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.

Sookbox Development LLC has taken aim at Kodi, filing separate suits against Fry’s Electronics (6:18-cv-00331) and Wal-Mart (6:18-cv-00330) over products sold with the open source media player software pre-installed. The complaints assert a single patent generally related to controlling the delivery of media content via multiple “participant control devices”, respectively naming the Sungale Cloud TV box allegedly sold by Fry’s and an Android TV Box allegedly sold under the QFX brand by Wal-Mart. These new cases are the first filed by Sookbox Development in this campaign in over a year.

Sookbox Development LLC has filed a second round of lawsuits in the campaign that it began a couple of months ago, hitting APX Group Holdings (Vivint) (6:17-cv-00244), Loxone (6:17-cv-00245), Muzzley (6:17-cv-00248), Roomie Remote (6:17-cv-00249), Thington (6:17-cv-00246), and Yonomi (6:17-cv-00247). As in its earlier complaints, the new filings assert a single patent (9,503,486), generally related to configuring multiple mobile devices to interoperate with a network, against the defendants, accusing them of infringement through the provision of software applications that turn various mobile devices (in particular, Apple iPhones and Google Android devices) into mobile controllers for a smart home system.