Stingray IP Solutions, LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded Acacia Research Corporation, has filed an Eastern District of Texas suit against ASSA ABLOY (2:24-cv-00159), targeting the support of certain wireless communications standards (i.e., Wi-Fi and ZigBee) within a wide array of devices, including bridges, card readers, gateways, modules, and smart locks, as well as related software products. After multiple strategic shifts, Acacia—in partnership with its majority shareholder Starboard Value—now characterizes itself as “an opportunistic capital platform that purchases businesses based on the differentials between public and private market valuations” but maintains a legacy “Patent Licensing, Enforcement and Technologies Business” that has not “obtain[ed] control of any new patent portfolios” since 2021.

R2 Solutions LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded Acacia Research Corporation, has sued Cloudera (1:23-cv-01205) over a single patent generally related to distributed database processing. Targeted in the new Western District of Texas complaint is the support for Apache Hadoop, Apache Hive, Apache Spark, Apache Impala, Apache Flink, Apache Kafka, and Apache Phoenix within the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP). This suit is the first from R2 Solutions since last December.

Acacia Research Corporation released its second quarter financial results this week, reporting over $8M in IP revenue and a repayment of $50M in notes to hedge fund Starboard Value (to which Acacia paid another $55M in notes subsequent to the end of Q2). Finalized in early 2020, Acacia’s partnership with Starboard—which was followed by a marked increase in Acacia’s acquisition and assertion of patents—will now be revisited and possibly expanded, according to CEO Clifford Press. Meanwhile, Acacia’s litigation campaign asserting former Yahoo patents saw a flurry of activity during the second quarter.

R2 Solutions LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded Acacia Research Corporation, continues to hit companies with patents from the large former Yahoo portfolio that Acacia acquired in 2020 through Excalibur IP, LLC. The latest defendants are American Airlines (4:22-cv-00353), Citigroup (4:22-cv-00357), CVS (4:22-cv-00354), and Hilton (4:22-cv-00356), each sued in Eastern District of Texas complaints that have been assigned to District Judge Amos L. Mazzant, who just this past January handed down a claim construction order that resolved multiple disputes over the meaning of terms from the claims of the patents asserted in this latest round of cases.

R2 Solutions LLC has filed suit against Roku (6:21-cv-00997) for a second time. The Acacia Research Corporation subsidiary again targets the provision of Roku’s media streaming platform, as well as related services, particularly certain features related to search and data analytics. Two former Yahoo patents picked up from among the roughly 2,500 that Acacia acquired last year through Excalibur IP, LLC are at issue in the first action, filed in the Western District of Texas in early June, with six more asserted in this second West Texas complaint, five appearing in litigation for the first time.

Acacia Research Corporation released its second quarter financials on August 16, reporting higher year-over-year licensing revenue and a number of settlements across multiple enforcement campaigns. While Acacia has completed fewer patent acquisitions so far this year (as compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020), a Q2 transaction has already given way to a new litigation campaign, begun earlier this month.

R2 Solutions LLC, an Acacia Research Corporation plaintiff, has sued iHeartMedia (6:21-cv-00552) and Roku (6:21-cv-00553) in the Western District of Texas over the provision of their respective streaming services, targeting certain features related to searching and search ranking. Two of the eight patents-in-campaign, from among the roughly 2,500 former Yahoo patents that Acacia acquired last year through Excalibur IP, LLC, are asserted against each defendant, with iHeartMedia hit with a third such patent.

RPX data and analysis indicate that while approximately 85% of the patent litigation filed each year since 2005 has involved patents that originated with operating companies, the vast majority of defendants in those cases were sued by NPEs. This trend persisted through the first quarter of 2021, with new cases brought by a range of NPEs, including serial filers, a publicly traded NPE, and multiple third-party backed plaintiffs.

Last year saw publicly traded Acacia Research Corporation amass a sizeable stockpile of patents, with CIO Al Tobia Jr., in a November 2020 earnings call, declaring that Acacia’s “IP team has been hard at work with our four previously acquired portfolios and we are on track to deliver the returns that we anticipated when we acquired these assets earlier this year and late last year”. Here, at the end of January, the company has kicked off the new year with litigation from that stockpile, both R2 Solutions LLC and Stingray IP Solutions LLC launching Acacia’s first new campaigns since last June.