For the sixth month in a row, a subsidiary of patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC has started a new litigation campaign. Kaldren LLC sued Citigroup (5:17-cv-00066), General Mills (5:17-cv-00067), J.D. Power and Associates (5:17-cv-00068), NeilMed Pharmaceuticals (5:17-cv-00069), Pioneer (5:17-cv-00070), Procter & Gamble (5:17-cv-00071), and SunTrust Banks (5:17-cv-00072), asserting a family of four patents (6,098,882; 6,176,427; 6,820,807; 8,281,999) generally related to encoding digital data in a machine-readable format. The new complaints target the use of QR codes in the defendants’ products and services.

IP Edge LLC affiliate MagnaCross LLC has filed a fresh round of lawsuits, capping off a wave of year-end litigation by other NPEs also controlled by the prolific monetization firm. The latest MagnaCross complaints target Avaya (2:16-cv-01461), Comtrend (2:16-cv-01462), EnGenius (2:16-cv-01463), Huawei (2:16-cv-01464), Juniper Networks (2:16-cv-01465), Siemens (2:16-cv-01466), and Sierra Wireless (2:16-cv-01467), accusing the companies of infringing a single patent (6,917,304) generally related to wireless data transmission through the provision of wireless access points or routers.

Three NPEs formed in Texas in June 2015, Pherah LLC, Mod Stack LLC, and Packet Tread LLC, have kicked off second waves in each of their litigation campaigns over the past month. In the first five days of July, Pherah filed 18 individual complaints, suing the same number of companies of infringing a single patent (RE44,652) through provision of interactive sales features on their websites. A couple of weeks later, Mod Stack asserted a patent (7,460,520) generally related to connecting telephone calls between legacy circuit-switched networks and newer packet-switched networks against the networking products of six defendants: AudioCodes (2:16-cv-00796), Calix (2:16-cv-00797), Metaswitch Networks (2:16-cv-00798), Mitel (2:16-cv-00799), Shoretel (2:16-cv-00800), and Synway Information Engineering (2:16-cv-00801). These new rounds of filings by Mod Stack and Pherah join a second wave of suits lodged by Packet Tread LLC earlier this month (see “Packet Tread’s Campaign Shifts to Unified Communication Systems“, July 2015).

Pherah LLC filed suit against five more defendants, bringing the total number of defendants in its sole litigation campaign to 20. The NPE has again asserted the RE44,652 patent against the interactive sales features available on the websites of Asana, Birst, Clarizen, Freshdesk, and Intuit. All 20 defendants have been sued in November 2015, with the earlier wave including cases against IBM, Microstrategy, TIBCO, Wrike, and ZenDesk.