NPE Litigation Targeting Networking Products Jumped Last Year

In 2024, the market sector that saw the most substantial increase in NPE litigation was Networking, which went up by 88% compared to the year before.  Other sectors that went up significantly last year were Financial Services (which went up by 81%), Automotive (up by 76%), and Media Content and Distribution (33%).

Much of that 2024 upswing in this sector came in the fourth quarter, including activity from a variety of different NPE plaintiffs. Among them were several NPEs controlled by prominent patent monetization firms and licensors, all filing litigation over various wireless networking technologies. In early October, Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC plaintiff Sovereign Peak Ventures, LLC filed a new case over Wi-Fi access points and routers in its ongoing wireless communications campaign, in which a large portfolio of patents originating with a prominent operating company are at issue. Also targeting various Wi-Fi products was Intellectual Ventures LLC, which tagged two airlines over the provision of in-flight Wi-Fi networks in early November; USTA Technology, LLC, a plaintiff linked to California monetization firm Oso IP, LLC, which added a complaint focusing on modems, routers, and smartphones with 802.11ac support in late October; and Encryptawave Technologies LLC, which is controlled by a firm managed by an IP industry veteran and aimed a pair of late November complaints against Wi-Fi products with WPA2 encryption. Later that month, Acacia Research Corporation also trained its sights on access points, routers, and other networking products—here focusing on the support of ZigBee mesh networking—in a new complaint filed by plaintiff Stingray IP Solutions, LLC, which launched its campaign in 2021.

Also joining the fray in Q4 were plaintiffs associated with notable individuals active in the patent assertion space. One was Nodal Technologies LLC, an entity linked to a patent monetization professional behind a growing number of NPE plaintiffs, which expanded an ongoing cellular networking campaign with a mid-December suit targeting cellular base stations. Moreover, Touchpoint Projection Innovations LLC, a plaintiff tied to a former inventor who in recent years has shifted to the assertion of patents acquired from others, opened up a second campaign in late November focusing on cybersecurity products with remote browser isolation functionality.

Several inventor-controlled plaintiffs also tagged the Networking sector in Q4—including XiFi Networks R&D, Inc., which launched a Wi-Fi 7 campaign in late December; VPN Technology Holdings, LLC, which kicked off a campaign targeting networking software platforms with VPN support in October and added a new complaint in December; and Swarm Technology, LLC, which in mid-December filed a new complaint targeting cloud platforms that utilize certain network management solutions, along with related networking hardware, in an ongoing campaign.

Additionally, Quicker Connections LLC—which is part of a growing web of plaintiffs with backing from the same litigation funder—initiated a campaign targeting high-speed networking products in late December. Quicker Connections is also the latest in a series of NPEs that have asserted patents originating with defunct networking equipment supplier Orckit (later Orckit-Corrigent).

See RPX’s fourth-quarter review for more on key patent litigation trends in Q4 and 2024.