Last week, RPX raised the possibility of IP Edge LLC’s practices—specifically, the naming of Texas residents with seemingly no discernible connections to patent monetization as managers or managing members of most of its LLCs—sliding under the judicial microscope. On September 12, District of Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly ordered a handful of such individuals to appear, in person, at evidentiary hearings to determine whether a group of apparent IP Edge plaintiffs has complied with his standing order regarding the disclosure of any third-party litigation funding. A similar order has been issued in multiple cases associated with Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP), Judge Connolly setting an October hearing to determine the accuracy of those plaintiffs’ amended corporate disclosure statements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, voluntary dismissals have been noticed across these cases, ending the court’s jurisdiction over the matters.

Evidence of IP Edge LLC’s frequent practice of naming individuals—seemingly with no discernible connections to patent monetization—as managers or managing members of its various LLCs has long been reported by RPX. Now, with Amazon having recently brought that practice to the attention of Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, and with a raft of amended disclosures filed on the same day last week by a handful of apparent IP Edge plaintiffs litigating before that same judge, the coming months may see the full extent of that setup, and its bearing on standing, come to light.

For the sixth month in a row, a subsidiary of patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC has started a new litigation campaign. Kaldren LLC sued Citigroup (5:17-cv-00066), General Mills (5:17-cv-00067), J.D. Power and Associates (5:17-cv-00068), NeilMed Pharmaceuticals (5:17-cv-00069), Pioneer (5:17-cv-00070), Procter & Gamble (5:17-cv-00071), and SunTrust Banks (5:17-cv-00072), asserting a family of four patents (6,098,882; 6,176,427; 6,820,807; 8,281,999) generally related to encoding digital data in a machine-readable format. The new complaints target the use of QR codes in the defendants’ products and services.

RPX observed several patent transfers to NPEs that were recorded in the first half of January 2017. Assignees included Empire IP LLC, an affiliate of IP Edge LLC, and a subsidiary of AIP Acquisition LLC, with the named inventors on the transferred patents including two former telecommunications entrepreneurs and a medical device engineer.

Drogo IP LLC, an affiliate of patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC, has filed its first litigation, accusing Medivators (2:17-cv-00021) and Olympus (2:17-cv-00020) of infringing a single medical device patent (5,782,765). Both companies are alleged to infringe through the provision of capsule endoscopes, which are pill-sized diagnostic devices containing cameras that are swallowed by patients, allowing photography of the gastrointestinal tract.