Amid a Steady Pace of Litigation and Continued Patent Pickups, IP Edge Tries a Case at the ITC

As detailed in RPX’s latest quarterly report, prolific patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC has been responsible for a significant portion of new NPE filings this year—accounting for nearly 26% of the defendants added to litigation through the end of Q3 2021, including 27 new litigation campaigns. While the steadiness of its current filing pace (around 50 defendants per month) is a recent development, IP Edge has consistently been a top filer for much longer.

Indeed, IP Edge has been the most litigious NPE plaintiff each year since 2014, and it has filed dramatically more litigation than any other plaintiff from 2010 onward—adding around 3,700 defendants during that period, with Acacia Research Corporation holding a distant second at just over 1,300 defendants added.

The volume of this litigation over time is illustrated below. For most of this period, IP Edge has followed the typical playbook of a file-and-settle NPE, litigation volume aside—namely, asserting its patents through numerous, short-lived district court suits, rarely engaging in substantive litigation, and usually dismissing its cases during the initial pleadings stage.

However, this changed in the third quarter, when IP Edge plaintiff Q3 Networking LLC tried the alleged infringement of several former Siemens patents by respondents CommScope, HP Enterprise, and NETGEAR in an evidentiary hearing before the International Trade Commission (ITC). The case, filed in late 2020, appears to be IP Edge’s first action brought in that venue. For more on that litigation, see “IP Edge Continues Litigating Former Siemens Patents, Including Through Recently Concluded ITC Hearing” (August 2021). A final initial determination remains pending and is due on December 7, 2021.

Meanwhile, the past 12 months have seen IP Edge diversify its patent holdings through acquisitions from various sources—operating companies, individual inventors, universities, and other NPEs—and also form dozens of entities to assert them. In Q3 alone, IP Edge formed at least 18 new entities in Texas, with several subsequently launching new campaigns over patents received from Empire Technology Development LLC; France Brevets SAS; IP Bridge, Inc.; Monterey Research, LLC; or Technicolor.

See RPX’s third-quarter review for more on IP Edge’s impact on NPE filing levels, as well as other trends affecting patent litigation in Q3 and 2021 overall. Additionally, RPX members can find further analysis of the Q3 Networking campaign on RPX Insight.