The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) continued to see the filing of petitions for inter partes review (IPR) against publicly traded NPEs in March 2017, including Acacia Research Corporation; Finjan Holdings, Inc.; Pendrell Corporation; TiVo Corporation (formerly known as Rovi Corporation); and Wi-LAN Inc. (WiLAN). A variety of prolific, privately held NPEs were also targeted for IPR throughout March, including Blackbird Tech LLC, General Patent Corporation, IP Edge LLC, Realtime Data LLC, and Papst Licensing GmbH & Company Kg, along with several inventors and inventor-controlled NPEs and an assortment of other plaintiffs.

Inventor-controlled Talsk Research, Inc. has filed willful infringement cases against Evernote (1:16-cv-02167) and Microsoft (1:16-cv-02166), asserting a single patent (7,178,097) and pleading facts against each defendant that suggest alleged copying. The ‘097 patent generally relates to creating and maintaining a bibliography of web content associated with a manuscript. Talsk accuses the defendants of infringement through the sale of their Evernote and OneNote products.