During the first half of March 2016, RPX saw seven patent transfers to known NPEs recorded with the USPTO. At least one of those transactions involved a patent that has been asserted in litigation against operating companies.

Beneficial Innovation’s (BI) filed suit against Microsoft on the same day that it dismissed its remaining active litigation. The suit asserts two patents that relate to multiplayer Internet games and targeted advertising to Internet users (6,712,702, RE44,566); the ‘566 patent is a reissue of patent 6,183,366. Microsoft’s websites, including www.msn.com and www.bing.com are accused of infringing the asserted patents. The patents-in-suit were developed by BI and both the ’366 and the ‘702 patents have been asserted in BI’s previous litigation.

Google won a suit against Beneficial Innovations after intervening on behalf of customer defendants. In Google’s 2012 complaint, the ad platform provider argued that Beneficial breached the terms of a 2010 settlement agreement when it sued five of Google’s customers in 2011 (2:11cv00229). On January 23, 2014, a jury found in Google’s favor and awarded one dollar in nominal damages. Beneficial Innovations filed two suits against Google in 2007 and 2008. In 2010, Beneficial and Google entered into a settlement agreement that included a license to Google and its “partners” to three patents related to targeted advertising (6,712,702; 6,183,366; 7,496,943). The settlement agreement defined partners to include Google’s customers. Beneficial then went on to file suit in 2011 against 12 defendants, of which five were Google customers: Advance Publications, ALM Media Properties, American Media, Autotrader.com, and Demand Media.  01/14, Eastern District of Texas, 2:11cv00229

Beneficial Innovations [NPE] files suit against Advance Publications, Dell, Amazon, and nine others over two patents related to systems for playing games and displaying advertisements on a network. 4/20, Eastern District of Texas, 2:2011cv00229.