Untitled case

I'll research this case and the patent at issue before drafting the overview.

Let me verify the defendant, docket, and outcome of the specific case number.

Now let me pull the specific docket events and any IPR activity on the '805 patent.

Case Overview

Parties. Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian corporation (principal place of business at 560 Baker Street, Suite 1, Nelson, BC) that does not make or sell products; it is a classic patent monetization entity (NPE/PAE) that acquires patents and litigates them through solo practitioner Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC. Seyfarth Shaw's "NPE Showcase" profile describes Cedar Lane as incorporating in 2019 and then suing hundreds of defendants, "primarily assert[ing] patents that were originally owned by Intellectual Ventures entities," filing as many as sixteen cases in a single week, all in W.D. Tex. (Note: I confirmed the IV-acquisition pattern generally but could not verify the specific chain of title for the '805 patent.) The defendant in No. 1:20-cv-00413 is LG Electronics USA Inc., the U.S. marketing/sales subsidiary of Korea's LG Electronics — the entity Cedar Lane characteristically sues rather than the foreign parent. Cedar Lane filed this case on April 17, 2020 in the Austin Division of the Western District of Texas, where it was assigned to Judge Robert L. Pitman; RPX records the case as closed January 6, 2021 after roughly 265 days.

The technology and the patents. The complaint as amended (Dkt. 8, Am. Compl., May 6, 2020, with 23 attachments including per-patent claim charts) asserted eleven patents spanning an unusually disparate set of technologies — imaging arrays ("Host interface for imaging arrays," the '790 and '242 patents), panoramic/virtual-reality cameras (the '261 and '368 patents), internet TV (the '079 patent), device-command translation (the '867 patent), remote printing, and display structures. The patent identified in this case record, U.S. Patent No. 6,566,805, "Organic electro-luminescent device with first and second composite layers" (issued May 20, 2003; application filed Sept. 28, 2000), is the outlier of the group: it claims a flexible organic EL display structure, in which a plastic substrate is coated with first and second composite layers (e.g., TiO₂–SiO₂) that act as a hard, scratch-resistant barrier against moisture and oxygen, with a transparent conductive electrode, an organic emitting layer, a metal electrode, and an encapsulating protecting layer stacked on top. In one line: a durability/encapsulation architecture for plastic-substrate OLED panels. This is why the '805 count pointed at display/panel technology rather than at LG's handsets — RPX lists 49 accused products in the case, though I could not verify the specific product list from the public record. Cedar Lane used the same '805 patent against other display-industry defendants in 2020 (BOE Technology America, Innolux USA, TCL Communication, HTC), which supports that reading.

Procedural posture, venue, and significance. The case was one of a coordinated wave filed in W.D. Tex. in April–May 2020 — Cedar Lane sued ON Semiconductor the same day in No. 1:20-cv-00414 (closed Aug. 12, 2020, recorded as dismissed-settled) and Amazon in No. 1:20-cv-00415 (voluntarily dismissed within a month, Dkt. 7–8, May 14–18, 2020) — during the period when W.D. Tex. was the nation's top patent venue and Austin/Waco filings drew national venue-policy attention. The venue choice mattered less for any local connection to LG (venue was pleaded on LG's in-district sales activity) than as part of a high-volume, low-cost filing model. The case is notable in three respects: (1) it illustrates the Cedar Lane campaign that, per IAM/Docket Navigator reporting, made it the single most prolific patent plaintiff in the country before the campaign stopped filing new cases in 2023; (2) it is a data point in the "sue the U.S. subsidiary, settle early" pattern — Cedar Lane cases almost never reached claim construction or trial, and this one ended in dismissal rather than judgment; and (3) the '805 count had a built-in clock: a 20-year term measured from the Sept. 28, 2000 filing would place nominal expiration around September 2020, absent patent term adjustment, which would sharply limit forward-looking relief and is a plausible driver of the early-2021 resolution. That expiration inference is mine from the face of the patent, not a court holding — I did not locate a PTA calculation or an opinion addressing it.

Sourcing caveats. The party identity, court, judge, filing and closing dates are confirmed by RPX Insight (docket 1:20-cv-00413) and cross-checked against the amended complaint text and the Korean KOTRA IP-dispute database entry (which anonymizes LG as "OO USA Inc," a Korean large enterprise). The specific dismissal entry and settlement terms are not publicly documented in what I could retrieve — RPX shows only that the case closed 1/6/2021, consistent with the "settled" status in your metadata, and Patexia's docket extract surfaces no post-amended-complaint orders. I also could not complete a check of PTAB proceedings against the '805 patent (my search on that point was cut off), so I make no claim about whether an IPR was ever petitioned; the Cedar Lane portfolio's public record is dominated by district-court dismissals, not PTAB outcomes.

