In the second half of June 2016, RPX saw over 20 patent transfers to NPEs recorded with the USPTO. A number of those transactions involved patents that have been asserted in litigation against operating companies—some as recently as this past week.

Virtual Fleet Management, LLC (VFM) has filed affirmative infringement cases against Fleetilla (2:16-cv-00646) and US Fleet Tracking (2:16-cv-00647) in the Eastern District of Texas. The two defendants had each filed an earlier action seeking declaratory judgments of non-infringement and invalidity of a single patent (6,958,701), Fleetilla in March in Michigan (2:16-cv-11060) and US Fleet Tracking in April in Oklahoma (5:16-cv-00376). The ‘701 patent generally relates to detecting the approach of a specific vehicle or tracker, and the defendants are accused of infringement through provision of fleet tracking services.