In recent months, RPX has flagged various approaches that patent litigants are taking to avoid the heightened corporate and third-party funding disclosure requirements in Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly’s courtroom. As shown by his stay in early August of a case filed by VLSI Technology LLC against Intel, and his more recent stay of an IP Edge LLC case against Amazon, parties attempting to circumvent Judge Connolly’s new standing orders should expect to face consequences.

Raindrops Licensing LLC, an apparent IP Edge LLC plaintiff, has initiated its first litigation campaign, suing Deezer (1:20-cv-01024), iHeart Media (1:20-cv-01025), Liberty Media (Pandora Media) (1:20-cv-01027), LiveXLive (1:20-cv-01026), and SoundCloud (1:20-cv-01028) over the provision of their music streaming platforms. The NPE’s infringement allegations focus on features for delivering personalized playlists incorporating targeted advertisements to users, with a single patent—generally related to providing customized radio broadcasts with “overlapping audio elements”—asserted in the new District of Delaware complaints.

Three April 2020 assignments from operating companies to NPEs were recently recorded with the USPTO—two from Xerox and subsidiary Palo Alto Research Corporation (PARC) to an IP Edge LLC affiliate, comprising over 130 US assets; and one from Huawei to an NPE with ties to EVS Codec Technologies, LLC, whose codec campaign asserting former VoiceAge patents remains active.