Untitled case

Case overview: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. [Verizon Communications Inc.](/litigations/by-defendant/Verizon%20Communications%20Inc.), No. 6:22-cv-00043 (W.D. Tex.)

Parties. The defendant, which the earlier summary left blank, is Verizon Communications Inc. — confirmed both by the docket (summons issued to Verizon on Jan. 12, 2022, Doc. 6) and by KOTRA's IP-dispute database entry for 6:22-cv-00043, which lists Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (Canada / NPE) v. Verizon Communications Inc. (US) over U.S. Patents 6,629,077, 6,721,489, 7,086,079 and 8,165,867 (Patexia docket; KOTRA record). Cedar Lane is a Canadian non-practicing entity (NPE/PAE) incorporated in British Columbia on April 29, 2019, with sole director Gregory Benoit (a former CEO of monetization firm Patent Armory, who also signed for Steephill Technologies LLC, the pass-through entity for its Intellectual Ventures acquisitions); the address on its complaints maps to the IP licensing firm Pigott & Co., and it has disclosed that it has no parent and no publicly held owner (RPX, "In a Matter of Months, Former IV Portfolio…"). Its litigation counsel is Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law (Alexandria, Va.), and reporting puts its total U.S. filings at roughly 200 suits since 2019 (The Logic/Calgary Herald, via Calgary Herald). Verizon, by contrast, is a large operating telecommunications company — the accused technology is Verizon's own service/product offering, not Cedar Lane's.

Accused technology and patents. The complaint (Doc. 1, filed Jan. 11, 2022) asserted four patents in four separate counts, with infringement charts attached as exhibits (compare the parallel Cedar Lane complaint text reproduced at RPX litigation document 14574293, which pleads the same '077 / '489 / '079 structure). The centrally relevant patent here is U.S. 6,721,489, "Play list manager" — issued April 2004 to PhatNoise, Inc. (the Los Angeles in-car digital-music jukebox/"PhatBox" company later acquired by Harman in 2005), with an estimated March 2000 priority date and a family of one; the patent passed to an Intellectual Ventures affiliate in 2006, then to AVInnov, then to Cedar Lane by assignment in October 2019 (RPX, supra; GoodIP listing for US6721489B1, "Play list manager"). In one line: it claims software for managing/organizing digital-media playlists and transferring the resulting collections to a portable playback device. The other three are 6,629,077, 7,086,079 and 8,165,867; the '867 is described in Cedar Lane's campaign reporting as covering "wirelessly controlling a device with another device in real time," while the '077 and '079 are described generally as media/playlist-related patents in the same former-IV campaign (Mondaq/ RPX campaign summary, Mondaq). I was not able to verify the exact titles/claim scope of the '077 and '079 in this session, and I could not retrieve the Verizon-specific claim-chart exhibits, so the precise accused instrumentalities (e.g., which Fios/streaming/DVR products and apps) are not publicly documented in what I could access — the complaint only pleads infringement by Verizon's products in the district. By pattern, Cedar Lane used the '489 against cable boxes and streaming UIs (Charter, Frontier, Starz in 2019; DISH, Disney, ViacomCBS, Deezer and LiveXLive in 2020), so the Verizon theory was almost certainly playlist/queue management in a video or music service rather than anything in Verizon's network core (RPX, supra; Mondaq, supra).

