Multiple Delaware NPEs under the same apparent control have each taken over the litigation of patents—earlier passed to a Texas entity for assertion—after the patents have boomeranged back. Most recently, Circuit Ventures LLC assigned a family of circuit monitoring patents to Texas entity Wireless Monitoring Systems LLC, which asserted them in litigation from November 2016 to January 2019 before assigning the family back. Circuit Ventures has sued NXP Semiconductors (6:19-cv-00275) and Pepprl + Fuchs (4:19-cv-01515) in April 2019 and Honeywell (1:19-cv-00857), Link Interactive (1:19-cv-00856), and Scout Security (1:19-cv-00858) so far in May. Likewise, Universal Cipher LLC assigned a single patent generally related to “dynamic” text generation to Cumberland Systems, LLC, which asserted it in litigation from May 2017 to May 2018 before returning the patent to Universal Cipher, which has now sued Best Buy (2:19-cv-00160), Target (2:19-cv-00163), and Wal-Mart (2:19-cv-00164) over it. These reversals, as well as other assignment activity, suggest a return to Delaware for these and other NPEs affiliated with the same patent attorney, perhaps motivated by a recent Federal Circuit opinion clarifying that targets of letter-writing campaigns can seek declaratory judgments in their home districts, rather than risk being sued elsewhere.

Spider Search Analytics LLC has accused the use of several additional web crawlers in new complaints filed in various districts. The NPE targets Lenovo’s alleged used of Adobe’s Analytics in a new District of Delaware complaint (1:18-cv-00178), also filing Delaware cases against Monotype Imaging Holdings (1:18-cv-00179) and TrendKite (1:18-cv-00180) over their purported use of a web crawler provided by 80Legs. Two Eastern District of Texas suits—one each against Adidas (6:18-cv-00037) and LVMH (Sephora) (6:18-cv-00036)—allege infringement through the use of the SimilarWeb web crawler, while a case against LVMH (LVMH Watch & Jewelry) (3:18-cv-00249) with similar allegations was filed in the Northern District of Texas. The Deep Crawl web crawler is targeted in new suits, also filed in the Eastern District of Texas, against Home Depot (6:18-cv-00039) and Staples (6:18-cv-00040). Each of these eight complaints asserts the earlier of the two patents so far at issue in the campaign.

Spider Search Analytics LLC has filed two new lawsuits in its file-and-dismiss campaign over two web crawling patents, one each against Connotate (1:17-cv-01848) and Import.io (1:17-cv-01849). The NPE accuses the companies of infringement through provision on their websites of web crawler development platforms. Since Spider Search began this campaign in March 2017, it has been filing (and quickly dismissing) cases asserting only one of the two patents now at issue against multiple defendants for their alleged use of similar web crawler development products provided by either Apifier, Diffbot, or Scrapy, without naming any of those companies itself as a defendant. Spider Search is among the NPE affiliates of Bradley D. Liddle, which together ranked at number eight among the most frequent plaintiffs last year.

Spider Search Analytics LLC continues to file suit against companies using web crawler development products of either Apifier, Diffbot, or Scrapy, without naming any of those companies as a defendant. The latest defendant is Wal-Mart (5:17-cv-05566), sued this past week in the Western District of Arkansas over the same web crawling patent at issue throughout the campaign. This new complaint follows summer dismissals of a March complaint against Sears (also an alleged Diffbot customer, dismissed with prejudice), CareerBuilder (an alleged Scrapy customer, dismissed without prejudice), Restocks (an alleged Apifier customer, dismissed with prejudice), and Hubspot (also an alleged Diffbot customer, dismissed with prejudice). Spider Search excerpts materials from Diffbot’s website in the complaint against Wal-Mart.

Spider Search Analytics LLC has added three lawsuits to the campaign that it began in the Eastern District of Texas this past March, suing MicroPyramid (6:17-cv-00400) there, as well as Gift Hero (1:17-cv-11282) and Hubspot (1:17-cv-11285) in Massachusetts. The complaints assert the same web crawling patent (7,454,430) already at issue, accusing each defendant of infringement through the use of web crawler development products supplied by other companies (not themselves named as defendants): MicroPyramid as a customer of Scrapy, and the other two as customers of Diffbot. Each of the eight defendants in this campaign to date has been identified on the website of Apifier (a third company with web crawler offerings), Diffbot, or Scrapy. Those companies’ websites identify many other customers of their services, not yet named.

Recently created Texas NPE Spider Search Analytics LLC has launched its first litigation campaign, asserting a single patent (7,454,430) in new cases against Restocks (6:17-cv-00161), Sears (6:17-cv-00162), and Tuva Labs (6:17-cv-00163). The ‘430 patent generally relates to web crawling, reciting the rare claim that can be economically quoted in its entirety: “1. A method for crawling the internet to locate pages relevant to an application and thus building a Web Crawler comprising: starting from a base set of application-dependent web pages or crystallization points; and applying breadth-first recursive crawling”. Spider Search’s complaints accuse each defendant of infringement through the use of web crawler development products supplied by other companies (not themselves named as defendants): Restocks as a customer of Apifier; Sears, of Diffbot; and Tuva Labs, of Scrapy. The complaints refer to the web sites of each of these supplier companies, which identify many other customers of their services.