The fifth new litigation campaign that Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC began at the end of last month targets the provision of automotive GPS navigation systems and mobile apps that support the determination of alternate routes, the calculation of a particular route's cost, and the consideration of traffic conditions. Typhoon IP LLC sued iGo ( 1:21-cv-00083), Mitsubishi (Mitsubishi Motors America) ( 1:21-cv-00084), Pioneer (Pioneer Electronics (USA)) ( 1:21-cv-00085), and Voxx ( 1:21-cv-00086) in the District of Delaware and Namsung ( 6:21-cv-00190) in the Middle District of Florida, asserting in each complaint three more patents that IP Edge acquired from NPE Empire Technology Development LLC.
Empire Technology is a subsidiary of Allied Inventors Management, LLC (AIM), which was founded in 2015 for the reported sole purpose of monetizing patents received from Intellectual Ventures LLC (IV). AIM still reports on its website having thousands of IP assets and $600M from about 30 institutional investors, among them a number of leading endowments and foundations in the US; however, currently available USPTO assignment records identify just over 2,100 patent assets held. AIM has described its portfolio as covering "a wide spectrum of technology areas such as next generation materials, telemedicine, surgical devices, and information and communication technologies".
IP Edge picked up the asserted patents ( 7,881,861; 8,108,141; 8,838,370), through controlled-entity Xinctec Technologies LLC, in a December 2019 assignment of roughly three dozen assets from Empire Technology. That assignment was one of three deals with Empire Technology that month—one each through IP Edge entities Chimetech Licensing LLC, Crave Licensing LLC, and Xinctec. At least three more deals with Empire Technology followed in 2020, one each through Atestraw Licensing LLC and Syclone IP LLC in April 2020 and one through Mellaconic IP LLC in August 2020. Roughly a third of IP Edge's nearly three dozen campaigns launched since the beginning of last year have arisen from the patents flowing from Empire Technology.
Much of that litigation has landed in or around the Automotive market sector, which has seen a sharp rise in activity over the last 12 months or so. That trend is treated in more depth in the Market Sector Update chapter (subtitled "Connected Cars Drive NPEs to the Automotive Space") of RPX's Q4 in Review: 2020 Ends with Litigation Increase Despite Pandemic as Courts Tackle SEP Issues (January 2021).
IP Edge was formed in July 2015 by Texas attorneys Gautham (Gau) Bodepudi, Sanjay Pant, and Lillian Woung in the wake of IP Navigation Group, LLC (d/b/a IPNav)'s departure from the monetization scene (details here). It has been the top filer of NPE cases over the past several years; in total, since just before and then after inception, it has launched over 130 litigation campaigns, reliably conducted in file-and-settle fashion. The firm has never taken a case to trial, with litigation usually ending at the pleadings stage, or just after. It is worth noting, however, that IP Edge recently filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) (a first for the firm), arguing the presence of a domestic industry based on the US activities of the original source of the patents asserted in that campaign, Siemens. (As reported in more detail last week, Siemens has moved to quash a subpoena served on it by the IP Edge complainant in that investigation, Q3 Networking LLC.)
Each comprising a family of one, Typhoon IP's patents each issued to one or more named inventors shortly before assignment to IV in the 2008-2010 timeframe. The '861 patent generally relates to a networked GPS navigation system that supports the determination of alternate routes; the '141 patent, to determining the cost of one or more selected routes; and the '370 patent, to routing a vehicle based on traffic flow. As noted, the defendants are targeted over their respective provision of certain features within automotive GPS navigation systems (Mitsubishi, Namsung, Pioneer, and Voxx) or GPS navigation mobile apps (iGo). 1/27, iGo, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Voxx; 1/28, Namsung, Middle District of Florida.
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