VoiceAge EVS LLC has filed its latest lawsuit, against OnePlus (2:25-cv-00460), in the Eastern District of Texas, not in Delaware where it filed its prior suits in this campaign, against HMD Global, TCL, Lenovo, Apple, and Xiaomi (in that order). Only the case against HMD remains open. Filed in October 2019, that case has been set for trial in mid-March 2027 by District Judge Gregory B. Williams. Against OnePlus, VoiceAge EVS asserts the same five patents previously in suit, joined by one more, all described as “cover[ing] foundational audio coding technologies for the EVS codec” and as having been “declared essential to the EVS Standard by way of Intellectual Property Rights (‘IPR’) Declarations to one or more of 3GPP’s organizational partners”.

A recent review of assignments of US patent assets made public by the USPTO reveals that the divestiture from Shanghai Langbo Communication Technology previously reported is bigger than at first blush. Such USPTO records also contain transfers of a signal transmission portfolio to a company with plans “to license its IP, look for potential partnerships, and be open to attractive acquisition possibilities”; of an image processing portfolio to a Texas entity held indirectly by an IP figure touting experience through “every stage of the patent process from initial invention to patent prosecution to exercising patent rights through licensing, sale and litigation”; and of a wireless communications portfolio to a licensing executive leaving one firm to set up his own.

Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright has denied competing motions for summary judgment over Intel’s license defense based on Fortress Investment Group LLC’s 2020 acquisition of Finjan, Inc. Per the short order, “The matters presented before the Court are complex and ought to be resolved on a full plenary trial record, to assure a just result and facilitate appellate review”. The order comes after Judge Albright held a hearing over the motions earlier this month and after plaintiff VLSI Technology LLC filed a motion for leave to submit supplemental briefing regarding “new fact arguments”, one of which is that, per Intel, Fortress adopted the settlement agreement with Finjan through its acquisition “due diligence”.

Entropic Communications, LLC has filed an Eastern District of Texas complaint against Sagemcom Broadband (2:25-cv-00379). There, it targets the provision of cable modems, gateways, or television set-top boxes that “include or are based on the Broadcom BCM3390, BCM33843, or BCM3384 SoCs” and are allegedly “sold to providers of cable telecommunications and television services” such as Charter Communications, Comcast, and Cox Communications. Central District of California District Judge John W. Holcomb presides over existing, consolidated litigation against Comcast and Cox, which is in limbo after the grant of a stay to Comcast in light of certain PTAB proceedings was conditioned on Cox’s agreement to be bound by estoppel arising from those proceedings. Cox did not so agree.

The first quarter of 2025 also saw several notable patent assignments appear in publicly available USPTO records, including another batch of patents moving from an “IP-centric startup company”, this one to an entity managed by folks tied to Fortress Investment Group LLC, as well as a portfolio moving from a defendant to the plaintiff that sued it last March and a portfolio moving from a named inventor’s vehicle to a publicly traded assertion entity.

This Wednesday, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright is scheduled to hear competing summary judgment arguments from plaintiff VLSI Technology LLC and defendant Intel ahead of a potential trial over Intel’s license defense based on Fortress Investment Group LLC’s 2020 acquisition of Finjan, Inc. VLSI asks Judge Albright to rule that Intel has no license; Intel asks the court to rule in its favor on most issues, leaving for a jury only whether VLSI and Finjan are under Fortress’s common control. Intel has also challenged VLSI’s planned presentation from seven experts, arguing that their “public policy and legal opinions” are impermissible. Meanwhile, Northern District of California Judge Richard Seeborg just granted to Palo Alto Networks summary judgment of noninfringement of the last three patents from Finjan’s 2014 case against it, leaving just one stayed case in Finjan’s long-running litigation campaign, pending any appeal.

As the USPTO continues to release assignment records, the announced acquisition by Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC of a “diverse, high quality patent portfolio” from Dolby Laboratories has taken further shape, with a notable asterisk. Those records also contain transfers to a new apparent Fortress Investment Group LLC entity and to a second Texas entity formed over the past couple of months by a figure formerly much more active in the patent monetization space.

Eastern District of Virginia Judge M. Hannah Lauck has remanded back to state court a case filed there by VLSI Technology LLC, a Fortress Investment Group LLC plaintiff, against Patent Quality Assurance (PQA). PQA had removed the suit to federal court, but Judge Lauck has agreed with VLSI Technology that none of its claims raise a federal question, much less a substantial federal question. The remand back to state court moots several pending motions before Judge Lauck, including a PQA motion to file under seal its corporate disclosure, a document that would have (finally) identified its “owners or members”.

Recorded patent assignments recently made public reveal a new Texas entity operated by a familiar and funded monetization team picking up a semiconductor portfolio; a networking entity previously backed by Fortress Investment Group LLC moving a traffic management portfolio onto the market; an IoT provider transferring all of its US patent assets during a “controlled recapitalization”; a Texas entity tied to an now-established operation topping off a prior acquisition, here with a video communications patent and a network collaboration patent; and the continued Delaware-to-Texas flow of patents by a named inventor awaiting the lift of a Northern District of California stay, that lift increasingly likely given a long list of inter partes reviews (IPRs) and ex parte reexaminations (EPR) seeming to draw to an end.

Radian Memory Systems LLC (RMS), a plaintiff tied to Fortress Investment Group LLC, has sued Samsung (2:24-cv-01073) over the provision of solid state drives and related products that support Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) technology. In the new Eastern District of Texas complaint, RMS asserts seven memory technology patents developed at Radian Memory Systems Inc. (RMSI), which it characterizes as having “pioneered a new paradigm for managing flash storage media that it called Cooperative Flash Management (‘CFM’)” but as having been “cast out by the industry”.