Growing Monetization Enterprises, Inventors, and Funded Plaintiffs Hit E‑Commerce and Software in Q3

The top market sector for NPE litigation in Q3 2024 was E-Commerce and Software, accounting for 25% of the defendants added to patent litigation campaigns. Networking saw the second highest amount of NPE litigation in the third quarter, followed by Financial Services, Consumer Electronics and PCs, and Mobile Communications and Devices.

NPEs targeting this sector in Q3 included multiple plaintiffs belonging to larger monetization enterprises. Among them were two NPEs linked to a familiar figure in patent monetization, a former inventor who in recent years has shifted to the assertion of patents acquired from others. One of those entities, Hyperquery LLC, returned to litigation in late July with a new round of suits targeting mobile app stores. The other, Torus Ventures LLC, revived a campaign of its own earlier that same month with a wave of new complaints against a long list of companies, primarily insurance companies and banks, over their websites’ support of the TLS 1.3 security protocol. Additionally, August saw Muvox LLC—one of a growing web of New Mexico plaintiffs represented by the same law firm—file its first litigation over music services with song recommendation features and AI-based music generation tools.

Also tagging this sector last quarter were a variety of inventors and inventor-backed plaintiffs, including several training their patents on products with features related to messaging. For instance, late September saw inventor Riccardo Vieri kick off a new campaign against systems for sending “automated and personalized” SMS advertisements. One day later, LaVoult.com, LLC began its own campaign focused on social media apps with “disappearing messaging” features. Another plaintiff zeroed in on social media, but with more of a video focus, was Weple IP Holdings LLC, which in August filed its first complaint over social media services that support viewing and posting text and video content. Additionally targeting short-form video services was inventor-controlled ART Research and Technology, L.L.C. (d/b/a ANZU), which in early August added a new case to the campaign it launched in May 2023.

Other notable campaigns focused on cloud storage in Q3. In late August, Daedalus Blue LLC opened up its third litigation campaign, asserting former operating company patents against online storage platforms with certain file management and authentication features. Earlier that month, Quick Vault, Inc. (d/b/a CloudVault) also revived its sole campaign with a new suit over cloud storage systems with data access management and usage tracking functionality.

Finally, Q3 saw two plaintiffs backed by the same prominent litigation funder continue to expand their existing litigation campaigns. In late July and mid-August, one of those plaintiffs—AGIS Holdings Inc. subsidiary AGIS Software Development LLC—filed multiple waves of new complaints targeting software products with location-sharing and messaging functionality. The other, RFCyber Corp., filed a fresh wave of complaints the month before over products with contactless payment functionality and mobile apps, as well as certain automobiles and related software.

See RPX’s third-quarter review for more on NPE litigation and third-party funding in Q3.