Untitled case

I'll research this case thoroughly using multiple sources.

Case Overview — Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC, No. 6:22-cv-00330 (W.D. Tex.)

The parties. The plaintiff is Hanger Solutions, LLC, a Delaware entity that is a patent-assertion vehicle (NPE/PAE). Its Rule 7.1 corporate-disclosure statement in its earlier Delaware suits identifies Brainbox Innovations, LLC as its corporate parent, and RPX classifies Hanger Solutions as an IP Investments Group LLC (d/b/a IPInvestments Group) NPE — i.e., a monetization vehicle, not an operating company, and not a university or research institution. Hanger has no products; its business is licensing and litigating a portfolio of late-1990s/early-2000s networking patents. The defendant is Cequel Communications, LLC, the operating entity behind the Suddenlink broadband/cable business, which by the time of filing sat inside Altice USA (RPX's campaign write-up is headlined "Altice Sued in Hanger Solutions's Wireless Communications Campaign," Apr. 5, 2022). So the case pits a non-practicing licensor against a large U.S. cable/broadband ISP. Plaintiff's complaint (Doc. 1, filed Mar. 29, 2022) was signed by Rozier Hardt McDonough PLLC (James F. McDonough, III; Jonathan L. Hardt; C. Matthew Rozier), with Jonathan R. Miller and Travis E. Lynch also listed — the same Georgia/Delaware-facing team that ran Hanger's earlier Delaware filings.

The accused technology and asserted patents. Hanger asserted five patents attached as Exhibits A–E: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,119,171; 6,430,623; 6,609,159; 6,772,227; and 6,868,160. The accused instrumentalities are (i) Suddenlink's "Website Infrastructure" — the complaint's claim charts point to Suddenlink domain/server infrastructure such as images.suddenlink.com, static.suddenlink.com, and isaoptimum.suddenlink.com — and (ii) "Suddenlink Virtualized Environments," i.e., Cequel's use of VMware to virtualize network operations, data centers, and enterprise infrastructure. The complaint's most legible claim mappings (Counts II and III, which I was able to retrieve) allege: for the '623 patent, infringement of claim 1 through a method of communicating messages to an addressable physical entity in a private network that lacks a globally unique address, reached via an intermediate entity (e.g., a router) that has a first global address — a NAT/proxy-style architectural claim; and for the '159 patent, infringement of claim 6 through running an interposed dynamically-loaded library (described as virtual switches) in a VM kernel, using the library to respond to OS accept() calls from a back-end server by passing the connection to a guest-OS front end and returning the socket in standard OS format — essentially a hypervisor networking/instrumentation claim. Caveat on the '171: the docket confirms the '171 is the lead asserted patent (Exhibit A), but I could not retrieve from available sources the claim language or the specific accused feature the '171 count targets, and I could not verify its title, issue date, or claim-mapping from a primary document. Any technical description of the '171, '227, and '160 specifically should therefore be treated as unverified until the complaint PDF (Doc. 1) is reviewed directly.

Procedural posture, venue, and why it matters. Filed March 29, 2022 in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas, assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright (Docs. 4–6). Venue choice is significant: in 2021–22 Judge Albright's Waco docket was the nation's leading patent-plaintiff venue, known for rapid scheduling and a high trial rate — notably, Hanger's earlier campaign cases against Extreme Networks (D. Del., 1:21-cv-00040, Jan. 14, 2021) and Squarespace (D. Del., 1:21-cv-00774, May 27, 2021) were filed in Delaware, so the 2022 pivot to Waco tracks the broader migration of NPE filings to Judge Albright. That said, the case did not litigate: Cequel was served April 4, 2022 (Doc. 7), and within three weeks Hanger filed an unopposed motion to stay (Doc. 9, Apr. 22, 2022), which Judge Albright granted on April 26, 2022 for 30 days, "at which time the Court expects Hanger to have filed a dismissal or to have informed the Court as to why a dismissal has not been filed"; Hanger then sought and obtained a 30-day extension to June 20, 2022 (Docs. 10–11; text order May 23, 2022). Docket aggregators now list the case as closed, consistent with a settlement/license-and-dismiss resolution rather than a merits ruling. Why it is notable: it is a data point on (1) the Hanger Solutions/IP Investments Group campaign asserting a shared late-1990s networking portfolio against a mix of networking vendors (Extreme Networks), web hosts (Squarespace), and ISPs (Cequel/Altice USA); (2) the Waco-ward shift of low-capital NPE filings in 2022; and (3) the use of virtualization/cloud-infrastructure claim charts (VMware-based) against legacy networking patents. Not verified / open items: whether any of the five patents were subject to parallel PTAB IPR/PGR proceedings; the original assignee and prosecution lineage of the '171; whether the case terminated by dismissal with or without prejudice and whether any license was taken; and the exact docket text past May 23, 2022 (the last PACER pull I can source is dated May 23, 2022). The '171's presence in the Google Patents/Unified Patents litigation record is the only basis tying this case number to the '171 in the existing case summary; that linkage is consistent with the docket's Exhibit A but I did not confirm it from a court document.

