Glad to be back in action after the holidays. The week ending December 25, 2020 there were 81 new patent lawsuits filed in the United States. The following are the new patent lawsuits filed impacting publicly traded companies:
The one to watch is the Canopy Growth Corp v GW Pharm filed in the Western District of Texas. Canopy Growth alleges in their filed complaint that GW Pharm infringes on their 10,970,632 patent, which is related to Canopy’s CBD extraction process in order to make their main drug Epidiolex. GW Pharm has reported $378M in 2020 sales through the three quarters of 2020.
The week ending December 31, 2020 there were 82 new patent complaints filed with the following impacting publicly traded companies:
The new litigation campaign I am watching is the Ocean Semiconductors LLC v 10 different semiconductor companies. Five of them are versus publicly traded companies listed above. The campaign also includes complaints versus Renesas, MediaTek, Huawei, and Infineon. The patents being asserted were originally from AMD and were assigned to Fullbrite Capital Partners LLC.
The Week ending January 8, 2021 was a quiet week post holidays with 30 new patent complaints. Only one appears to impact a publicly traded company:
There was some big news over the last few weeks:
Wilan ($QTRHF) acquired a patent portfolio of nearly 2,000 patents from MediaTek. The portfolio covers power management ICs, RF ICs, embedded and NFC microcontrollers. The portfolio will be monetized out of Wilan’s Xueshan Technologies Inc subsidiary.
On Seekingalpha.com, author Jenks Jumps wrote an excellent article about Acacia Research Group ($ACTG) and their biotech portfolio they bought from the UK Woodford liquidation.
My friends at IAM Magazine have done an excellent job covering the Ericsson ($ERIC) v Samsung FRAND patent suit in the Eastern District of Texas.
On January 6, 2021 the sealed Final Judgment was entered in the VirnetX (VHC) v Apple ($AAPL) trial. The Judgment is currently sealed and a redacted version is set to be released by close of business January 15, 2021. The order denied Apple’s motions for a retrial and granted VirnetX’s motion for Entry of Judgment and for Equitable and Statutory relief. We will see if HJ Schroeder increases the $503M damages award. Will VirnetX collect the damages award with the state of the Inter Partes Reviews currently on appeal is the $500M question.
The US Patent Office published new applications:
December 24, 2020 - 7,940
December 31, 2020 - 8,759
January 7, 2021 - 7,260
The US Patent Office granted new patents:
December 22, 2020 - 5,155
December 29, 2020 - 7,668
January 5, 2021 - 7,676
2021 is sure to bring many big patent events. Stay tuned. Thank you everyone for all of the support.
Hi David. I have been following you on Twitter from the perspective of looking for event driven investments. Congratulations on the Substack! Do you have an opinion on NTIP? I have owned it, sold some and am thinking of buying some more. Downside seems limited and the stake in the vaccine company is a nice wildcard. Thanks. Eric