Since late last year, a growing web of plaintiffs associated with IP Edge LLC have become tangled in compliance issues over heightened disclosure requirements imposed by Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly in a pair of April 2022 standing orders. Now, Judge Connolly has rejected motions from two more IP Edge-linked plaintiffs, Backertop Licensing LLC and Mellaconic IP LLC, that sought to overturn a related set of production orders requiring them to disclose reams of information on their corporate control, assets, and legal representation. Not only did those decisions reject objections related to jurisdiction and allegations of overbreadth, Judge Connolly also ominously suggested that their claims of attorney-client privilege are undercut by the crime/fraud exception—which allows the disclosure of communications between a party and counsel that relate to legal advice used in furtherance of illegal activity.

Over the past several months, several plaintiffs affiliated with patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC have sparred with Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly over disclosure rules imposed in his courtroom. As this “Series of Extraordinary Events” has unfolded, those plaintiffs have found themselves under close scrutiny due to their apparent failure to disclose information on their management and control in compliance with those heightened rules. Now, one of those entities, Backertop Licensing LLC, has urged the court to halt an order mandating the wide-ranging production of information on those topics until its challenge of that order gets decided—while its attorney is looking for a way off of its cases altogether.

As former top filer IP Edge LLC struggles to extricate itself from the courtroom of Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, last April’s standing orders remain in force: one of those orders requiring litigants to disclose details related to any nonrecourse funding arrangements with third parties; and another requiring all “nongovernmental joint ventures, limited liability corporations, partnerships or limited liability partnerships” to include in disclosure statements “the name of every owner, member and partner of the party, proceeding up the chain of ownership until the name of every individual and corporation with a direct or indirect interest in the party has been identified”. Both orders continue to surface information that otherwise would have remained private.

In October, TRON Holdings LLC—a Delaware plaintiff apparently associated with a familiar patent monetization figure—expanded its personalized advertisements campaign with a suit against new defendant Booking Holdings (1:22-cv-01419) in the District of Delaware and a second suit against Expedia (this time, against its subsidiary Trivago) (6:22-cv-01139) in the Western District of Texas, after dismissal of the first. The two asserted patents generally relate to displaying advertisements in “loading” screens, with the defendants accused of infringement over features for displaying personalized advertisements while loading search results in their respective platforms.

This past quarter, US patents continued to spread among NPEs, including to familiar faces in patent monetization, and while some of those recipients have yet to file any litigation, several did launch new campaigns during Q3, targeting players in the Networking market sector, wireless carriers, e-commerce or software companies, and device makers, among others.

TRON Holdings LLC has filed its first litigation over a family of three patents, generally related to displaying advertisements in “loading” screens, received this past July. The defendants are Alphabet (Google) (6:22-cv-01055), AT&T (6:22-cv-01054), and Expedia (6:22-cv-01057). Google is accused of infringement through the provision of its AdMob mobile advertising platform; AT&T and Expedia, over the inclusion of customized ads in the NFL Sunday Ticket mobile app and the Expedia app, respectively, both using third-party providers including Google. The plaintiff is associated with a familiar patent monetization figure.

With the first half of 2022 in the rearview, a list of the year’s top NPEs—by number of defendants added to litigation—is coming into focus. A web of plaintiffs, tied by their association with a single patent monetization professional, appears poised to land on that list, having collectively added more than 30 defendants to litigation so far this year. Given the pipeline of patents apparently flowing into the same operation, its trajectory looks likely to continue through the second half of 2022.