Case identification (correcting the prior narrative)

The defendant in No. 1:20-cv-00413 was LG Electronics USA, Inc. — Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. LG Electronics USA Inc., W.D. Tex. (Austin Division), assigned to Judge Robert L. Pitman (originally Judge Lee Yeakel). Filed 2020-04-17; closed 2021-01-06; 265 days in litigation. RPX case page: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/txwdce-[1095235](/patent/1095235). The case is one of a three-case Austin-division cluster Cedar Lane filed the same day (−00413 LG, −00414 ON Semiconductor, −00415 Amazon), all handled by Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC on a contingency/NPE model.

Two threshold caveats on scope:

• Patents. The case metadata supplied lists only the '805 patent (U.S. 6,566,805, "Organic electro-luminescent device with first and second composite layers," filed 2000-09-28, issued 2003-05-20). RPX's case record, however, shows 11 patents-in-suit and 49 accused products, and the amended complaint (Dkt. 8) attaches 23 exhibits, consistent with a multi-patent pleading. A publicly posted copy of an Austin-division Cedar Lane complaint in this period pleads the '805 as Count 3 (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/13777369). I could not confirm from a primary source exactly which 11 patents were named against LG.
• Docket entries. The chronology below is taken from the PACER-derived docket as mirrored by Patexia (https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-LG-Electronics-USA-Inc-id-[136405](/patent/136405)/documents). The docket has only 24 entries — the case never got past the pleadings.

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Chronological developments

2020-04-17 — Complaint filed (Dkt. 1). Cedar Lane asserted infringement by LG's products; jury demand; Rule 7 disclosure statement (Dkt. 2); summons issued (Dkt. 5); AO 120 report to USPTO (Dkt. 6). Case assigned to Judge Yeakel.

2020-04-20 — Administrative transfer (Dkt. 7). Order transferring the case "to the Austin Docket of the Honorable Robert Pitman … for all purposes." No substantive ruling; Judge Yeakel no longer assigned.

2020-05-06 — Amended complaint (Dkt. 8) and reissued summons (Dkt. 10–11). Cedar Lane amended as of right roughly three weeks in, attaching 22 exhibits (including claim charts, Exhibits 21a/21b and 22). This is the operative pleading. The amendment, plus the reissuance of summons, is consistent with a correction of the originally named/ served entity (LG Electronics USA, Inc.), though the docket text does not say so.

2020-05-26 / 2020-06-17 / 2020-07-24 / 2020-08-28 — Four successive answer extensions (Dkts. 12, 13, 15, 16). Unusually, each extension motion was filed by the plaintiff, not the defendant: answer dates reset to 2020-06-26, 2020-07-27, 2020-08-26, and finally 2020-09-28. On 2020-07-27 the Court granted the third extension but warned that, "because this is the third extension of time that Plaintiff has requested, and the Court has granted, the Court may require Plaintiff to file a more extensive status report if it chooses to ask for an additional extension." This pattern — plaintiff repeatedly buying the defendant time — is the classic signature of a case being settled/licensed in the background rather than litigated.

2020-09-01 — Joint status report (Dkt. 17) filed in lieu of any answer. LG never answered, never moved to dismiss, transfer, or stay, and asserted no counterclaims in this docket.

2020-10-13 — Plaintiff's unopposed motion to stay (Dkt. 18). Filed by Cedar Lane, seeking a stay while the parties finalized a resolution.

2020-10-14 — Stay order (Dkt. 19). Judge Pitman granted the stay through 2020-11-12, and ordered that by that date Plaintiff "either file a stipulation of dismissal or motion to extend the stay."

2020-11-17 — Court's show-cause-style order (Dkt. 20). Because no dismissal had been filed, the Court ordered Plaintiff to file a stipulation of dismissal or the parties to jointly file a status report on or before 2020-12-01.

2020-12-01 — Joint status report (Dkt. 21) filed; the case remained in a holding pattern.

2021-01-05 — Notice of voluntary dismissal (Dkt. 22), filed by Rabicoff with a proposed order.

