The launch of a new semiconductor campaign looks imminent, with USPTO records reflecting the recent assignment of former AMD/ATI Technologies patents to an NPE. Similar movement of an AMD/ATI portfolio last year—from the same assignee, Fullbrite Capital Partners, LLC, to a Delaware entity—was a precursor to NPE Vantage Micro LLC’s campaign, which to date has hit nine defendants over the provision of a wide range of controllers, integrated circuits, and processors.

RPX completed a number of deals in April 2020 on behalf of its patent risk management network. The acquisitions occurred within the E-Commerce and Software; Media Content and Distribution; and Semiconductors market sectors.

STMicro (3:19-cv-02858), one of the defendants hit in early October 2019 in Vantage Micro LLC’s new litigation campaign, has filed a complaint seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement of the same four patents—originally developed by either AMD or ATI Technologies (which AMD acquired in 2006)—asserted against it earlier. Vantage Micro sued nine defendants, three in the Eastern District of Texas and six in the Western District of Texas, STMicro in that latter group. STMicro’s new complaint—filed in the Northern District of Texas—alleges personal jurisdiction over Vantage Micro there based in part on a revealing assertion letter that STMicro attached for the court’s consideration.

Vantage Micro LLC, an entity formed in Delaware this past April, has launched a litigation campaign, suing Huawei (4:19-cv-00731), STMicro (4:19-cv-00732), and TI (4:19-cv-00733) in the Eastern District of Texas; and Cirrus Logic (6:19-cv-00578), MediaTek (6:19-cv-00580), Microchip Technology (6:19-cv-00581), NVIDIA (6:19-cv-00582), NXP (6:19-cv-00584), and Renesas (6:19-cv-00585) in the Western District of Texas. Six patents—originally developed by either AMD or ATI Technologies (which AMD acquired in 2006) and generally related to technologies ranging from detecting a display monitor to managing shared memory resources, from accessing graphics data via multiple memory channels to “tracking the movement of masks” during chip fabrication—are asserted in overlapping subsets across the new complaints, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of a wide range of processors, GPUs, integrated circuits, and controllers.