I'll research this case thoroughly. Let me start with several searches.

Found the case: Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC. Let me dig deeper.

Let me get more detail on the campaign, the outcome, and any IPRs.

I've hit search limits, so here's my report based on what I was able to verify. I should flag up front that this case moved fast and left a thin public-record footprint — and that some of the case-summary metadata in the prompt needs correcting.

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Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC, No. 6:22-cv-00330 (W.D. Tex.)

Critical correction to the case summary

The existing summary — "plaintiff, defendant, asserted patents … could not be verified" — can now be verified, and it was incorrect/incomplete on the patent count:

Sources: Justia Dockets (https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txwdce/6:2022cv00330/[1167358](/patent/1167358)); UniCourt docket (https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-hanger-solutions-llc-v-cequel-communications-llc-[1168057](/patent/1168057)); RPX Insight, 2022-04-05.

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Chronology of legal developments

1. Filing & initial pleadings (March–April 2022)

• 2022-03-29 — Hanger Solutions filed its Complaint for Patent Infringement (Dkt. 1; filing fee $402), asserting a multi-patent wireless-communications portfolio. A Rule 7 disclosure statement (Dkt. 2) and summons request (Dkt. 3) followed the same day.
• 2022-03-29 — Case assigned to Judge Albright; AO-120 form standing-order notice issued (Dkt. 4).
• 2022-03-31 — AO-120 Patent/Trademark form filed and forwarded to the USPTO Director (Dkt. 5).
• 2022-04-01 — Summons issued as to Cequel (Dkt. 6).
• 2022-04-04 — Cequel served; answer due 2022-04-25 (Dkt. 7, summons returned executed).
• 2022-04-14 — Judge Albright's Standing Order Governing Proceedings – Patent Cases entered (Dkt. 8), which would have set the presumptive Markman and trial schedule.

No answer or counterclaims appear on the docket. Cequel never answered, never counterclaimed (no invalidity/non-infringement counterclaim, no § 285 or declaratory-judgment counterclaim), and no Rule 12 motion was filed. Per RPX, the accused instrumentalities were Suddenlink's "Website Infrastructure" and its use of certain VMware products.

2. Stay — and the case effectively ending (April–June 2022)

The most notable feature is that the plaintiff itself moved to stay, twice, signaling an out-of-court resolution.

• 2022-04-22 — Dkt. 9: Unopposed MOTION to Stay Case filed by Hanger Solutions (plaintiff).
• 2022-04-26 — Text order granting the stay for 30 days, "up to and including May 23, 2022, at which time the Court expects Hanger to have filed a dismissal or to have informed the Court as to why a dismissal has not been filed."
• 2022-05-18 — Dkt. 10: Notice of Agreed Extension of Stay (Hanger).
• 2022-05-19 — Dkt. 11: Unopposed MOTION to Extend Stay (Hanger).
• 2022-05-23 — Text order granting the extension, staying the case "for an additional 30 days, up to and including June 20, 2022, at which time the Court expects Hanger to have filed a dismissal…"

Interpretation: The court's language ("expects Hanger to have filed a dismissal") plus the plaintiff-initiated, unopposed stay is the classic W.D. Tex. pattern for a settlement/license-in-place leading to voluntary dismissal. Docket aggregators now list the case Closed. I could not retrieve the actual dismissal entry (e.g., a Rule 41(a) notice or dismissal order) — the free docket snapshots I found stop at the 2022-05-23 text order, and PACER was not directly accessible in these searches. The precise dismissal date and instrument are unverified, though the disposition was plainly a plaintiff-side dismissal following settlement, not a merits judgment.

3. Stages the case never reached

• Claim construction (Markman): none. No Markman order exists.
• Discovery milestones: none of substance. The case was stayed ~3 weeks after the answer deadline and never entered discovery.
• Trial / verdict: none. No trial, no JMOL, no new-trial or fee motions.
• Appeal: none. No Federal Circuit activity.
• Final disposition: Closed on voluntary dismissal (settlement) in mid-2022 — a full plaintiff win only in the sense of a settlement/license; there is no adjudicated outcome on validity, infringement, or damages.

