Last month’s review of notable patent assignments considered the movement of assets from Avaya to Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC; from Level 3 Communications to Sandpiper CDN, LLC; from Seiko Epson to IPValue’s 138 East LCD Advancements Ltd. and Lumitek Display Technology Ltd.; from Transaction Security to a “BioCrypt Access”; from Fortress Investment Group LLC’s KIP Prod P1 LP to Prodea Automation LLC; from EMM Patents Ltd. to Empire IP LLC; from Siemens and Abdelsalam Helal to Rokiot USA LLC; and from Proxicom Wireless, LLC to Secure Communication Technologies, LLC. While a couple of these entities again feature prominently, this month’s review extends well beyond them to cover the movement of patents away from other operating companies, as well as within several repeat monetization players.

Recorded patent assignments recently made public reveal patents on the move, to an NPE that appears to be collecting assets from a familiar source as prior litigated patents run into PTAB trouble; to an entity managed by what appears to be a relatively new monetization operation standing up; to a recent entrant into the litigation funding space; to entities associated with a frequent plaintiff-side law firm in Texas; and to a host of other plaintiffs recently filing suit.

Commstech LLC has added a Central District of California case against Unizyx Holding (ZyXEL) (8:20-cv-00939) to the litigation campaign that the NPE began over roughly one year ago. The complaint again targets the provision of networking switches, including the Zyxel XGS3600 series switches, this time with just one of the six patents-in-campaign, received from Harris Corporation. Each of the cases filed has been short-lived, with the only other active suit filed against Fortinet in the Western District of Texas in mid-April.

That portfolio of US patents that RPX recently identified as having been assigned in October 2019 by Sharp Electronics, now a Hon Hai subsidiary, to LedComm LLC are on the move again. Three of them, generally related to making LEDs (light emitting diodes), have been asserted in litigation by LedComm, an entity associated with monetization firm IPValuation Partners, LLC (d/b/a IPVal), against Anker Innovations (Fantasia Trading) (5:20-cv-00421), Sengled (1:20-cv-00956), and TP-Link Technologies (8:20-cv-00424). LedComm assigned nine others to Heavy Duty Lighting LLC, a new Texas entity associated with a prominent plaintiff-side law firm in the state.