Last week, RPX raised the possibility of IP Edge LLC’s practices—specifically, the naming of Texas residents with seemingly no discernible connections to patent monetization as managers or managing members of most of its LLCs—sliding under the judicial microscope. On September 12, District of Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly ordered a handful of such individuals to appear, in person, at evidentiary hearings to determine whether a group of apparent IP Edge plaintiffs has complied with his standing order regarding the disclosure of any third-party litigation funding. A similar order has been issued in multiple cases associated with Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP), Judge Connolly setting an October hearing to determine the accuracy of those plaintiffs’ amended corporate disclosure statements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, voluntary dismissals have been noticed across these cases, ending the court’s jurisdiction over the matters.

RPX data and analysis indicate that while approximately 85% of the patent litigation filed each year since 2005 has involved patents that originated with operating companies, the vast majority of defendants in those cases were sued by NPEs. This trend persisted through the first quarter of 2021, with new cases brought by a range of NPEs, including serial filers, a publicly traded NPE, and multiple third-party backed plaintiffs.

Through controlled plaintiff Westwind IP LLC, Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC has initiated a litigation campaign over a single patent, originally developed by an operating company but acquired last fall from Longitude Licensing Limited, an NPE subsidiary of IPValue Management (d/b/a IPValue). Westwind IP accuses Lenovo (1:21-cv-00113) and PNY Technologies (1:21-cv-00114) in separate District of Delaware complaints of infringing the “semiconductor integrated circuit” patent through the provision of memory drives and displays, respectively, hitting ADATA Technology (2:21-cv-00894), Fossil Group (3:21-cv-00203), and Transcend Information (8:21-cv-00214) in a trio of Central District of California complaints as well.