In the first half of December 2015, RPX saw 14 patent transfers to NPEs recorded with the USPTO. A number of those transactions involved patents that have recently been asserted in litigation against operating companies.

In a preliminary response to a petition for IPR filed by RPX Corporation, patent owner Cedatech Holdings, LLC noted that it had disclaimed all six claims of its 7,707,591 patent. Cedatech asserted the ‘591 patent in litigation brought against Apple, Dell, and HTC in July 2014, adding cases against HP and LG Electronics (LGE) to the campaign in November 2014. The ‘591 patent relates to a system for integrating an audio or video (AV) program with another application program so that users can access AV program functionality as if natively provided by the other application. The focus of Cedatech’s sole litigation campaign had been smartphones and tablets, specifically those with speech recognition features.

Cedatech Holdings, LLC filed its second round of suits, suing Hewlett-Packard and LGE, in the same campaign it began earlier this year. One patent is asserted in the campaign, and it relates to embedding audio or video within an application (7,707,591). Speech recognition programs on devices made and/or sold by the defendants are accused of infringing the patent-in-suit. Similar products were accused in Cedatech’s first round of filings, against Apple, Dell, and HTC. Those suits, filed in July of this year, are still active. Cedatech was incorporated in May 2014 and lists a virtual office used by other NPEs, including Droplets, Innovative Wireless Solutions, and RPost, as its address. According to USPTO records, Cedatech owns a second patent not asserted in litigation (7,937,443). Both patents originated with Talkway, Inc. and were assigned to Cedatech in July 2014. 11/10, Eastern District of Texas, 2:14cv01023, 2:14cv01024