December 2022 was the first month in about seven years that saw no patent case filed by a plaintiff with apparent ties to Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC. IP Edge has been the top filer, by orders of magnitude, for several years running, but the “Series of Extraordinary Events” unfolding before Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly seems to have ground the firm’s filing patterns to a halt. January 2023 seems to have extended the pause, although it did see one case affirmatively filed by an apparent IP Edge plaintiff. That one case, however, is the third time for this particular plaintiff—and it was certainly no charm.

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.

Ridgeview IP LLC, an apparent IP Edge LLC plaintiff, has filed its first litigation, suing Cengage Learning (1:22-cv-00557), Cornerstone OnDemand (1:22-cv-00558), EBSCO Industries (1:22-cv-00559), Elevier (1:22-cv-00560), and Emerald Group Publishing (1:22-cv-00561) over the provision of certain search functionality on their respective websites. USPTO assignment records do not yet reflect movement of the sole patent-in-suit, generally related to “displaying a progress and results of a database search” until the “desired result” can be displayed, away from its sole named inventor.