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.

Last May, Atlantic IP Services Limited plaintiff Iarnach Technologies Limited sued AT&T (AT&T Mobility and several other subsidiaries) in the Eastern District of Texas over optical networking patents received from ZTE earlier in 2023. Nokia successfully intervened in September, the case moving into discovery. Now, Iarnach has filed a second suit, also in East Texas, this one against Verizon (Verizon Wireless and several other subsidiaries) (2:23-cv-00631), over the same five patents, infringement allegations again focused on the provision of “all components necessary”—including “hardware and software, optical line terminals (ONTs), and optical network units (ONUs)/optical network terminals (ONTs)”—for providing its fiber-optic networks and network services.

Daingean Technologies Limited has filed a third complaint in the litigation campaign that it began this past March. Then, it sued AT&T (AT&T Mobility) in an Eastern District of Texas case in which Ericsson has since intervened. A July suit in the same district against Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) followed, and now Daingean has hit Apple (3:23-cv-01560). Daingean operates under the Atlantic IP Services Limited umbrella; other such entities have repeatedly sued Apple in the Western District of Texas where the parties have engaged in long venue disputes, triggered each time by a motion to transfer for convenience; this time, the case has been filed directly in the Southern District of California.  

This past week, Daingean Technologies Limited, an Atlantic IP Services Limited plaintiff, filed its second lawsuit, accusing Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) (2:23-cv-00347) of infringing the same six patents already in suit against AT&T (AT&T Mobility)—and now Ericsson. Eastern District of Texas Judge Rodney Gilstrap just granted Ericsson’s unopposed motion to intervene in the suit that Daingean filed against AT&T Mobility this past March. Cellular services, particularly via the defendants’ respective 5G networks, are in the crosshairs here.

Atlantic IP Services plaintiff Daingean Technologies Limited has filed its first litigation, accusing AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:23-cv-00123) of infringing six patents through the provision of its cellular services, particularly its 5G network. In August of last year, Mitsubishi Electric (MELCO) assigned five patents to Daingean, that group joined by seven patents transferred to the plaintiff from FG Innovation Company Ltd. (f/k/a FG IP Innovation Company Ltd.) (FGI) in October. Patents from both sources have been on the move lately.