Just a few years ago, the Federal Circuit was locked in a frenzied back-and-forth with Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright over his restrictive handling of convenience transfers. Starting in 2020, the court reversed him repeatedly on that issue in response to mandamus petitions, identifying a series of recurring legal errors in his substantive handling of the applicable transfer factors and faulting his tendency to sit on transfer motions for months on end. While that mandamus wave became a trickle by 2023 as Judge Albright began to adjust his approach, the Federal Circuit has continued to scrutinize his rulings on this issue—doubling down on its active posture last year with the apparent support of the Fifth Circuit. A recent pair of mandamus rulings applying that latest precedent against DoDots Licensing Solutions LLC—one granting Samsung’s request for a writ ordering transfer by Judge Albright to the Northern District of California, and the other denying the patent owner’s request to undo his transfer of a parallel case against Apple to the same venue—confirms that the Federal Circuit is still watching closely.

Since late last year, RPX has flagged three batches of security agreements—each batch covering six different patent portfolios—all apparently involving the same third-party funder. Of the 18 funded patent portfolios, all but one has spawned new litigation campaigns, four having started last month. Meanwhile, public records provide hints as to the possible identity of the funder here—helpful hints, since the plaintiffs litigating in the Northern District of California or the District of New Jersey have apparently skirted, so far, respective disclosure requirements in those venues.

This past September, records made public by the USPTO revealed another batch of security interests in the patent portfolios separately held by six entities. Similar sets of security interests popped up last April, as well as late in 2021. After last week, of those 18 portfolios, 16 have now spawned litigation, over different subject matter, by various types of plaintiffs, all with ties back to the same apparent funder.

The litigation finance space saw fireworks in Q2, with Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly of the District of Delaware posting a pair of standing orders that heighten disclosure requirements in the second most popular district for patent litigation in the US—at least for cases assigned to Judge Connolly. While patent plaintiffs litigating in that courtroom are taking varied approaches to navigating (or, in some cases, avoiding) this evolving territory, RPX data and research indicate that the rate at which new third-party funded NPE campaigns are being initiated held steady in Q2.

Earlier this year, the first case of DoDots Licensing Solutions LLC, filed back in January 2018 against Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), was dismissed from the District of Delaware after the court granted the plaintiff’s motion to lift a stay that had been imposed to await the outcome of three inter partes reviews (IPRs), one of each of the three asserted patents. The PTAB declined to cancel any of the claims challenged. Now, DoDots has turned those three patents on Apple (6:22-cv-00533) and Samsung (6:22-cv-00535), each sued alongside Best Buy, this time in Western District of Texas complaints.

Throughout late 2021, RPX reported new litigation initiated by an apparently unrelated group of plaintiffs that had granted security interests in their portfolios to the same funder. Now, a second batch of security agreements, involving a different set of six patent holders, has been recorded with the USPTO—suggesting that a new wave of financed campaigns is coming. In fact, one of those campaigns began this week.

Last month, RPX noted the December 2017 transfer of 21 patent assets, broadly related to content delivery, from Strategic Intellectual Solutions, Inc. (SIS) to its subsidiary DoDots Licensing Solutions, Inc. The latter has now filed its first lawsuit, accusing Lenovo (Motorola Mobility) (1:18-cv-00098) of infringing one of those transferred assets through the manufacture and sale of certain desktop, laptop, and tablet computers, as well as certain smartphones. DoDots Licensing’s complaint recounts the rise and fall of the patent’s original developer, DoDots, Inc., through the “industry-wide dot com bubble burst” after that company sought to “commercialize a novel and completely unconventional approach to delivering content via the Internet in the form of connected widgets or applications called ‘Dots’ rather than via a web browser”.