April cases against Ace Hardware (6:22-cv-00419) and Walgreens (6:22-cv-00420) join March suits filed against Stichting Ingka Foundation (IKEA) (6:22-cv-00302) and Target (6:22-cv-00301) in the LED lighting campaign that LedComm LLC began roughly two years ago. The IPValuation Partners LLC (d/b/a IPVal) plaintiff has asserted eight former Sharp Electronics patents, in overlapping subsets, across the defendants in this litigation, which has previously hit additional retailers (e.g., Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart) as well as manufacturers (e.g., Anker Innovations (Fantasia Trading), Sengled, Westinghouse).

That portfolio of US patents that RPX recently identified as having been assigned in October 2019 by Sharp Electronics, now a Hon Hai subsidiary, to LedComm LLC are on the move again. Three of them, generally related to making LEDs (light emitting diodes), have been asserted in litigation by LedComm, an entity associated with monetization firm IPValuation Partners, LLC (d/b/a IPVal), against Anker Innovations (Fantasia Trading) (5:20-cv-00421), Sengled (1:20-cv-00956), and TP-Link Technologies (8:20-cv-00424). LedComm assigned nine others to Heavy Duty Lighting LLC, a new Texas entity associated with a prominent plaintiff-side law firm in the state.