Procedural posture and venue significance. The case was filed in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas and assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright, the busiest patent judge in the country at that time; the docket shows the complaint (Doc. 1), attorney appearance (Doc. 2), Rule 7 disclosure (Doc. 3), summons (Doc. 6), Cedar Lane's notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice on Jan. 18, 2022 (Doc. 7), the AO-120 report to the USPTO (Doc. 8), and Judge Albright's order granting dismissal without prejudice on Feb. 9, 2022 (Doc. 9) — a 29-day life span with no answer, no motion practice, no claim construction, and no fact discovery (Patexia docket). Nothing in the public record explains the dismissal; consistent with Cedar Lane's broader practice (quick, low-dollar demands — e.g., a US$95,000 opening demand reported in the Ecobee matter), a short-lived license/settlement or nothing at all are both plausible, and I cannot source which. The case is notable for three reasons. First, it is a textbook illustration of the 2021–22 Waco/Albright filing surge by serial NPEs — filed (per KOTRA) on Jan. 11, 2022, dismissed four weeks later, before any venue or transfer fight could mature; this was the same period in which the Federal Circuit's mandamus decisions and the district's mid-2022 divisional-assignment change began reshaping Waco's patent docket. Second, it shows the IV-derived portfolio's PTAB exposure: sibling patent 7,173,177, asserted alongside the '489 in the same cable/streaming campaigns, was held unpatentable in Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., IPR2020-00006 (FWD Feb. 12, 2021) (Unified Patents) — I found no IPR petition against the '489 itself in the sources searched, so the '489's validity remains unchallenged on the public record I could locate. Third, it is part of the broader market story of telecom/streaming incumbents being hit with legacy 2000-era media-management patents, and of Cedar Lane's practice of seeking portfolio-wide settlements rather than judgment on any single patent.

Sourcing caveats: party names, documents and dismissal come from the PACER-derived Patexia docket and KOTRA; the '489 provenance comes from RPX; the accused-product specifics and the reason for dismissal are not publicly documented and are flagged as unknown above. No PACER/Reuters/Law360 opinion or Federal Circuit decision exists for this case because it was dismissed before any contested ruling.

I'll research this case systematically, starting with identifying the defendant and the docket.

Now let me dig into the specific docket and any related/refiled actions.

Now let me check for any PTAB proceedings on the '489 patent itself and any claim construction rulings in related cases.

Case identified: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Verizon Communications Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00043-ADA (W.D. Tex.)

The prior summary's open question — the defendant's identity — resolves to Verizon Communications Inc. Case No. 6:22-cv-00043 is the W.D. Tex. (Waco Division) action assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright, filed 2022-01-11 and voluntarily dismissed without prejudice on 2022-02-09 — a 29‑day case that never left the pleading stage. (UniCourt docket summary; Patexia document list)

A note on scope: this is a thin docket. There was no answer, no counterclaim, no Markman, no discovery, no trial, and no PTAB proceeding on the '489 patent. I set out below what the record shows, and I flag explicitly where a fact is not well sourced rather than filling gaps.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

2022-01-11 — Complaint filed (Dkt. 1). Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., a British Columbia NPE formed 2019-04-29, filed a four-count complaint through Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Alexandria, VA). The complaint asserted four patents from the former Intellectual Ventures / AVInnov playlist-and-media portfolio:

The petition/patent list is corroborated by the Korean IP protection agency's docket record for this case number, which lists US6629077 | US6721489 | US7086079 | US8165867 as the asserted rights. (KOTRA IP dispute record) The complaint text is available via RPX's document repository and confirms the structure — Count 2 pleads direct infringement of the '489 patent literally and under the doctrine of equivalents, with claim charts at Exhibit 6, and demands a jury. (Complaint excerpt, W.D. Tex., dated 2022-01-11)

Provenance of the '489 patent (relevant to damages exposure): issued 2004-04-13 to PhatNoise, Inc., application filed 2000-03-08; PhatNoise was acquired by Harman in August 2005, and the patent passed to an IV affiliate in September 2006, later via Steephill Technologies LLC to Cedar Lane in the October 2019 AVInnov assignment. (RPX, 2019-11-09)

Docket, filing week. Dkt. 2 (notice of appearance), Dkt. 3 (Rule 7.1 disclosure), Dkt. 4 (request for summons), Dkt. 5 (AO 120 form), and Dkt. 6 (summons issued as to Verizon, 2022-01-12). Case assigned to Judge Albright on 2022-01-11 with the -ADA suffix.

