In the first half of August 2016, RPX saw five patent transfers to NPEs recorded with the USPTO. Assignees include IP Valuation Partners LLC—affiliates of which have collectively filed nearly 50 patent infringement suits to date—and France Brevets. Also, a newly formed NPE controlled by the manager of Multiplayer Network Innovations, LLC, which in 2014-2015 sued over 25 operating companies, received a patent from Rovi Corporation.

Litigation affiliated with IP Valuation Partners LLC shows no signs of abating in 2016. Two Texas NPEs with managing member Jonathan Szarzynski, a principal of IP Valuation, have filed suit over the past week. PositionTech LLC has turned its solo case against The Walt Disney Company into a campaign with a second filing asserting the same two information management patents. Meanwhile, eHierarchy LLC has filed a case against Microsoft (2:16-cv-00564) over data access and display patents that issued to their named inventor, an apparent, one-time Microsoft employee.

Since April 2015, seven NPEs managed by two partners at IP Valuation Partners LLC have collectively filed over 30 patent infringement suits against operating companies. Six of these NPEs were incorporated in Texas in 2015. (Gene Reader LLC was incorporated in Texas in 2014.) Each NPE is managed by IP Valuation’s Jason Bourgeois (a former patent agent trained in biomedical engineering) or Jonathan Szarzynski (a former patent licensing director at IPNav). Spangler Law P.C. represents all seven of the NPEs in litigation.

In the second half of October 2015, RPX saw five patent transfers to NPEs recorded with the USPTO (roughly half the number observed in the first half of the month). One of those recently recorded transactions has already resulted in new litigation filed by an NPE affiliated with IP Valuation Partners LLC.