), and network multiplexer chips (Semtech).

One of two new litigation campaigns arising from a November 2020 transfer of 17 US patents from Monterey Research, LLC to IP Edge LLC has been started by Viewpoint IP LLC. The plaintiff filed separate Delaware lawsuits against Anokiwave (1:21-cv-00102), STMicro (1:21-cv-00103), and Teledyne (Teledyne LeCroy) (1:21-cv-00104), as well as a Southern District of Ohio case against Fortive (Tektronix) (1:21-cv-00063). A single transistor fabrication patent is aimed at the provision of integrated circuits (STMicro and Anokiwave) and oscilloscopes (Tektronix and Teledyne).