4. Parallel PTAB proceedings

• No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition on US 6,119,171 (or the co-asserted patents) tied to this case could be located. Targeted searches returned nothing. This is unsurprising given the case was dismissed roughly three months after filing — well before any defendant would typically petition — and because the patents are 1990s-era wireless communications patents with a short remaining life that reduces IPR incentive.
• Caveat: I could not run an exhaustive PTAB docket check; if an IPR exists it was not surfaced. Treat "no IPR" as unconfirmed-negative rather than affirmatively verified.

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Strategic significance / campaign context

• Hanger Solutions (IP Investments Group) ran a multi-defendant licensing campaign launched January 2021 against Extreme Networks, with the Cequel/Altice case added in March 2022 (RPX, 2022-04-05).
• The Cequel suit was short-lived and settlement-driven: filed 2022-03-29, stayed 2022-04-22, and on a track to dismissal by June 20, 2022. That is consistent with a license/settlement, i.e., a "paid and dismissed" NPE outcome rather than litigation on the merits.
• Cequel/Altice is a repeat patent defendant, appearing in other suits (e.g., Freedom Patents LLC v. Altice USA, Inc. et al., 4:23-cv-00300 (E.D. Tex.)), suggesting it resolves such cases commercially rather than litigating.

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Bottom line

This was a portfolio-assertion complaint by Hanger Solutions against Cequel/Altice (Suddenlink), filed 2022-03-29, asserting US 6,119,171 and at least four other wireless-communications patents on the Suddenlink website infrastructure/VMware stack. It generated no answer, no counterclaims, no Markman, no discovery, no trial, and no IPR, and was stayed on the plaintiff's own motion and dismissed under settlement terms by / around June 2022. The single most important legal development is the plaintiff-initiated stay-and-dismiss, which indicates an out-of-court license.

Unverified items (do not treat as confirmed)

1. The exact dismissal instrument and date (Rule 41(a) notice vs. dismissal order) — strongly implied by the court's orders but not directly retrieved.
2. The complete and exact patent list (I confirmed US 6,119,171, 6,430,623, 6,609,159; the '227 and '160 numbers are partial from an aggregator).
3. Whether any IPR was ever filed on the asserted patents (none found; not exhaustively ruled out).
4. Whether the resolution included a cash payment vs. a bare dismissal — the docket does not say.

If you can pull the PACER docket directly, the two entries to retrieve would be the dismissal filing after 2022-05-23 and the full Dkt. 1 exhibit list, which would close items 1–3.

I'll research this case to identify plaintiff's counsel. Let me start with several searches.

Found it — the case is Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC. Let me verify the counsel details.

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record

Case: Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC, No. 6:22-cv-00330 (W.D. Tex., Waco Division), filed March 29, 2022 before Judge Alan D. Albright. Patent asserted: U.S. Patent No. 6,119,171 (Exhibit A to the complaint); a second patent, 6,430,623, appears as Exhibit B. (Source: docket/complaint as reflected in the UniCourt and Ex Parte case records.)

The single plaintiff is Hanger Solutions LLC. All plaintiff-side counsel identified in the record are from the same firm: Rozier Hardt McDonough PLLC (RHM Trial), a patent-litigation boutique with offices in Austin, Denver, and Atlanta. The signature block of the March 29, 2022 complaint designates each of the following as "Attorneys for Plaintiff Hanger Solutions, LLC":

The complaint's signature block contains the following legend, which explains the asterisks: "* admitted to Western District of Texas" and "** admission pro hac vice to Western District of Texas anticipated." (Source: RPX litigation document capture of the complaint's signature page, reflecting the W.D. Tex. Waco Division caption.)

