In mid-MayRPXreportedon the connection between a bushel of the Georgia LLCs in receipt of thousands of patent assets divested byIntellectual Ventures LLC(IV) to that state's monetization firmIPInvestments Group LLC (d/b/a IPinvestments Group). Now, several of those LLCs have filed suit, withCDN Innovations, LLCopening up a wireless communications campaign;CommWorks Solutions, LLC, networking litigation; andDigiMedia Tech, LLC, a digital camera campaign. It may not be long before the others pick patents to assert in litigation of their own.
Those others includeHanger Solutions, LLC;DataCloud Technologies, LLC; andKioba Processing, LLC. Together, all six entities received over 3,800 patents from IV in November and December of last year, with the vast majority of them assigned to Hanger Solutions. That LLC has already passed along 73 US assets (and a number of foreign counterparts in Asia and Europe), in a February 2020transaction, to21ST CENTURY GARAGE LLC(21st Century Garage), an NPE formed in Georgia on February 11, 2020. As noted earlier this month, 21st Century Garage has already begunlitigatingsome of those assets, hittingHyundaiwith an Eastern District of Texas suit filed on May 11. In doing so, the NPE joined a growing list of plaintiffs suing companies operating in the Automotive market sector, tripling the number of such cases in early 2020 over activity in the same sector last year. For further details on this development, see "Early 2020 Sees Cars Pull Closer to Being the New Phones" (May 2020).
IPinvestments Group was founded in Georgia in September 2005 by president & CEO Michael McLaughlin, an industry veteran with a finance background coming to IPinvestments Group after earlier positions with monetization/licensing firmsInteCap(1998 through 2003) andIPAC(2003 through 2005, subsequently renamedScenera Research LLC). IPinvestments Group identifies Ryan E. Strong as its COO and cofounder; Strong also reports training in finance and accounting, with past positions with InteCap and IPAC. The firm's CTO is Bill Hartselle, a Georgia lawyer with past licensing and patent positions withANTEC(nowARRIS) andBell South.
IPinvestments Group has been acquiring and litigating patents from IV over the past couple of years, including throughFireNet Technologies, LLCSynchView Technologies, LLCUniversal Transdata, LLC, andVisible Connections, LLC, among others. The relationship appears to have deepened last year, with that large divestiture, which itself is part of a larger trend, covered in depth in thisreporton the accelerating divestiture and subsequent assertion of patents held by IV.
Insight also features reporting on the new cases filed by CDN Innovations (here), CommWorks Solutions (here), and DigiMedia Tech (here).
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