In July 2022, AX Wireless, LLC—a plaintiff formed in Texas but operating among the monetization programs of South Korea’s Ideahub, Inc. (d/b/a IDEAHUB)—sued Dell, HP, and Lenovo in separate Eastern District of Texas complaints, adding a case in the same district against Acer in February of last year. Asserted now are eight patents described by the plaintiff as “directed to wireless OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) networks and systems”, with infringement allegations targeting compliance with the Wi-Fi 6 networking standard. Ax Wireless pleaded ownership of the asserted patents, but briefing has just completed on HP’s motion to dismiss the case against it for lack of subject matter jurisdiction in which it argues that the plaintiff could not have received the patents from Applied Transform LLC in August 2021 because the plaintiff did not exist on that date.

In addition to the announced divestiture of a large tranche of VoIP patents from Avaya to Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC, March 2024 saw several other operating companies—including DXC Technology, Huawei, and SOLiD—unload patent assets. Several NPE enterprises also moved patents around, internally or to other NPEs, seemingly in preparation for new assertion campaigns.

Last month, IoT Licensing, LLC sued Snap One (3:22-cv-00652) in the Western District of North Carolina, adding a second case to the litigation campaign that it began in the District of Massachusetts against Schneider Electric (1:22-cv-11358) this past August. In both suits, IoT Licensing targets, with the same two wireless communications patents, the provision of devices that support the Zigbee or Z-Wave wireless mesh networking standards: for Snap One, including controllers, dimmers, motion/contact sensors, thermostats, fan speed controllers, garage door modules, sirens, switches, and repeaters; and for Schneider Electric, certain EcoStruxure and SmartStruxure-series products, including controllers, switches, and relay antennas.

Texas plaintiff Ax Wireless LLC has launched its first litigation campaign, suing Dell (2:22-cv-00277), HP (2:22-cv-00279), and Lenovo (2:22-cv-00280), each in the Eastern District of Texas. The NPE asserts four patents broadly directed to wireless communications, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of devices (e.g., appliance, computers, IoT devices, networking devices, smartphones, and tablets) that are compliant with the Wi-Fi 6 networking standard. Ax Wireless appears to be connected to a web of NPEs that has been steadily growing over the years.