No answer and no counterclaims were ever filed. The docket reflects no return of service and no appearance by Verizon counsel — consistent with the case being resolved before Verizon's response deadline ran.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

None. There was no Rule 12 motion, no § 1404(a) transfer motion, no motion to stay pending IPR, and no summary judgment motion. The only motion filed was Cedar Lane's own dismissal request (below).

3. Claim construction (Markman)

The case never reached claim construction. No Markman order, hearing, or joint claim construction statement appears on the docket. So far as my searches of the aggregators and secondary coverage show, no court has construed the '489 patent claims in any of Cedar Lane's suits — the '489 was asserted in a long series of cases (Charter, Frontier, Starz, DISH, Disney, LiveXLive, Aspiro/Tidal, and others) that overwhelmingly terminated before Markman. Caveat: this is a negative finding from incomplete public sources; a claim construction ruling in a non-indexed case cannot be ruled out.

4. Discovery milestones

None of record. Discovery never opened — no Rule 26(f) conference, no scheduling order, no infringement or invalidity contentions. The dismissal occurred before the answer deadline, so Cedar Lane never had to serve contentions on the '489 claim charts.

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial date was set, no verdict, no JMOL/new trial motion, and no § 285 fee motion by either side.

6. Final disposition

2022-01-18 — Dkt. 7, styled "MOTION to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)," filed by Cedar Lane one week after filing the complaint and six days after summons issued. Dkt. 8 sent the patent/trademark report to the USPTO that same day.

2022-02-09 — Dkt. 9, Order Granting Plaintiff's Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice, signed by Judge Albright. That is the terminal entry; the case is closed. (Docket entries)

No appeal was taken (Cedar Lane obtained the dismissal it requested).

Why dismiss? The record does not say. The filings contain no settlement agreement, no license, and no stated reason, and I found no reporting on the reason. What the timing supports is an inference only: a dismissal within seven days of filing, before service was perfected and before Verizon appeared, is the signature of Cedar Lane's standard monetization funnel — a pre-suit or immediately post-filing nuisance-value settlement, or a decision to re-route the claim into a different campaign. Cedar Lane's overall track record is roughly 270 suits with about 80% resolved by settlement and a mean life around 90 days, which matches this case's profile. (Lex Machina-derived profile via GDOIP, 2022-07-04)

Note on possible refiling: I searched for any subsequent Cedar Lane action against Verizon (any district, any Cedar Lane asset) and found none. The 2022-01-11 W.D. Tex. suit appears to be the only Cedar Lane–Verizon case, and the '489 patent was not re-asserted against Verizon.

Note on the opposing party's position: Because Verizon never appeared, Verizon's invalidity and non-infringement positions on the '489 patent were never placed on the record. There is no answer, no IPR petition by Verizon, and no estoppel.

7. Parallel PTAB proceedings

No IPR or PGR was ever filed against U.S. Patent 6,721,489. I found no PTAB proceeding — instituted, denied, or pending — on the '489 patent, and no PGR either. The '489 was one of the few patents in Cedar Lane's playlist group that escaped PTAB attack.

The relevant parallel PTAB activity in this portfolio was directed at a different patent:

• *IPR2020-00006, Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., U.S. Patent No. 7,173,177* ("User interface for simultaneous management of owned and unowned inventory").
  • Petition filed 2019-10-03; trial instituted on all challenged claims (claims 1–26) 2020-03-18.
  • Final Written Decision 2021-02-12 (panel: Kaiser, Beamer, Howard; opinion by Kaiser) holding the asserted independent claim unpatentable.
  • Petitioner's request for rehearing denied 2021-12-08.
  • Unified was represented in-house by Michelle Callaghan and Roshan Mansinghani, with Husch Blackwell as outside counsel.

Sources: Unified Patents announcement, 2020-03-18; Unified Patents announcement, 2021-02-12; IPR2020-00006 document list.