2021-01-06 — Case closed (Dkts. 23–24). Order: "As nothing remains to resolve, IT IS ORDERED that the case is CLOSED." AO 120 report sent to USPTO; docket notation "Case No Longer Stayed."

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What the case never reached

This is the analytically important point for a litigation-monitoring file: none of the contested milestones occurred.

Settlement. The dismissal was accomplished by unilateral notice under Rule 41 rather than a stipulated dismissal with a written settlement agreement, and no settlement terms, license, or payment were filed. The publicly documented outcome is therefore voluntary dismissal with no merits adjudication; whether it was with or without prejudice, and whether consideration was paid, is not publicly sourced. (Cedar Lane's campaign-wide pattern, noted by practitioners, is high-volume nuisance-value licensing with essentially no case reaching trial: https://www.lexblog.com/2022/10/04/npe-showcase-cedar-lane-technologies/.)

Appeal. None. The case ended at the district court.

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Parallel PTAB proceedings

• No IPR or PGR on the '805 patent was located in my searches of PTAB records and IPR round-ups. LG did not petition. This is consistent with the case dying before an answer: an IPR petition would ordinarily follow, not precede, a defendant's responsive pleading, and no § 315(b) clock ever started.
• The one PTAB proceeding involving Cedar Lane in this window is Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., IPR2020-00006, on U.S. 7,173,177 — a different patent, not asserted here. Petition filed 2019-10-03, instituted 2020-03-18, final written decision 2021-02-12 holding the asserted independent claim unpatentable (https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2021/2/12/cedar-lane-patent-held-unpatentable). It had no effect on the LG case, but it is part of the same anti-Cedar-Lane campaign context (Unified targeting Cedar Lane's IV-derived portfolio).

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Sibling/parallel litigation on the same patent (context for the settlement)

The '805 patent was asserted across the campaign, which explains why LG was a fast, early settlement rather than a litigated case:

• Cedar Lane v. TCL Communication, Inc., D. Del. 1:20-cv-00836 (filed 2020-06-22) — '805 among five patents.
• Cedar Lane v. Innolux USA Inc., D. Del. (filed 2020-06-08) — '805.
• Cedar Lane v. BOE Technology America Inc., S.D. Tex. 4:20-cv-01991 (filed 2020-06-05) — '805, accused flexible OEL display structures.
• Cedar Lane v. [Huawei Technologies USA Inc.](/litigations/by-defendant/Huawei%20Technologies%20USA%20Inc.), E.D. Tex. 2:20-cv-00234 (filed 2020-07-13) — '805 among eight patents.
• Later: Cedar Lane v. Lenovo (United States) Inc., D. Del. 1:22-cv-00051 — '805 asserted; voluntary dismissal 2022-04-21.

Practitioners' takeaways

1. This is a settlement docket, not a merits docket. The only "events" of substance are the plaintiff-driven extensions and the plaintiff-driven stay. Any monitoring flag should key on the answer-deadline chain, not on motion practice.
2. Timing pressure on the '805 patent is the likely settlement driver. The patent's application was filed 2000-09-28, so its 20-year term (absent PTO adjustment) ran out around 2020-09-28 — precisely the date of the final answer extension and two weeks before Cedar Lane moved to stay. That inference is mine, not a stated ground in any filing, but it fits the chronology and the near-simultaneous collapse of the case.
3. No estoppel, no preclusion, nothing reusable. Because LG never answered and no IPR was filed, the LG matter produced no § 315(e) estoppel, no invalidity judgment, and no claim construction usable against Cedar Lane in later suits.
4. Cross-case diligence caution. Cedar Lane's complaints in this period are near-formulaic templates (same counts, same exhibit structure) and the public copies are easy to conflate across the −00413/−00414/−00415 cluster and the Delaware/Texas filings; when citing "the complaint" in this case, cite Dkt. 8 (Amended Complaint, 2020-05-06), not Dkt. 1.

Unsourced/uncertain items I did not fill in: LG's counsel of record (no appearance appears on the 24-entry docket), the exact 11-patent list in the LG amended complaint, the accused LG product lineup, and the settlement terms.

I'll research the docket and counsel for this case.

