In 2015, seven NPEs controlled by Monument Patent Holdings, LLC filed over 40 patent infringement suits against operating companies—a marked increase compared to just nine cases lodged by two Monument entities (DataTech IP, LLC and Optical Tech IP) in 2014. Monument Patent Holdings was incorporated in Texas in December 2013 and is managed by four Dominion Harbor Group, LLC executives: David Pridham, Dominion’s CEO, formerly of IPNav; Matthew DelGiorno, Dominion’s president, formerly of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP; Conner Mowles, Dominion’s CFO, formerly of IPNav; and Lee Bradlee Sheafe, Dominion’s Chief IP Officer.

Preservation Wellness Technologies, LLC initiated its first litigation campaign by filing four suits asserting a single patent (7,640,271) against Allscripts (2:15-cv-01485), Athenahealth (2:15-cv-01486), Epic Systems (2:15-cv-01487), and NextGen Healthcare (2:15-cv-01488). The ‘271 patent relates to a system that allows both doctors and patients to access medical records. Each complaint alleges infringement by defendants’ systems for maintaining medical records. Preservation Wellness pleads as an express point of novelty called out during prosecution of the patent-in-suit a “two way firewall program” that allows the claimed system to limit patient access to certain portions of the medical records maintained. The complaints also explicitly plead that the claims do not seek to patent an abstract idea, do not preempt all ways of allowing secure, selective access to medical records, and do introduce purportedly novel inventive concepts (e.g. the “two way firewall program”), all in an apparent attempt to forestall an Alice-based challenge to validity.