VOIT Technologies, LLC, a Florida NPE under the control of named inventor Barry Schwab, has added three more cases to its sole litigation campaign, one each against The Guitar Sanctuary (4:17-cv-00343), Medusa Skates (1:17-cv-00473), and World of Organics (4:17-cv-00344). A single patent (6,226,412), generally related to product tracking in an e-commerce platform, has been asserted against the defendants in the campaign, all of which have been accused of infringement through the operation of their websites. Schwab’s patents have been asserted in litigation by other NPEs, some under his control and some apparently independent.

Another apparent affiliate of IP Edge LLC, Bartonfalls LLC, has initiated a litigation campaign with a flurry of lawsuits against Advance Publications, Bloomberg, CBS, Comcast (NBC), Consumers Union of United States, Discovery Communications, Disney (ABC), Forbes, Meredith (Allrecipes.com), New York Times, Scripps Networks Interactive, Time Warner (TBS), Viacom, and Ziff-Davis. The new complaints assert a single patent (7,917,922), which relates generally to automatically changing the channel on a television. Bartonfalls accuses the defendants of infringement through mechanisms for automatically changing channels or programs in video platforms available on their websites. For example, the NPE alleges that Viacom infringes when the video player on the MTV website switches from, e.g., Rihanna’s live performance of “Stay / Love on the Brain / Diamonds” to The Chainsmokers’s live performance of “Closer”.