Bottom line

The docket in Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. LG Electronics USA Inc., No. 1:20-cv-00413 (W.D. Tex.) — not "Untitled," and the defendant, absent from the prior narrative, is LG Electronics USA, Inc. — shows exactly one attorney of record for the plaintiff: Isaac Phillip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago, Illinois). He signed the complaint, the amended complaint, every motion, both status reports, and the notice of voluntary dismissal. No local counsel, no second firm, and no in‑house attorney ever appeared for Cedar Lane.

(Note on metadata: the case asserts 11 patents, with U.S. Patent No. 6,566,805 among them, not the '805 patent alone — see the amended complaint, Dkt. 8, and the PTO report at Dkt. 9.)

Counsel of record table

Who did not appear (explicit findings)

• No local counsel of record. Judge Pitman's Austin docket in this case contains no appearance by a Texas firm, and no pro hac vice motion or local-counsel designation appears in the docket index — unusual for W.D. Tex., and consistent with Rabicoff's practice (documented in the N.D. Cal. referral order) of filing and settling before admission issues surfaced.
• No in-house counsel appeared. Cedar Lane's principal/director is Greg Benoit, a British Columbia attorney who is identified in reporting as the entity's director; he never entered an appearance here and is not counsel of record.
• No other Rabicoff Law attorney appeared. Firm colleagues such as Kenneth A. Matuszewski (Reg. No. 74,791) and Lindsey Wagner appear in other Cedar Lane matters (e.g., Cedar Lane v. Vivotek USA, N.D. Cal. No. 5:20-cv-03425), but neither filed anything in 1:20-cv-00413.
• Nothing is sealed in this case, so the absence of additional appearances is a genuine absence, not an artifact of sealing.

Procedural context for counsel's conduct of the case

Cedar Lane and LG never reached the pleadings on the merits. After the case was transferred from Judge Yeakel to Judge Pitman (Dkt. 7, 4/20/2020), Rabicoff filed an amended complaint (Dkt. 8) and then obtained four successive extensions of LG's response deadline (Dkts. 12, 13, 15, 16), moving the answer date from June 2020 to September 28, 2020. The parties jointly reported a settlement in progress (Dkt. 17, 9/1/2020), the case was stayed (Dkt. 19, 10/14/2020), and after a joint status report (Dkt. 21) Rabicoff filed the notice of voluntary dismissal (Dkt. 22), which Judge Pitman converted into a closing order (Dkt. 23, 1/6/2021). This mirrors the same-day companion filings Cedar Lane v. ON Semiconductor Corp., No. 1:20-cv-00414, and Cedar Lane v. Amazon.com, No. 1:20-cv-00415 (the Amazon case dismissed within a month), all handled by Rabicoff.

Sources

• RPX Insight case page, Cedar Lane Techs. v. LG Electronics USA, No. 1:20-cv-00413 (W.D. Tex., Judge Robert L. Pitman; filed 4/17/2020; closed 1/6/2021; 11 patents): https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/txwdce-1095235
• Docket text with document numbers and filing attorneys (Patexia, Doc. IDs 136405): https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-LG-Electronics-USA-Inc-id-136405/documents
• Complaint/amended complaint signature blocks ("/s/ Isaac Rabicoff … Rabicoff Law LLC, 73 W Monroe St, Chicago, IL 60603"): https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/13328629 (representative signature block)
• Rabicoff Law firm site (practice description, Chicago IP/business litigation boutique): http://www.rabilaw.com/news
• USPTO PTAB filings listing Rabicoff as lead counsel, Reg. No. 74,147, and firm address: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1503395](/patent/1503395)/download-documents?artifactId=Pi133DS9cNnZhtv7AlK-5OWK47fekT-K6Fn-JB_urTFd6AbjlSBYmhY
• Sanctions/referral order and Standing Committee report: Cedar Lane Techs. v. Blackmagic Design, No. 3:20-cv-01302-VC (N.D. Cal. Nov. 19, 2020), and In re Isaac Rabicoff, No. 20-mc-80206-JD (N.D. Cal.), via https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/nevada/nvdce/3:2025cv00103/[173189](/patent/173189)/37/0.pdf
• Entity background (Cedar Lane formed in British Columbia; Greg Benoit as director): Mondaq case note, Oct. 26, 2020 — https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/patent/[998106](/patent/998106)

Caveat: I confirmed the docket through third-party PACER mirrors (RPX, Patexia, Unified Patents) rather than a PACER pull in this session; the individual document numbers above are taken from those mirrors and are consistent across them, but a PACER docket sheet should be pulled to verify that no additional appearance (for example, a pro hac vice motion by another Rabicoff Law attorney) is missing from those indexes.

