At least 31 lawsuits with more than one company listed as a defendant were started in the three days through Sept. 9, mostly brought by so-called non-practicing entities, according to an analysis by Craig Smith, a patent lawyer at Lando & Anastasi LLP in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Of those cases, 16 target more than 10 companies in a single suit including Apple, PepsiCo, Google Inc., Target Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co.