Around eight months after it acquired the former Yahoo! portfolio from Excalibur IP, Acacia has brought its first suits involving the assets against five companies: Workday, Target, Walmart, Deezer and Samsung Electronics. The cases were filed on Friday in the Eastern District of Texas with the NPE asserting between two and five patents in each court filing. The subsidiary which has brought the suits is called R2 Solutions.
Acacia acquired the portfolio of more than 2,500 assets in May last year just months after Excalibur and RPX had announced a licensing deal for the former Yahoo! rights.
One of the interesting things to note from Acacia’s opening litigation campaign is that it has targeted some big-name retailers. This highlights the extent to which it is looking to license the IP outside of the traditional high-tech space.
In a statement issued after it acquired the portfolio, Acacia talked of the potentially broad applicability of the grants, claiming they cover enterprise software, web search and analytics, online shopping and advertising, and audio/video streaming. Given the size of the portfolio, that suggests Acacia believes it has plenty of licensees to go after in addition to its first targets.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that Samsung Electronics is on that initial list. This indicates that despite having one of the most active licensing teams in the market, the South Korean tech giant did not take a licence to the rights either through the RPX deal, via a separate bilateral deal or through some other agreement. You can see the complaint filed against Samsung here.
Acacia’s acquisition of the Yahoo! portfolio was part of the NPE’s recent re-emergence as a monetisation force. This has seen a new management team take control, the acquisition of fresh portfolios, the formation of a partnership with Starboard Value and a sizeable biotech investment.
At the same time as announcing the Yahoo! deal, Acacia also revealed that it has picked up an additional stockpile of 150 patents from defence technology business L3Harris. Late last week the NPE also placed that IP into litigation with a pair of lawsuits also against Samsung Electronics and also in the Eastern District of Texas. Those cases were brought by Acacia’s Stingray IP Solutions subsidiary and together the two complaints involve seven grants.
At the time of the deal with L3Harris, the NPE talked up the wide applicability of the portfolio, saying it covers technologies related to WiFi and the IoT.