The earlier-announced divestiture of patents from Innolux to a well-established monetization operation has taken shape in assignment records recently made public. Those records also reflect the continued divestiture of patents, along established pathways, into hands that suggest that monetization may at some point be in the works. Meanwhile, another batch of US patent assets has moved in the other direction, from monetization operation to operating company.

Daedalus Blue LLC has filed a District of Delaware complaint against Dropbox (1:24-cv-00998), alleging infringement of three former IBM patents through the provision of various products, including the Dropbox API, Magic Pocket storage system, and Nautilus search engine. At issue are features such as the support for file management and OAuth 2.0. The plaintiff pleads that the asserted patents have been licensed to “many companies”, including Amazon, Oracle, and Dropbox itself, but that “that license expired”.

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.

Recently recorded patent assignments made public by the USPTO contain noteworthy transfers to multiple plaintiffs now in litigation, including a new source of patents for Apex Beam Technologies LLC, a new source of patents for Pantech Corporation, and a familiar source of patent rights for Crystal Leap Zrt, this time assigning patents directly, though. Movement can also be seen from troubled patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC, as well as movement from various sources to patent broker Allied Security Trust. Take a look.

This past quarter, US patents continued to spread among NPEs, including to familiar faces in patent monetization, and while some of those recipients have yet to file any litigation, several did launch new campaigns during Q3, targeting players in the Networking market sector, wireless carriers, e-commerce or software companies, and device makers, among others.

In late 2019, NPE Daedalus Group LLC acquired roughly 600 former operating company patents, moving about 500 of those assets to Daedalus Blue LLC in January 2020. Daedalus Blue immediately filed its first litigation over patents from its received portfolio, suing SZ DJI Technology (a Chinese corporation) and DJI Europe (a “European” corporation) in the Western District of Texas over drones sold in the US under the DJI brand. At that point, it looked like direct assertion might be Daedalus Blue’s primary plan, but outbound assignments throughout 2020-2021 have presented an alternate approach, cutting the NPE’s holdings in half—and a remarkable order from District Judge Alan D. Albright, just unsealed in Daedalus Blue’s drone case, suggests why directly litigating can get . . . dicey.

Earlier this month, RPX reported the launch of new campaigns by apparent IP Edge LLC plaintiffs Noblewood IP LLC, Pixeltide Pathway LLC, and Wikeshire IP LLC—each asserting a former IBM patent. Assignment records made public this week suggest that more such litigation could be coming.

Daedalus Blue LLC has sued Microsoft (6:20-cv-01152) over the provision of a variety of products (i.e., Microsoft SQL Server and Azure-series products) and features (i.e., database shipping, log shipping, etc.) allegedly related to “cloud infrastructure, cloud management, network security, database management, data processing, and data management”. The plaintiff asserts five patents, two new to the litigation and three previously in suit, against Oracle. That case was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice in July, but a third suit is active in the campaign in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Daedalus Blue LLC has sued Oracle (6:20-cv-00428) over the provision of various products related to enterprise access management, storage and backup, and virtualization. The NPE has asserted five patents from among the over 500 US assets that associated entity Daedalus Group LLC acquired from IBM late last year and passed along to Daedalus Blue in late January. This campaign is the third to arise from those divested IBM assets, the second litigated by Daedalus Blue.

The bulk of a large tranche of patents that Daedalus Group LLC picked up from IBM last fall was assigned to Daedalus Blue LLC in late January. A day later, the remainder of those assets—many of them generally related to various aspects of self-driving vehicles—was transferred to Slingshot IOT LLC, a Maryland entity created one week earlier. Daedalus Blue has already begun litigating its portion of that portfolio; given its apparent origins, Slingshot IOT may not lag by much.