In the past two months, three NPEs with ties to Robert A. Westerland—IP Communication Solutions, LLC, Content Aggregation Solutions LLC, and Nova Intellectual Solutions, LLC—have filed nearly 20 cases against a total of 18 operating companies, including Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, Huawei, HTC, LG Electronics, Sharp, Sony, and ZTE. These NPEs’ principal place of business, according to their complaints, is a luxury condominium in Dallas, Texas owned by Westerlund—a well-known patent attorney, patent broker, and inventor connected to NPEs that have litigated both patents issuing to Westerlund and patents issuing to others but subsequently acquired for assertion.

Innovative Wireless Solutions  filed a new wave of suits targeting 14 wireless router and networking companies, Adtran, Arris, Aruba Networks, Belkin, Buffalo Technology, Engenius Technologies, Fortinet, IC Intracom, Motorola Solutions, Netgear, SMC Networks, Ubiquiti Networks, Western Digital, and Zoom Telephonics. In April of this year, Innovative Wireless filed 41 suits targeting hotels and restaurant chains over wireless Internet services. The three patents-in-suit (5,912,895; 6,327,264; 6,587,473) were part of a portfolio of Nortel patents owned by Zhone. In September 2011 those patents were transferred from Zhone to Patent Business Development, several months after the entity acquired a portfolio of patents formerly owned by Paradyne. Robert Westerlund is the named correspondent on the assignments of the three patents-in-suit as he is on assignments of the Paradyne portfolio of patents. Similar to the Paradyne portfolio, the patents-in-suit passed through Clearwater Innovations before they reached Innovative Wireless in March 2013. 11/6, District of Delaware, 1:13cv01856, 1:13cv01857, 1:13cv01858, 1:13cv01859, 1:13cv01860, 1:13cv01861, 1:13cv01862, 1:13cv01863, 1:13cv01864, 1:13cv01865, 1:13cv01866, 1:13cv01867, 1:13cv01868, 1:13cv01869