WAG Acquisition, L.L.C. has expanded its over decade-long litigation campaign with suits against Disney (Disney Streaming Services (DSS) (2:21-cv-08230) and Hulu (2:21-cv-08242) in separate suits, both in the Central District of California, and Netflix (6:21-cv-01083) in the Western District of Texas. The three patents-in-suit, asserted in overlapping sets, are broadly directed to media streaming. The plaintiff targets “pre-recorded and live programming, delivered to desktop, tablet, smartphone, smart TV, streaming stick, and other streaming device and media player platforms”, calling out, respectively, the Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix streaming platforms. This family of patents, now numbering over a dozen, has been in litigation (at least some of it funded by the litigation finance firm Woodsford Litigation Funding Limited) since February 2007.

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.

WAG Acquisition, L.L.C. has filed two more suits in its long-running litigation campaign, accusing Alphabet (Google, YouTube) (6:21-cv-00816) and Amazon (6:21-cv-00815) of infringing three media streaming patents. The plaintiff targets “pre-recorded and live programming, delivered to desktop, tablet, smartphone, smart TV, streaming stick, and other streaming device and media player platforms”, calling out, respectively, YouTube and “CloudFront CDN (Content Distribution Network) service, and their AWS Elemental MediaConvert, AWS Elemental MediaStore, and AWS Media Package software and services, which serve as a processing front-end thereto”. This family of patents, now numbering over a dozen, has been in litigation (at least some of it funded by the litigation finance firm Woodsford Litigation Funding Limited) since February 2007.