Multiple litigation finance players announced large fundraises during the third quarter, signaling a continued interest in the asset class by institutional investors. Also during Q3, several NPEs began new campaigns financed by third parties, including an established litigation finance firm as well as a hedge fund.

Proven Networks, LLC has expanded its first litigation campaign with suits against Barracuda Networks (5:21-cv-02185) in the Northern District of California and Juniper Networks (6:21-cv-00305) in the Western District of Texas. The NPE targets—with three previously litigated patents and one patent new to litigation—various networking hardware and software products. Since launching its first litigation campaign in March 2020, the NPE has hit over a dozen defendants and asserted a total of seven former Nokia (or Alcatel-Lucent) patents.

Proven Networks, LLC has kicked off its second litigation campaign over former Nokia patents, suing Dell (VMware) (6:21-cv-00275) in the Western District of Texas and SAP (2:21-cv-00100) in the Eastern District of Texas. In each complaint, the plaintiff asserts a single patent generally related to providing “network alarms” through a “graphical user interface (GUI) of a Network Management System (NMS)”. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of software products that feature notification alerts; for VMware, over the vRealize Operations Manager; and for SAP, over its SAP Solution Manager.

Proven Networks, LLC has already added two 2021 cases to its litigation campaign over former Nokia patents, suing Broadcom (6:21-cv-00003) and Microsoft (6:21-cv-00022) in the Western District of Texas, where the remaining active suits from last year have been consolidated by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation for pretrial proceedings before District Judge Alan D. Albright. Two patents are asserted against Broadcom; three, against Microsoft, all familiar to the campaign.

Proven Networks, LLC has filed suit against Palo Alto Networks (2:20-cv-00389) in the Eastern District of Texas, a couple of months after its earlier cases—against Amazon, Arista Networks, Cisco, Dell (EMC), HP Enterprise (HPE) (Aruba Networks), NetApp, Solarwinds, and SonicWall—have been consolidated by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation before District Judge Alan D. Albright, in the Western District of Texas, for pretrial proceedings. Multiple former Nokia patents are at issue in this campaign, which has seen voluntary dismissals without prejudice in additional cases, against Extreme Networks and F5 Networks.

The latest two defendants sued by Proven Networks, LLC—NetApp (6:20-cv-00369) and Solarwinds (6:20-cv-00338)—have joined the Western District of Texas “wing” of the NPE’s litigation campaign, where Proven has already hit Amazon, Arista Networks, and Dell. The new defendants are accused of infringing former Nokia patents through the provision of the ONTAP operating system and the SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor product, respectively. Cases against Extreme Networks and F5 Networks are underway in the Northern District of California, as are cases against Cisco and HP Enterprise in the Eastern District of Texas.

Proven Networks, LLC has added a Northern District of California case against F5 Networks (3:20-cv-02521) to suits filed since early March, in various districts, against Amazon, Arista Networks, Cisco, Dell (EMC), HP Enterprise (HPE) (Aruba Networks), and Extreme Networks. Four of the five former Nokia patents, received from Provenance Asset Group LLC, are at issue in the new complaint, with F5 accused of infringement through the provision of certain BIG-IP networking products. Each of the prior defendants has yet to respond to the complaint filed against it.

Arista Networks (6:20-cv-00281) and HP Enterprise (HPE) (Aruba Networks) (2:20-cv-00095) have become the latest defendants sued in the growing campaign of Proven Networks, LLC. The NPE asserts the same two networking patents, both originating with Nokia and received from Provenance Asset Group LLC, in each new complaint, with infringement allegations targeting certain operating systems and switches and/or other networking devices (e.g., controllers, access points, etc.) of Arista and HPE/Aruba. Since it began a month ago, this campaign has hit half a dozen companies, including Amazon, Cisco, Dell (EMC), and Extreme Networks.

Proven Networks, LLC has added a Northern District of California suit against Extreme Networks (3:20-cv-02067) and a Western District of Texas suit against Amazon (6:20-cv-00266) to its sole litigation campaign, begun in March with separate cases against Cisco, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, and Dell (EMC), in the Western District of Texas. The new complaints assert a total of four former Nokia patents received from Provenance Asset Group LLC, three of which have been previously asserted by Proven Networks, and one appearing in litigation for the first time. The NPE targets Amazon over its AWS Transit Gateway, CloudFront content delivery networks (CDN) service, and ElastiCache in-memory data store and cache, and Extreme Networks over the Extreme XOS network operating system and various network devices that run it, including switches and edge devices, as well as Extreme Application Analytics, a platform that offers analytics for network application usage.

Earlier this month, Proven Networks, LLC filed its first lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas, accusing Cisco of infringing four former Nokia patents received from Provenance Asset Group LLC. The plaintiff has since amended its Cisco complaint to reduce to two the asserted patents there and has filed its second case, hitting Dell (EMC) (6:20-cv-00202) in a Western District of Texas complaint with the two patents still live against Cisco, as well as with a couple of others, all broadly directed to “data networking technology”. Proven accuses Dell of infringement through the provision of various networking devices and systems, including the Dell Networking Operating Software, certain infrastructure appliances, and devices that incorporate them.