Acacia Research Corporation released its second quarter financials on August 16, reporting higher year-over-year licensing revenue and a number of settlements across multiple enforcement campaigns. While Acacia has completed fewer patent acquisitions so far this year (as compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020), a Q2 transaction has already given way to a new litigation campaign, begun earlier this month.

Semiconductor Connections LLC, a subsidiary of publicly traded NPE Acacia Research Corporation, has filed its first litigation, asserting a single patent, generally related to semiconductor fabrication, against TSMC (6:20-cv-00109) in a new Western District of Texas complaint. The plaintiff pleads that it is the exclusive licensee of the patent-in-suit, the most recent owner of which is identified in currently available USPTO assignment records as German research institution Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. At issue is TSMC’s provision of certain semiconductor devices, including the “Xilinx Virtex-7 2000T and H580T FPGAs manufactured by TSMC, and all TSMC semiconductor devices, integrated circuits, and products manufactured at the 28nm technology nodes or other process nodes in the same or similar manner”.