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 took notice, among the USPTO assignment records made available during the latter part of February, of the transfer of patents from operating companies Dongbu, Eastman Kodak, Honeywell, IBM, and Koninklijke Philips to various NPEs. One of those NPEs (Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited) has already launched a campaign asserting the patents that it received (from IBM). RPX also saw during this time the recordation of the assignment of one two-way radio patent from one litigating NPE to another (the second, an affiliate of IP Edge LLC) and the assignment of two database management patents from a Daniel F. Perez entity that asserted them in litigation back to the Georgia patent monetization firm from which that NPE acquired them.

RICPI Communications LLC, an apparent affiliate of Texas patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC, has acquired and asserted in a second litigation campaign a single patent (7,333,806) generally related to the operation of two-way radios over a computer network. Last year, the prior owner of the ‘806 patent, RFJ Licensing, LLC, asserted it in cases filed against Tait Radio, Icom, and Ritron, each of which ended in dismissals in October 2016. RICPI received the patent in a December 5 assignment from RFJ and has now targeted two-way radios made and sold by Codan (2:17-cv-00162), JVCKenwood (2:17-cv-00163), and Zetron (2:17-cv-00164).