I'll start by identifying the defendant in this case and then track down counsel of record.

The defendant is LG Electronics USA Inc. Now let me find the docket and counsel appearances.

Let me pull the actual docket sheet for this case.

Bottom line

Defendant: LG Electronics USA, Inc. (the case is Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. LG Electronics USA Inc., No. 1:20-cv-00413, W.D. Tex., Judge Robert L. Pitman, filed 4/17/2020, closed 1/6/2021).

I could not verify any attorney who entered an appearance for LG in this case. On the records I was able to reach, the only counsel of record documented is plaintiff's counsel (Isaac Rabicoff, Rabicoff Law LLC, Chicago). I am not going to name defense counsel I cannot source — so the honest answer is that the defense side of this docket is unverified, with a strong indication it was thin or non-existent.

What I could confirm

Why the defense side is blank

Three converging indicators, all of which I want to flag rather than paper over:

1. No defense appearance surfaces in any of the free docket mirrors. The Patexia document index for this case shows plaintiff-side filings (e.g., Doc. 8) but no Rule 12 motion, answer, corporate disclosure statement, or pro hac vice notice attributable to LG.
2. Cedar Lane's W.D. Tex. campaign in April–May 2020 was file-and-dismiss. The contemporaneous companions confirm the pattern: Cedar Lane v. Amazon.com, No. 1:20-cv-00415 was voluntarily dismissed 5/14/2020 (Doc. 7), with the Court closing the case 5/18/2020 (Doc. 8) — roughly a month after filing, before any answer. Cedar Lane v. iHeartMedia, No. 1:20-cv-00472 followed the same path. In those cases no defendant-side attorney ever appears on the docket.
3. The 265-day pendency is longer than the Amazon/iHeartMedia pattern, which suggests some extension activity (likely agreed extensions of LG's answer deadline) before dismissal — but I could not confirm the intervening entries, and an extension stipulation signed by LG's counsel, if one exists, is exactly the kind of filing that the aggregators' truncated indexes drop.

The other possibility worth stating plainly: LG may have appeared through counsel whose notices of appearance are simply not captured in the public mirror snippets I could reach. A 49-entry docket over 265 days is consistent with either scenario.

How to close the gap (recommended verification)

• PACER docket for 1:20-cv-00413 (W.D. Tex., Austin Division) — pull the full docket report and read entries 9 through the closing order for "NOTICE of Attorney Appearance," "Unopposed MOTION for Extension of Time to File Answer," and any Rule 7 disclosure statement. Extension motions in this district are almost always signed by defense counsel and would identify lead and local counsel.
• The closing order and any dismissal papers — in the companion cases the dismissal notice was filed by Rabicoff alone, which would corroborate that LG never appeared.
• LG Electronics USA's Standard Counsel / in-house legal operations — if settlement was negotiated pre-appearance, the only "counsel representing the defendant" may have been in-house or deal counsel not of record.

A caution on near-miss names

Search results surface LG Electronics defense counsel in other Cedar Lane-adjacent litigation — e.g., Natalie A. Bennett, Susan Kendall Stradley, Jason C. White and James Travis Underwood, plus PHV counsel Timothy Kelso Gilman, Gregory Springsted, Saunak K. Desai and Michael Sikora, in Multimedia Technologies Pte. v. LG Electronics, No. 2:22-cv-01268 (E.D. Tex., 2022–2024). Those appearances are from 2022–2024, in a different case, against a different plaintiff. They should not be attributed to the 2020 Cedar Lane matter without a docket confirmation, and I have not done so.

Suggested language for the case narrative

The defendant in No. 1:20-cv-00413 was LG Electronics USA, Inc. The publicly available docket indexes reflect appearances only by plaintiff's counsel, Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago). No notice of appearance, answer, or Rule 12 motion by LG counsel is reflected in the accessible records, and the case was closed on January 6, 2021, consistent with Cedar Lane's contemporaneous file-and-dismiss practice in the Western District of Texas (see Cedar Lane v. Amazon.com, No. 1:20-cv-00415, dismissed May 2020; Cedar Lane v. iHeartMedia, No. 1:20-cv-00472). Defense counsel of record should be treated as unverified pending a full PACER docket pull.

If you can authorize a PACER pull of the docket sheet, I can populate the attorney table with names, firms, offices, and roles from the actual appearance entries.