Artax LLC has sued Samsara (1:24-cv-01847) over the provision of various navigation products, including the Samsara Driver app, Samsara Connected Operations Cloud platform, and Samsara GPS Fleet Tracking system. The new complaint was filed in the Northern District of Georgia, which requires litigants to certify “a full and complete list of all other persons, associations, firms, partnerships, or corporations having either a financial interest in or other interest which could be substantially affected by the outcome of” the case. Artax has certified that there are no such interested parties, not even the monetization figure elsewhere identified as its managing member.

Artax LLC, an entity associated with patent monetization firm IPValuation Partners LLC (d/b/a IPVal), has expanded its sole litigation campaign over former TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) patents with a suit against Samsung (4:23-cv-01145) in the Eastern District of Texas. The three asserted patents, two of which are appearing in litigation for the first time, generally relate to tracking “position information” through wireless device communications technology or generating “contextual information of visual media”. Samsung is accused of infringement through the provision of smartphones that support Samsung SOS and Bixby Vision. 

MDSP Technologies LLC has launched litigation in the Western District of Texas with separate suits against Alphabet (Google) (6:23-cv-00257), Apple (6:23-cv-00254), Garmin (6:23-cv-00255), Samsung (6:23-cv-00259), and TomTom (6:23-cv-00260). Asserted are two patents generally related to using “Doppler frequency observables” on a mobile device to determine speed, with the complaints targeting various devices (e.g., navigation devices, smartphones, and smartwatches) for the alleged incorporation of “Doppler aided navigation systems”.

Currently available USPTO assignment records contain two 2022 divestments from a subsidiary of Comtech Telecommunications, one to Artax LLC, executed in April; and the other to ALD Social LLC, in late July. Both of those recipients have now turned plaintiff, Artax suing TomTom (4:22-cv-00737) in the Eastern District of Texas over the provision of various navigation products, including the TomTom Go Navigation app and TomTom Routing API; and ALD Social hitting Alert Media (6:22-cv-00959), Alphabet (Google) (6:22-cv-00972), Apple (6:22-cv-00969), AT&T (6:22-cv-00970), Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (6:22-cv-00973), and Verkada (6:22-cv-00975) in the Western District of Texas over the provision of their respective emergency communication solutions.

Recent months have seen a number of patent divestments by operating companies made public, with a range of assignees including frequent filers, publicly traded patent assertion entities, third-party funded plaintiffs, and newly formed NPEs. Divestment size has also varied widely—from a single transacted patent to thousands.