NPEs Linked to Familiar Monetization Professionals and Inventors Hit E‑Commerce and Software in Q1

The top market sector for NPE litigation in Q1 2024 was E-Commerce and Software, accounting for 33% of the defendants added to patent litigation campaigns. Consumer Electronics and PCs saw the second highest amount of NPE litigation in the first quarter, followed by Networking, Financial Services, and Mobile Communications and Devices.

A wide variety of plaintiffs hit this sector throughout the first quarter, including several linked to notable individuals active in the patent assertion space. Among them were multiple NPEs apparently associated with a familiar figure in patent monetization—a former inventor who in recent years has shifted to the assertion of patents acquired from others. Those plaintiffs included Media Key LLC, which in late February launched its first campaign over content and/or software update tools; and Webcon Vectors LLC, which two weeks prior kicked off its own campaign against communications platforms with certain videoconferencing features. Another pair of plaintiffs hitting this sector in Q1 are controlled by a second inventor and prolific plaintiff: Secure Ink LLC, which in early February filed its first litigation over web-based and mobile e-signature platforms; and Wyoming Technology Licensing LLC, which later that month added a new complaint to its ongoing campaign over virtual assistants with certain natural language processing and semantic analysis features. Additionally, in late March, Dialect, LLC filed a new case in the voice recognition software services campaign it launched in February 2023. Dialect is connected to yet another well-known figure in patent monetization who has been linked to other established NPE plaintiffs with somewhat rocky litigation histories—including Oyster Optics, LLC and Document Security Systems, Inc.

Also joining the fray were a variety of inventor-controlled plaintiffs. Those targeting this sector in Q1 included Audio Pod IP, LLC, which in late March initiated a funded campaign against certain audiobook services. In addition, Factor2 Multimedia Systems, LLC filed its first litigation in January and added new complaints in March—here, hitting user authentication features offered by social networking apps well as those used in various USPTO systems. The patents-in-suit come from a family previously asserted by its named inventors, Kamran Asghari-Kamrani and Nader Asghari-Kamrani, in a campaign that lost one patent to Alice and saw an unsuccessful attempt to force discovery on the issue of whether the plaintiffs had litigation funding. Factor2’s counsel has since publicly confirmed that the Asghari-Kamranis are behind this latest plaintiff as well. Other inventor-managed plaintiffs hitting this sector in Q1 included Taiwanese entity Laixion Network Technology Ltd., which filed its first litigation over social networking collaboration tools in late March; and Keysoft, Inc., which began its own campaign in late February with suits focusing on data management features found in certain advertising and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

See RPX’s latest quarterly report for more on other key patent litigation trends from Q1 2024.