A telephonic conference held this week shed light on the status of Tech+IP Advisory’s litigation against BlackBerry, which earlier this year divested its legacy patent portfolio to Malikie Innovations Limited in a transaction for which Tech+IP claims credit—and wants payment. Meanwhile, having handed off those patents and wound down its smartphone business, BlackBerry announced earlier this month that it intends to separate—and take public—its Internet of Things (IoT) business unit.

BlackBerry’s divestment of substantially all of its non-core patents assets to Malikie Innovations Limited may be in the rearview, the transaction having closed in May of this year, but the deal continues to spark new litigation: first from Catapult IP Innovations, Inc., which failed to complete its earlier attempt to buy the BlackBerry portfolio; and more recently, from Tech+IP Advisory, which was hired to facilitate BlackBerry’s patent sale.

USPTO records recently made public confirm the assignment of thousands of patent assets from BlackBerry to Malikie Innovations Limited, a subsidiary of Irish patent monetization firm Key Patent Innovations Limited. The transfers reflect the early May completion of the deal between the two, described as involving the sale of “substantially all of its non-core patents and patent applications” to Malikie. The transfers surface after York Eggleston’s Catapult IP Innovations Inc. voluntarily dismissed the Eastern District of Virginia case that it had filed in early June seeking to unwind the May transaction with Malikie.

In early May, BlackBerry completed the sale of “substantially all of its non-core patents and patent applications” to Malikie Innovations Limited—a subsidiary of Irish patent monetization firm Key Patent Innovations Limited—for $200M in upfront and guaranteed payments, plus a profit-sharing agreement. The transaction closed roughly 16 months after BlackBerry announced a tentative agreement to sell the same portfolio to York Eggleston’s Catapult IP Innovations Inc.—which is now seeking to compel Malikie to participate in an arbitration against BlackBerry to unwind last month’s transaction.

BlackBerry issued a press release on June 1 providing an update on the $600M sale of “substantially all of its non-core patent assets” to Catapult IP Innovations Inc., a Delaware entity reportedly tied to patent monetization professional York Eggleston. According to BlackBerry, the company is no longer under exclusivity with Catapult IP—which appears to have missed the deadline by which it was to secure the required financing commitments—and “given the length of time that the transaction has taken, BlackBerry is exploring alternative options in parallel”.

During its March 31, 2022 earnings call, BlackBerry announced that the planned sale of “substantially all of its non-core patent assets” to Catapult IP Innovations Inc. has cleared regulatory review in both the US and Canada. The price tag is reportedly $600M, with BlackBerry retaining the right to cancel the deal should Catapult IP—formed in Delaware in June 2021 and reportedly connected to a familiar figure in patent monetization circles—fail to lead a group of cross-border lenders and investors to arrive at the required total.