IAM/Funai Electric’s 233 patent sale is 2025 Q4’s biggest US transaction
Funai Electric’s 233 patent sale is 2025 Q4’s biggest US transaction
Tim Lince
The US secondary patent market closed out 2025 with some major large-scale portfolio deals and rising NPE activity, new data shows.
The latest “Allied Security Trust Patent Deals Report” shows that, in the fourth quarter, the USPTO recorded 475 patent sale transactions involving 2,626 assets – slightly down on the previous quarter. These deals included 473 sellers and 405 buyers, appearing to reflect a highly active and liquid market despite ongoing cost pressures and regulatory uncertainty.
Several high-value transactions underlined the scale and strategic intent of activity during the quarter. Among the largest deals were:
- Funai Electric selling 233 electronics assets to Anjay Venture Partners;
- Rambus transferring 142 computing systems assets to Highlands Advisory; and
- Xerox divesting 122 industrial assets to IPValue Management.
Other notable transactions included Eastman Chemical selling 98 industrial assets to Exxon Mobil, and Tran Bao transferring 78 lighting assets to Jeffrey M Gross.
“The secondary patent market continues to demonstrate strong structural momentum,” says Mihir Patel, executive vice president of licensing and analytics at AST. “Our Q4 2025 analysis shows that well-capitalised NPEs and institutional investors are deploying significant capital into large-scale portfolio acquisitions, while operating companies remain active in portfolio rationalisation.”
Looking closer, electronics and software each accounted for 18% of transacted assets, followed by healthcare and pharma at 10% and computing systems at 8%. High-tech categories collectively made up around 65% of activity, reinforcing the continued dominance of innovation-driven sectors.
Universities and research institutions remained a meaningful source of supply, participating in 70 transactions. This reflects a broader trend in which academic IP increasingly feeds into commercialisation and enforcement pipelines – with examples in the quarter including the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources divesting industrial assets to Ideahub, and Kyung Hee University transferring software assets to Allied Security Trust.
At the same time, operating companies continued to dominate the sell side, accounting for 67% of deals and divesting nearly 2,000 assets. Companies such as Bose, NEC, Panasonic and Sony were among those actively monetising portfolios, particularly in electronics.
In terms of top sellers, it was led by China-based HaiCun Information Technology, with four deals.
On the buy side, the market showed a clear split between defensive and assertive strategies. Operating companies pursued targeted acquisitions, while NPEs continued to scale portfolio accumulation. Overall, NPEs accounted for 45% of acquired assets, with 21 new entrants participating during the quarter.
Jeffrey M Gross was the most active buyer, completing 38 deals involving 318 assets across a wide range of sectors, including automotive, communications, electronics and software.
This growing concentration of activity among a relatively small group of well-funded buyers is becoming a defining feature of the market. The five largest NPE transactions alone accounted for 26% of total assets transferred in the quarter.
OpCos, NPEs and enforcement risk
One of the most notable developments in Q4 was the continued acceleration of enforcement following acquisitions. According to AST, 29 transactions involving 42 assets generated 114 new litigations against major technology companies, including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Nvidia, Samsung and Sony.
A significant proportion of these assets had previously circulated through AST, highlighting the predictive value of early visibility into the secondary market. In several cases, litigation followed within weeks of assignment, reinforcing the view that acquisitions are increasingly structured with enforcement in mind.
“Patent transactions are increasingly serving as a precursor to litigation rather than simply a portfolio repositioning tool,” Patel notes. “The growing role of well-funded NPEs and the rapid transition from acquisition to enforcement underscore why technology companies need continuous visibility into the secondary patent market.”
Among the quarter’s notable enforcement-linked deals:
- Tria Network Systems sold 17 wireless assets to Calibrate Networks, a Jeffrey M Gross subsidiary, with at least one asset subsequently used to file multiple litigations against companies, including Adecco and KPMG;
- Highlands Advisory acquired communication assets from Fortinet and moved quickly to assert patents against Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise; and,
- WiTricity transferred 13 electronics assets to the newly formed NPE Via Licensing, illustrating continued activity among new entrants.
Elsewhere, transactions involving Xene Innovations and Cedar Lane Technologies also led to litigation shortly after acquisition, including cases targeting Boeing and multiple unnamed defendants.
These patterns point to a maturing market in which monetisation strategies are increasingly sophisticated and closely aligned with litigation finance structures. The presence of new NPEs – alongside the established players continuing to scale their activities – suggests that enforcement pipelines will remain active into 2026.
Overall, Q4 2025 reflects a secondary patent market that is both highly active and structurally evolved. Large-scale transactions, growing capital concentration, and a tightening link between acquisition and litigation are redefining how patents are valued and deployed.
Methodology
AST monitors USPTO patent assignment records and gathers data from numerous public sources. US assets are reassigned numerous times between multiple parties for different purposes. Such assignment activity is monitored using proprietary methodology, and each assignment record is probed for business intelligence, including the involved parties, business types, industries and technologies.
AST defines a “patent deal” as an exchange of assets (including patents and published applications) between the same parties during a set timeframe. Each deal may include multiple assets and multiple reel/frame numbers.
For the Q4 2025 study, AST analysed over 19,748 USPTO assignments involving 45,616 US assets with 648 sale assignments recorded from 1 October 2025 to 31 December 2025.