The third quarter of 2024 saw multiple funded NPEs launch new patent campaigns, with several funded plaintiffs also filing new cases in existing litigation campaigns. In addition, towards the end of the quarter, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas awarded a large verdict to a plaintiff funded by a prominent litigation finance firm.

As RPX recently noted, on June 25, 2024, Suzhou Lekin Semiconductor Co. Ltd. (d/b/a LEKIN) transferred 27 US patents to Light Guide Innovations LLC, which has now accused TCL (TCT Mobile and multiple subsidiaries) (2:24-cv-00646) of infringing 14 of its received assets, described by the plaintiff as covering “systems and methods related to LED lighting and image enhancement for televisions and displays”. Targeting the provision of displays and TVs that incorporate LED, QLED, and QD-MINI LED lighting technologies, Light Guide has backing from a prominent litigation funder.

In a new Eastern District of Texas complaint, Advanced Coding Technologies LLC (ACT) has accused Apple (2:24-cv-00572) of infringing the same three data coding patents asserted against Alphabet (Google) in a May 2024 complaint in the same district. The three patents, received as part of a larger set received from JVCKenwood in February 2022, are a subset of those asserted in the other active case in this campaign; ACT and Samsung are currently briefing dispositive and other pretrial motions before Eastern District of Texas Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap.

Three transfers of US patents recently recorded with the USPTO and made public—one from an optoelectronics company to an entity in a growing family of funded plaintiffs, one from an individual inventor who ended a litigation campaign last September, and one of former NEC assets passing through a Singaporean entity to a potential Delaware plaintiff—all bear watching over the coming months.