Recorded US patent assignments recently made public include several transfers of former operating company patents worth watching, including a transfer of more than 20 US assets into the hands of a newly-formed Delaware entity tied by an experienced monetization team that has run several litigation campaigns with the backing of third-party litigation funding; a transfer from the same source to another Delaware entity of uncertain management but possible connection to a prolific foreign monetization operation; and a transfer between two active NPEs of a couple of wireless communications patents received by one of them from an operating company back in April 2021. Those USPTO records also contain the divestiture of more than two dozen memory patents from an operating company and its acquired subsidiary to a recipient with suggestive ties.

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.

K.Mizra LLC has filed its first new campaign since 2021 and its first suit over patents received from Rambus last September. In a new Eastern District of Texas complaint, K.Mizra accuses Silicon Motion (2:24-cv-00101) of infringing six memory circuitry patents through the provision of SSD controllers that support certain Double Data Rate (DDR) (i.e., DDR3, DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR3, and/or LPDDR4) and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) (i.e., PCIe 3.0 or later) standards.

K.Mizra LLC has added a Western District of Tennessee case against Brother Industries (2:23-cv-02430) to its litigation targeting multifunction printers and toner cartridges. In the only other active case in this campaign, the Northern District of Illinois has pushed Konica Minolta’s deadline to respond into mid-September. Earlier suits against HP and Ninestar (Lexmark) ended in relatively quick noticed settlements, as did litigation against Toshiba, after claim construction. The first of the cases that K.Mizra has filed, across any of its multiple campaigns, against Cisco, to approach trial has just seen an indefinite continuance by Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright to “give [the] parties time to organize”.

In 2020-2021, K.Mizra LLC launched six litigation campaigns. Five of those had gone dormant—until last week, when K.Mizra revived one of them by filing a Northern District of Illinois case accusing Konica Minolta (1:23-cv-03367) of infringing four former Sharp patents through the provision of multifunction printers and toner cartridges. Two other defendants in this campaign, HP and Ninestar (Lexmark), exited via relatively quick noticed settlements, while litigation against a third, Toshiba, persisted through claim construction, several months after which a settlement was also noticed. The new case against Konica Minolta comes as Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright has docketed, sua sponte, a “set of standard limine rulings to be applied mutually to both parties” in the first case that K.Mizra filed, against Cisco, in the other active campaign. Trial there is set for August 1.

As IP Edge LLC continues its usual month-end onslaught of new filings—including a handful involving a former Panasonic patent, and nine more over former ZTE patents—USPTO records suggest that the monetization firm has several patent portfolios lined up for future assertion. Meanwhile, other IP Edge moves indicate that the firm’s monetization strategies may continue to evolve beyond short-lived cases filed and dismissed in bulk.

As recently reported by RPX in its Q3 in Review, NPE litigation targeting the Automotive sector increased during the third quarter by over 180%. Several familiar faces in the patent monetization space launched or expanded automotive campaigns in Q3, including multiple NPEs tied by public records to third-party litigation funders. While the number of defendants sued in automotive campaigns remains relatively low as compared to other busy sectors, the litigation activity of several established plaintiffs in this space reflects sustained NPE interest.

A week after launching its fifth litigation campaign, K.Mizra LLC has expanded its first, begun with a suit filed against Cisco last November, and initiated a sixth. As the plaintiff and Cisco enter claim construction before District Judge Alan D. Albright, K.Mizra has filed three complaints next door, in the Eastern District of Texas, one each against Broadcom (2:21-cv-00247), ForeScout Technologies (2:21-cv-00248), and Fortinet (2:21-cv-00249), targeting email and/or network security products. In another new complaint, also filed in East Texas, K.Mizra accuses GM (2:21-cv-00244) of patent infringement through the provision of “connected vehicle services” that use “GPS and cellular systems to provide emergency services, among other applications”.

K.Mizra LLC has kicked off a fifth litigation campaign, filing separate lawsuits against AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (2:21-cv-00241), Deutsche Telekom (Sprint; T-Mobile) (2:21-cv-00242), and Verizon (Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless) (2:21-cv-00243) in the Eastern District of Texas. The sole patent-in-campaign generally relates to determining the location of “user equipment” through “particle filtering”, with the defendants accused of infringement over the provision of “mobile location services” within their various cellular networks (e.g., CDMA, LTE, and/or 5G), characterized as “instrumental in pinpointing a mobile user’s location for the provision of a myriad of location-based services”.

On the heels of a settlement in a January 2021 case against Lexmark, K.Mizra LLC has filed a new complaint, this one asserting an overlapping set of former Sharp patents against HP (2:21-cv-00226). The plaintiff targets the provision of certain multifunction printers as well as toner cartridges. The lawsuit keeps K.Mizra’s number of active campaigns, waged either directly or through managed subsidiary Ginegar LLC, at four.