Effect on the litigation: indirect but real. The '177 FWD issued eleven months before the Verizon complaint was filed, and — notably — the Verizon complaint asserted the '077, '489, '079, and '867 patents but not the '177. That is consistent with Cedar Lane shelving the '177 after it was invalidated. The PTAB proceeding did not, however, generate any stay motion, estoppel, or invalidity defense in this case, because Verizon never appeared and the case died in 29 days. The '489 patent itself was not adjudicated, disclaimed, or otherwise affected by IPR2020-00006.

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Assessment: what this case actually signifies

1. It is a settlement-vehicle filing, not a litigated dispute. Everything about the case — a one-page-ish complaint with boilerplate counts and claim charts, a summons issued and never returned served, a voluntary dismissal without prejudice in week one, and no defendant appearance — indicates a filing designed to move Verizon to a license, not to adjudicate the '489 patent. Judge Albright's Waco docket in January 2022 was the pressure point; Cedar Lane filed a companion suit against Qualcomm, No. 6:22-cv-00046-ADA, on the same day, which was likewise voluntarily dismissed without prejudice (Dkt. 21, granted 2022-06-14). (Qualcomm docket)

2. The without-prejudice dismissal preserved a refiling option that Cedar Lane apparently never used. Legally, Cedar Lane could have refiled on the '489 (subject to the statute of limitations); practically, it did not, against Verizon or anyone else. That absence is itself informative about the perceived value of the '489 after the portfolio began to age.

3. Damages exposure on the '489 was structurally collapsing. The '489 application was filed 2000-03-08 and the patent issued 2004-04-13, so its 20-year term ran out on or about 2020-03-08 absent PTA/PTE. By the January 2022 filing date, the patent was expiring or expired, leaving a § 286 six-year lookback window that closed in early 2020 and no forward-looking royalty or injunctive leverage. This is my inference from the face of the patent as recited in the complaints, not a holding in the case; I have not verified whether the '489 carried a terminal disclaimer, PTA, or PTE.

4. No judicial guidance on the '489 exists. For anyone tracking this family, the practical takeaway is that the '489 patent's claim scope is unconstrued and untested — no Markman ruling, no PTAB validity determination, no invalidity judgment, no consent judgment on the merits. Across the entire Cedar Lane campaign, only the '177 patent received a merits adjudication (the Unified IPR), and it did not

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

I've identified the defendant and initial counsel. Let me verify the full docket and attorney details.

Let me look for the complaint document itself and check whether any other plaintiff attorneys appeared.

Bottom line

This case is Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Verizon Communications Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00043 (W.D. Tex., Waco Division), filed January 11, 2022 before Judge Alan D. Albright. (This fills the gap in the existing summary, which did not identify the defendant.) The docket shows exactly one attorney appearing for the plaintiff — Isaac Phillip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC — and no other plaintiff-side appearances, no local counsel, and no pro hac vice motion. There were also no defense appearances; the case was voluntarily dismissed 8 days after filing.

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Counsel of record for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

1. Isaac Phillip Rabicoff — lead counsel (sole counsel of record)

Docket activity attributable to him (all plaintiff-side filings in the case):

• Doc. 1 — Complaint for Patent Infringement (with Exhibits 1–8 and civil cover sheet)
• Doc. 2 — Notice of Attorney Appearance
• Doc. 3 — Rule 7 Disclosure Statement
• Doc. 4 — Request for Issuance of Summons
• Doc. 5 — AO 120 Patent/Trademark form
• Doc. 7 — "MOTION to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)" (Jan. 18, 2022)
• Doc. 9 — Order granting voluntary dismissal without prejudice (signed by Judge Albright, Feb. 9, 2022)

Relevant patent litigation experience / notability:

