Back in 2011, This American Life toured an office building in Marshall, Texas, and found eerie hallways of empty offices that serve as the ‘headquarters’ of patent trolls. For many, that was the first introduction to the strange world of the Eastern District of Texas, its outsized role in patent litigation and especially its effective support of the patent troll business model. Trolls love the Eastern District for its plaintiff-friendly rules, so they set up paper corporations in the district as an excuse to file suit there. Meanwhile, defendants find themselves dragged to a distant, inconvenient, and expensive forum that often has little or no connection to the dispute.

Have you recently received a patent demand letter or been hit by a lawsuit from either “Shipping and Transit, LLC” or “Electronic Communication Technologies, LLC”? Despite their current SEO-unfriendly names that make it difficult to find information, we want you to know that there’s lots of information out there related to these trolls, just under different names. 

It is important that those on the receiving end of these trolls’ patent demands can find the resources they need. To that end, more information useful against both of these trolls can be found by searching for ArrivalStar (instead of “Shipping and Transit, LLC”) or Eclipse IP (instead of “Electronic Communication Technologies LLC”). And even though the names are different, the documents linked below show that for practical purposes the new trolls are closely related to the old trolls.