On January 31, 2024, FG Innovation Company Ltd. (f/k/a FG IP Innovation Company Ltd.) (FGI) divested a portfolio of 35 assets, including 30 issued US patents, to a Texas entity, which moved the portfolio to a second Texas LLC the next day. This FGI divestiture is the sixth to an apparent US NPE since May 2021, to date four of the prior five recipients having launched litigation over the patents received.

Plaintiffs tied to monetization firm Atlantic IP Services Limited have launched multiple litigation campaigns with cases most often filed in the Western District of Texas. A frequent defendant, Apple, has responded with repeated motions to transfer, for convenience, to the Northern District of California, with various results: several remain in limbo before District Judge Alan D. Albright after the Federal Circuit issued a writ of mandamus requiring that the transfer motions be adjudicated before the end of discovery; another was stricken in its entirety as a discovery sanction; and other such motions have been granted—with a bit of an asterisk, that is, over extensive criticism of a repeat venue declarant. Most recently, Judge Albright has outright denied an Apple motion to transfer in one Atlantic IP-tied suit, and, in an order newly made public, transferred another of those cases—but not to the Northern District of California, as Apple had requested.

So far this year, two plaintiffs associated with Dublin-based Atlantic IP Services Limited, Speir Technologies Limited and Togail Technologies Limited, have filed suit against TCL (together with multiple subsidiaries, including TCT Mobile) (2:23-cv-00027, 2:23-cv-00039) in the Eastern District of Texas. Both plaintiffs assert wireless communications patents, albeit from different sources, targeting the provision of mobile devices (including smartphones and tablets) that support 5G networking capabilities. If past patterns hold, a suit against TCL from fellow Atlantic IP plaintiff Lionra Technologies Limited could follow in the weeks ahead.

This past week, two Atlantic IP Services Limited plaintiffs took aim at Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), Togail Technologies Limited filing suit on Tuesday in the Northern District of Illinois (1:22-cv-02176) over patents acquired from FG Innovation Company Ltd. and Lionra Technologies Limited doing so on Thursday in the same district (1:22-cv-02231) over a patent acquired from L3Harris. These cases follow litigation from other Atlantic IP entities against the same defendants, starting in May 2019 with Neodrón Limited; then September 2020 with litigation from Solas OLED Limited; then Sonraí Memory Limited (July and August of 2021), then Sonraí again (in early 2022); then Arigna Technology Limited (in February 2022); and then Speir Technologies Limited (earlier in April).

Togail Technologies Limited has initiated its first litigation campaign, suing Alphabet (Google) (6:22-cv-00327), Apple (6:22-cv-00326), and Samsung (6:22-cv-00328) over the provision of “wireless communication electronic devices”, including smartphones and tablets, that support various 3GPP mobile networking standards. The Atlantic IP Services Limited plaintiff asserts the same four patents across the three Western District of Texas complaints, each apparently sourced from a Hong Kong entity that has recently offloaded two other mobile communications portfolios to US NPEs.