Over the past month, Elite Gaming Tech, LLC has resuscitated the larger of its two litigation campaigns, suing Inventec (2:23-cv-00186), Pegatron (2:23-cv-00189), Ricoh (2:23-cv-00190), and Wistron (2:23-cv-00191) in April and Wiwynn (2:23-cv-00232) just this past week: Inventec, over the provision of computing products that include hard disk drives, solid-state hybrid drives, and dual-drive hybrid systems manufactured by Western Digital or Hitachi Global Storage Technologies; and for the remaining defendants, over computing products that include hard disk drives manufactured by one of the same two providers. This Alpha Alpha Intellectual Partners LLC campaign, begun in February 2020, had been dormant for roughly a year.

Recent months have seen yet more NPEs file litigation over patents received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), including Elite Gaming Tech LLC (d/b/a Elite Gaming Technology, LLC), which this past week fired off a dozen new suits asserting former IV patents. Meanwhile, USPTO records indicate that IV continues to assign patents to NPEs, including to at least one new entrant into the monetization business—and may be preparing for additional divestments in the near future.

Elite Gaming Tech LLC (d/b/a Elite Gaming Technology, LLC) has added an Eastern District of Texas case against MediaTek (2:21-cv-00098) to its sole litigation campaign, begun in February 2020. The Alpha Alpha Intellectual Partners LLC (AAIP) NPE asserts a single patent, generally related to bridge driver communications, with MediaTek accused of infringement through the provision of Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) that contain a bridge driver, including the MT6XXX, MT7XXX, MT8XXX, and Helios-series SoCs, as well as related software. The patent is among seven, each received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), that Elite Gaming Tech has asserted across its previous complaints, filed against ASUSTek, Giga-Byte Technology, Micro-Star, and Pegatron (ASRock).

Longhorn HD LLC has launched a third litigation campaign, suing Samsung (2:20-cv-00350) in the Eastern District of Texas over a single patent, acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) and generally related to an “information backup system”. The NPE targets Samsung over the provision of smartphones that support Smart Switch, a technology for “seamlessly” upgrading from one model to another. Concurrently, Longhorn HD has added three new defendants to its existing network security campaign, hitting Mitel Networks (Mitel Software Technologies) (2:20-cv-00350), NetScout Systems (2:20-cv-00349), and Trend Micro (2:20-cv-00348), also in East Texas, over a variety of networking hardware and software products.

The late 2019 peel off by Intellectual Ventures, LLC (IV) of more than 3,500 US assets to a batch of Georgia NPEs has ousted Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC from its long-held position as the top NPE assignee of IV divestitures. Meanwhile, as discussed in RPX’s Q1 in Review blog post, throughout the first quarter, NPEs continued filing new litigation asserting patents received from IV, hitting a broad range of targets, including over patents developed by major operating companies.

“Elite Gaming Technology, LLC” (EGT) has launched a new litigation campaign over patents apparently acquired from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), suing ASUSTek (2:20-cv-00059), Micro-Star International (MSI) (2:20-cv-00062), and Pegatron (ASRock) (2:20-cv-00060) in the Eastern District of Texas. The six patents asserted, of disparate origins, generally relate to computer hardware, with infringement allegations focused on long lists of computing devices (e.g., laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.), some based on their inclusion of Intel chipsets or hard disk drives supplied by Western Digital (directly, or by Hitachi Global Storage, which Western Digital acquired in 2012). EGT pleads that it is a Texas LLC at an address that suggests that its name is actually Elite Gaming Tech LLC, an NPE of familiar management.