The last couple of years have seen Texas monetization firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC shift away from the acquisition of smaller families of patents from various sources toward the acquisition of large portfolios of assets—of former Kodak patents in March 2017, of former NEC patents in February 2018, and of former American Express patents in March 2018, all from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV), as well as a large portfolio of assets acquired directly from Panasonic beginning in October 2018. Dominion (through subsidiaries of its litigation arm Monument Patent Holdings, LLC) has asserted patents from those large-portfolio acquisitions in litigation, and while it has continued litigating assets acquired prior to this strategy shift, that activity has dropped off. Assignment records recently made public by the USPTO suggest that, in addition, Dominion has begun to shed some of the smaller families that it had acquired under its earlier model.

Mobile Networking Solutions, LLC (MNS), an affiliate of Texas monetization and advisory firm Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC, has revived a sleeping campaign over a family of physical computer storage patents. This past week MNS sued Alibaba (3:19-cv-00217) and Uber (3:19-cv-00219), training its infringement allegations on the use of cloud storage systems based on Hadoop, including its Distributed File System (HDFS), YARN, and MapReduce. MNS asserted patents from this family in a case brought in 2017 against Experian and MapR Distribution; the family was previously at issue in a much larger campaign litigated by Parallel Iron LLC (a subsidiary of IP Navigation Group, LLC d/b/a IPNav), which hit nearly 50 defendants between 2011 and 2014.

Mobile Networking Solutions, LLC (MNS) has kicked off a campaign asserting patents that have been previously litigated by Parallel Iron LLC (a subsidiary of IP Navigation Group, LLC d/b/a IPNav) against nearly 50 defendants. MNS, which is managed by Monument Patent Holdings, LLC, sued Experian and MapR Technologies on May 19, alleging infringement of three physical computer storage patents (7,197,662; 7,543,177; 7,958,388) through Experian’s data storage systems based on the MapR Distribution including Hadoop (8:17-cv-00884).

RPX took note, among the USPTO assignment records made available during the first half of March, of the transfer of one set of patents to Fortress Investment Group LLC, after the NPE assignor’s default on a prior financing agreement. Fortress intervened in the campaign asserting some of those patents, bringing the litigation to a relatively rapid close. RPX also took notice of the transfer of patents from multiple assignors to another entity, Knapp Investment Company Limited, a British Virgin Islands entity that has never filed suit. The records made available in early March also contain transfers to frequent plaintiffs, including affiliates of patent monetization firms IP Valuation Partners LLC and Monument Patent Holdings, LLC, as well as Blackbird Tech LLC and Empire IP LLC.

Falkon Treasures LLC, a newly formed NPE based in Texas, has initiated a litigation campaign asserting a single patent (6,233,682) generally related to distributing musical products over the Internet. The entity accuses Adidas (2:16-cv-00653), Barnes & Noble (2:16-cv-00654), Burlington Coat Factory (2:16-cv-00655), GameStop (2:16-cv-00656), and Sun Capital Partners (Limited Stores) (2:16-cv-00657) of infringing the ‘682 patent through websites that offer online gift cards and distribute both electronic and tangible products. While these lawsuits are the first filed by Falkon Treasures, the ‘682 patent has also been involved in two previous litigation campaigns: one started by Batarga LLC in 2015 and another waged by Sharing Sound LLC beginning in 2010.