Recorded patent assignments recently made public reveal patents on the move, to an NPE that appears to be collecting assets from a familiar source as prior litigated patents run into PTAB trouble; to an entity managed by what appears to be a relatively new monetization operation standing up; to a recent entrant into the litigation funding space; to entities associated with a frequent plaintiff-side law firm in Texas; and to a host of other plaintiffs recently filing suit.

This past March, RPX noted two January 2020 assignments from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) to Innovative Silicon Solutions, LLC, an NPE formed in Texas in late 2019 by a veteran of several notable monetization firms. Innovative Silicon had yet to file suit. Since then, the company has changed its name—to “HD Silicon Solutions LLC”—and kicked off its first campaign over seven of the dozen US patents received. Microchip Technology (6:20-cv-01092) is accused of infringing those patents, which are generally related to various aspects of electronic circuits, including field-programmable gate array chips (FPGAs), integrated circuits (ICs), and processors through the provision of a wide variety of computing devices, including certain FPGAs, ICs, microcontrollers, and microprocessors.

Two January 2020 assignments from an affiliate of Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV) to Innovative Silicon Solutions, LLC, an NPE formed in Texas the prior month, were recently recorded with the USPTO. The transacted portfolio includes patents originating with Cypress Semiconductor or STMicro.