Important caveats and sourcing notes

• Source basis: The names, bar numbers, firm addresses, and admission notations come from the signature block of the plaintiff's complaint (as captured in litigation-record aggregators) and the UniCourt docket entry listing "Plaintiff Attorneys: James F. McDonough, C. Matthew Rozier, Jonathan L. Hardt, Jonathan R. Miller, Travis E. Lynch." I was not able to pull the PACER docket sheet directly to confirm each attorney's formal "lead counsel" designation, nor to confirm whether pro hac vice papers for Mr. Rozier were ultimately granted before the case was stayed.
• No designation of lead/local counsel: The public record I could retrieve does not contain an explicit "lead counsel" or "local counsel" label from the court; the role column above is inferred from the filing positions (first-listed signer and e-filer vs. Texas-bar member for local sponsorship), not from a docketed designation. Treat those role labels as analytical, not verified.
• Undisclosed/absent counsel: I found no in-house counsel and no additional outside firms appearing for Hanger Solutions in the retrievable record. If any additional appearances were filed after the case was stayed, they are not reflected in the sources I could access.
• Case posture: The docket shows the case was stayed — DE 9 (Unopposed MOTION to Stay), granted April 26, 2022 for 30 days; DE 10 (Notice of Agreed Extension of Stay); DE 11 (Unopposed Motion to Extend Stay), granted May 23, 2022, extending the stay to June 20, 2022, with the court stating it "expects Hanger to have filed a dismissal or to have informed the Court as to why a dismissal has not been filed." Aggregator records show the case as Closed. This suggests the matter was likely dismissed (consistent with the pattern of Hanger Solutions' short-lived 2022 campaign), but I did not retrieve the dismissal order itself, so I cannot state its date or terms with certainty.
• Experience notes: I was unable to complete firm-website/bio verification of these attorneys' other patent-litigation matters within this session, so I am not asserting specific prior-case experience for any of them beyond the fact that they filed this case. Rozier Hardt McDonough is a patent-focused boutique, and Messrs. McDonough, Hardt, and Rozier are its named partners, but I have not independently verified individual case histories here.
• If you need court-verified counsel designations or the dismissal order, the next step is a direct PACER pull of the 6:22-cv-00330 docket (Waco Division) and the complaint's full caption page.

I'll research this case systematically, starting with the docket and patent record.

Let me dig into the docket specifics and whether defendant counsel ever appeared.

Now let me check for any defendant filings and the case's final disposition.

Bottom line

I could not identify any attorney of record for the defendant in this case — and the public record strongly suggests that no defense counsel ever appeared before the case was closed.

What the docket shows

The case is Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC, No. 6:22-cv-00330-ADA (W.D. Tex., filed Mar. 29, 2022), assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright (Waco Division). Plaintiff Hanger Solutions LLC (an IP Investments Group / IPInvestments Group NPE) asserted five wireless-communications patents — including US 6,119,171 (the patent in the case metadata) plus US 6,430,623, 6,609,159, 6,772,227 and at least one more — against Cequel Communications, LLC (the Suddenlink/Altice USA cable and broadband entity), targeting its "Website Infrastructure" and VMware virtualization. (RPX Insight, Apr. 5, 2022; UniCourt docket summary)

The docket entries retrieved (last publicly updated May 23, 2022 via Justia Dockets and UniCourt) are:

Critically, every substantive filing after the complaint came from plaintiff's counsel (signatures of James McDonough, with Jonathan R. Miller on the summons return). There is no answer, no Rule 12 motion, no corporate disclosure, and no notice of appearance by any attorney for Cequel on the docket through May 23, 2022, despite Cequel having been served on April 4, 2022 with an answer deadline of April 25, 2022.

Why no defense counsel appears

• The case was stayed on April 26, 2022 — one day after Cequel's answer deadline — on plaintiff's own unopposed motion. Judge Albright's stay orders twice state that the court expected Hanger to file a dismissal, which is the signature of a case resolved behind the scenes (typically a license or covenant-not-to-sue) before the defendant engaged litigation counsel.
• Aggregator records list the case status as "Closed" with no reported defense-counsel entry (Patexia/AI-docket record for 6:22-cv-00330).
• The docket's public mirror was last refreshed May 23, 2022, so I cannot see a final dismissal entry — but nothing in any source indicates defense counsel filed an appearance at any point.

Caveats and sourcing

• This is a negative finding, not an affirmative one. The docket snapshots available to me (Justia, UniCourt, Patexia) stop at May 23, 2022. It is possible that (a) a dismissal was filed shortly after June 20, 2022, and (b) a defense appearance exists on PACER that these aggregators did not capture. The authoritative check is the PACER docket for 6:22-cv-00330-ADA.
• I did not find any firm press release, Law360 or Reuters report naming Cequel/Altice patent counsel for this matter, and I will not infer counsel from other Altice litigation (e.g., the unrelated City of Pikeville v. Cebridge/Cequel/Altice franchise case, E.D. Ky. No. 7:22-cv-00064, or Cequel's role as a defendant in other matters). Naming a firm on that basis would be speculation.
• Note the case-metadata discrepancy: the case is styled Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC, and the patents actually asserted in the complaint number five, with US 6,119,171 being only the first-listed ('171, '623, '159, '227, plus one more). The metadata's single-patent listing understates the asserted set.

Recommendation

To definitively answer "counsel of record for defendant," pull the PACER docket report (all-party, all-attorney format) for 6:22-cv-00330-ADA for the period May 23, 2022 through the case's termination. If the docket shows a voluntary dismissal (likely under Rule 41(a)(1)) with no intervening appearance, the correct answer is that no defense counsel of record ever appeared in this case.