Artax LLC has sued Samsara (1:24-cv-01847) over the provision of various navigation products, including the Samsara Driver app, Samsara Connected Operations Cloud platform, and Samsara GPS Fleet Tracking system. The new complaint was filed in the Northern District of Georgia, which requires litigants to certify “a full and complete list of all other persons, associations, firms, partnerships, or corporations having either a financial interest in or other interest which could be substantially affected by the outcome of” the case. Artax has certified that there are no such interested parties, not even the monetization figure elsewhere identified as its managing member.

On January 31, 2024, FG Innovation Company Ltd. (f/k/a FG IP Innovation Company Ltd.) (FGI) divested a portfolio of 35 assets, including 30 issued US patents, to a Texas entity, which moved the portfolio to a second Texas LLC the next day. This FGI divestiture is the sixth to an apparent US NPE since May 2021, to date four of the prior five recipients having launched litigation over the patents received.

Artax LLC, an entity associated with patent monetization firm IPValuation Partners LLC (d/b/a IPVal), has expanded its sole litigation campaign over former TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) patents with a suit against Samsung (4:23-cv-01145) in the Eastern District of Texas. The three asserted patents, two of which are appearing in litigation for the first time, generally relate to tracking “position information” through wireless device communications technology or generating “contextual information of visual media”. Samsung is accused of infringement through the provision of smartphones that support Samsung SOS and Bixby Vision. 

5G IP Holdings LLC, an entity associated with Texas monetization firm IPValuation Partners LLC (d/b/a IPVal), has sued Apple (5:23-cv-03905) in a Northern District of California complaint that targets the provision of certain iPads and iPhones over their alleged 5G connectivity. The plaintiff asserts three patents originating with FG Innovation Company Ltd. (f/k/a FG IP Innovation Company Ltd.) (FGI), which is identified as a nonparty having an interest in the outcome of the litigation. Much of the new pleading is devoted to a purported timeline of contacts between the parties stretching from March 2022 through August 2023.

MDSP Technologies LLC has launched litigation in the Western District of Texas with separate suits against Alphabet (Google) (6:23-cv-00257), Apple (6:23-cv-00254), Garmin (6:23-cv-00255), Samsung (6:23-cv-00259), and TomTom (6:23-cv-00260). Asserted are two patents generally related to using “Doppler frequency observables” on a mobile device to determine speed, with the complaints targeting various devices (e.g., navigation devices, smartphones, and smartwatches) for the alleged incorporation of “Doppler aided navigation systems”.

IPValuation Partners LLC (d/b/a IPVal) plaintiff Recog IP LLC has added another round of suits in the campaign that it took over from fellow IPVal entities Recall Marketing LLC and Retrospection Marketing LLC in September 2021, suing Adidas (6:22-cv-01260)—which has since been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice—and Gap (6:22-cv-01261) in the Western District of Texas. The sole asserted patent generally relates to tracking and displaying information about the pages visited on a particular website (and then discarding that information upon departure), with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of e-commerce websites that support features for displaying recently viewed items.

Currently available USPTO assignment records contain two 2022 divestments from a subsidiary of Comtech Telecommunications, one to Artax LLC, executed in April; and the other to ALD Social LLC, in late July. Both of those recipients have now turned plaintiff, Artax suing TomTom (4:22-cv-00737) in the Eastern District of Texas over the provision of various navigation products, including the TomTom Go Navigation app and TomTom Routing API; and ALD Social hitting Alert Media (6:22-cv-00959), Alphabet (Google) (6:22-cv-00972), Apple (6:22-cv-00969), AT&T (6:22-cv-00970), Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) (6:22-cv-00973), and Verkada (6:22-cv-00975) in the Western District of Texas over the provision of their respective emergency communication solutions.

Recent months have seen a number of patent divestments by operating companies made public, with a range of assignees including frequent filers, publicly traded patent assertion entities, third-party funded plaintiffs, and newly formed NPEs. Divestment size has also varied widely—from a single transacted patent to thousands.

LedComm LLC, an NPE associated with monetization firm IPValuation Partners, LLC, continues to expand the number of retailers named as defendants in its litigation campaign asserting overlapping subsets of eight former Sharp Electronics patents. The most recent complaint, filed again in the Western District of Texas, hits Best Buy (6:22-cv-00841) over the sale of various LED lighting products, Best Buy joining active defendants Ace Hardware, Stichting Ingka Foundation (IKEA), Target, and Walgreens, each sued there earlier this year. One of those defendants has moved to transfer the case to the district where its base of operations is located, arguing that it, “[m]uch like other major retailers . . . is simply caught in the middle of a recent trend of plaintiffs like Ledcomm bringing suit against big-box retailers where venue may not otherwise be available for the actual component suppliers”.

Brightplus Ventures LLC, a plaintiff associated with Texas monetization firm IPValuation Partners, LLC (d/b/a IPVal), has launched litigation over the portfolio of LED and LCD backlighting patents received from IDEAL Industries Lighting, a subsidiary of IDEAL Industries this past March. LG Electronics (LGE) (2:22-cv-00170) was sued in late May, with TCL (2:22-cv-00194) added as a defendant afterward, both in the Eastern District of Texas. The cases follow the end of IDEAL’s own litigation, mid-appeal from a mixed decision from the International Trade Commission.