Non practicing entities brought 46 of the 63 suits, or 73.0%, a share close to software and internet. The patents behind the other 17 do not look the way operating company patents look elsewhere.
Operating companies here assert patents a median 11.6 years after grant, against 6.4 for the non practicing side. Their average family runs 25.9 members against 12.9, and their median family is 27. On every structural measure the operating company column looks more like a legacy licensing portfolio than the non practicing column does.
The explanation sits in who those companies are. Asserters on that side include the licensing arms of businesses holding broadcast and video portfolios built over decades. They have products, so the classification is accurate, and their filing behavior resembles portfolio monetization more than competitive defense.
What this cannot tell you. The dataset records filings, parties and asserted patents, not results, so settlement rates, IPR institution rates and dismissal figures all fall outside it. Nothing here describes what a matter costs to defend or how it ends.
Using this on a live matter
Three questions answerable from public records in the first hour after a complaint or demand letter arrives, and what each answer usually means in this industry.
Does the asserter have a licensing program?
Entity type sorts this industry less cleanly than it sorts the others. Operating company assertions here carry a median family of 27 members and reach court 11.6 years after grant. Establishing whether the asserting entity licenses its portfolio as a business tells you more about the matter than establishing whether it ships a product.
Is the claim about delivery or about commerce?
Video and transmission classes hold 67 of the 120 classified assertions. Commerce and business method claims hold a further 23. A patent reading on advertising placement or subscriber billing sits in a different population from one reading on encoding or streaming, and the two draw different asserters.
How many independent claims?
Operating company assertions here average 5.6 independent claims and 33.1 total. Each independent claim is a separate construction and a separate invalidity analysis, so claim count drives the cost of the first six months more than the patent count does.
Who is doing the asserting
of cases came from entities that hold patents without building products.
That sits just below software and internet at 74.6% and well above consumer goods at 42.9%. Every case in this window carried a classified asserter, so the headline figure and the all filings figure are the same number.
Twenty four distinct non practicing entities filed the 46 cases on that side, and the largest brought five. The 17 operating company cases came from a shorter list, with two companies filing three times and one filing twice.
No case in this window was left unclassified, so 73.0% is both the classified share and the share of all filings.
What a defensive portfolio reaches
A portfolio held for deterrence works by giving the other side something to lose if it is sued back. The mechanism needs an opponent whose own products can infringe.
media companies sued here appear anywhere in this data as an asserting party.
The 24 non practicing entities that filed here sell nothing, so a countersuit on the defendant's own patents has no target across 73.0% of the docket. Invalidity and non infringement defenses work normally against them.
The operating company quarter is only partly reachable. An asserter that runs a licensing program has products to countersue, and it also has a portfolio built to absorb that response. A counterclaim against a company holding a median family of 27 members meets a different kind of resistance than one against a competitor with a single design patent.
Deterrence bears on the 27.0% of matters operating companies bring, and the value it carries there is lower than the same share would be worth in consumer goods or semiconductors.
Who is getting sued
One company with market capitalization above $200 billion absorbed a single case. 34 companies with no public listing absorbed 38 between them, or 60% of the industry total, and small listed companies under $2 billion absorbed a further 12.
Cases by defendant size
63 cases across 57 distinct media and entertainment defendants.
Private companies and small listed companies together absorbed 50 of the 63 cases, or 79%. The large studios and platforms whose names define this sector are not where the volume sits. Streaming services, advertising technology firms and production companies below public market scale carry most of it, and 57 defendants absorbed 63 cases between them.
What they assert on
Most asserted patents carry a primary CPC subclass. Three classes account for 75% of everything brought against media defendants, and the largest of the three is the one operating companies dominate.
Asserted patents by technology area
120 patents with a primary CPC classification, split by asserting party type.
H04N35.0% of asserted patentsH04L20.8%G06Q19.2%A63F8.3%G06F7.5%G06T3.3%Two kinds of asserted patent
Patents asserted by non practicing entities differ from those asserted by operating companies on attributes visible in the public record.
| Attribute | Asserted by NPEs | Asserted by op. co. | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median years from grant to suit | 6.4 | 11.6 | op. co. older |
| Median years from priority to suit | 14.1 | 22.1 | op. co. older |
| Average simple family size | 12.9 | 25.9 | op. co. 2.0× |
| Median simple family size | 8 | 27 | op. co. 3.4× |
| Average total claims | 21.0 | 33.1 | op. co. 1.6× |
| Share acquired rather than original | 58.6% | 55.8% | level |
Two years of filings
Cases filed per quarter against media and entertainment defendants
By asserting party type. 2026 Q3 is partial and the data ends 10 August 2026.
Volume rose from 6 cases in 2024 Q3 to 25 in 2026 Q2, and 2026 Q2 alone holds 40% of the trailing twelve month total. Non practicing filings supplied 17 of those 25. Operating company filings moved between one and eight a quarter with the peak in the same quarter, so both sides rose together at the end of the period rather than one displacing the other.
Recent assertions by operating companies
Seventeen operating company suits landed in the window and three were classified as disputes between direct competitors. Two of the three were brought by the same asserter.
- Competitive
Tait Towers Manufacturing, LLC v. WiCreations BVBA
1 patent · live event staging and automation · neither party is public
- Competitive
AlmondNet, Inc. v. Epsilon Data Management, LLC
3 patents · advertising targeting · the asserter's second filing in the window
- Competitive
AlmondNet, Inc. v. Criteo Corp.
4 patents · advertising targeting · same asserter, different defendant
One asserter brought two of the three competitor filings, against two defendants in the same advertising technology segment, three months apart. Competitive relationship labels come from model classification in the source data rather than from court findings.
Portfolio attributes across all assertions
- Acquired patents
- All industries: 49.9%
- Median grant → suit
- All industries: 6.3 yrs
- Median priority → suit
- All industries: 13.1 yrs
- Continuations
- All industries: 44.5%
- Avg simple family
- All industries 17.3 · median here 9
- Avg independent claims
- 26.2 total claims average
Media assertions reach back a median 19.3 years from priority date against a 13.1 year norm. Continuation share runs seven points above average. The picture is of long lived families with live chains, asserted late, from both sides of the entity divide.
Most active asserters in window
Entities that do not practice
- Videotex LLC
- ContentNexus LLC
- Err Content IP, LLC
- Culminate LLC
- DynaMuse LLC
Operating companies
- AlmondNet, Inc.
- DISH Technologies LLC
- Nokia Technologies Oy
- ADT, LLC
- Alpha Modus, Corp.
The second entry combines two cases filed as DISH Technologies LLC with one filed as DISH Technologies L.L.C. The operating company list is the reason the patent profile in section 06 looks the way it does. The top three names run licensing programs alongside their operating businesses, and they hold the video and transmission families that pull the operating company medians above the non practicing ones.