• He is the architect of Cedar Lane's enforcement program — the single most prolific patent plaintiff of 2022 — filing well over 100 cases for Cedar Lane (largely in the W.D. Tex. Waco Division), plus cases for other NPEs such as SportBrain Holdings, RecepTrexx, Sensor360, Mirror Imaging, Patent Armory, and Spycurity. He has acted as lead counsel in multiple PTAB proceedings (e.g., IPR2020-00111; IPR2016-01464).
• Adverse notability (secondary sourcing, flag for verification): In 2020 Judge Vince Chhabria of the N.D. Cal. sanctioned Cedar Lane and Mr. Rabicoff, finding filings "objectively frivolous" and made in bad faith, and referred Mr. Rabicoff to that court's Standing Committee on Professional Conduct. This is reported by the LexBlog "NPE Showcase" post on Cedar Lane (Oct. 4, 2022), not from a primary opinion I retrieved — treat the precise wording as needing primary-source confirmation.
• Business-side context: IAM (Mar. 20, 2023) interviewed Greg Benoit, president of Cedar Lane, who is the client decision-maker — he is not an attorney of record in this case and made no appearance.

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Verification notes and limits

• Source of docket detail: PACER-derived aggregators because the case is long closed and no free RECAP docket sheet surfaced: Patexia's document list for Cedar Lane v. Verizon (case no. 6:22-cv-00043), UniCourt's docket summary, and Docket Navigator-based coverage in the January 2022 Retail Patent Litigation Report and IPWatchdog's Jan. 20, 2022 filings round-up. I could not pull the PACER docket sheet itself in this session, so the attorney list is confirmed by the appearance entry and the signature blocks on every plaintiff filing — both pointing to Rabicoff alone.
• No sealed material / no gaps to disclose: Nothing in this case was filed under seal, and no attorney "hasn't appeared yet" issue exists — the case opened and closed with a single appearance.
• No pro hac vice motion appears on the docket. Unlike many out-of-state W.D. Tex. appearances, the docket registers no PHV application; either he was already admitted or the case resolved before admission was tested.
• Patents actually asserted: The complaint asserted four patents — U.S. Nos. 6,629,077; 6,721,489; 7,086,079; and 8,165,867 (all originally Intellectual Ventures-family assets) — so the '489 patent in the case metadata was one of four counts, not the sole patent. Count 2 of the complaint was the '489 count, with claim charts at Exhibit 6 (complaint text as reproduced on RPX Insight's litigation document repository).
• You may want to correct the case summary caption to Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Verizon Communications Inc. and note the outcome: voluntary dismissal without prejudice (Docs. 7, 9), case terminated Feb. 9, 2022.

I'll start by identifying the defendant and docket details for this case number.

The docket shows a very short-lived case. Let me verify the full docket on CourtListener and check whether Verizon ever appeared.

The docket confirms no defendant appearance in this case. Let me check related Cedar Lane/Verizon litigation and whether Verizon's counsel appeared elsewhere, plus verify the case's patent coverage.

Bottom line

No attorney ever appeared for the defendant in this case — there is no counsel of record to identify. 6:22-cv-00043 is Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Verizon Communications Inc. (W.D. Tex., Judge Alan D. Albright), filed January 11, 2022 and voluntarily dismissed — before any defense appearance, answer, or Rule 12 motion — twenty-nine days later. Any list of "defense counsel of record" for this docket would be fabricated; I won't provide one.

What the docket actually shows

The complete record is nine entries, every substantive one filed by the plaintiff (sourced from the Patexia docket mirror and UniCourt's PACER extract for 6:22-cv-00043):

Key indicia that Verizon never retained/appeared:

• No executed summons return on the docket — only issuance (Doc. 6). No proof of service was ever filed.
• No answer deadline was ever triggered; no extension notices, no stipulations, no Rule 12 motion, no corporate disclosure statement, no pro hac vice applications, and no local-counsel designation for defendant.
• No defense-side document of any kind appears in Patexia's document list or UniCourt's docket extract, both of which pull full PACER dockets rather than only opinions.
• The dismissal came seven days after filing (Doc. 7, 1/18/2022) and was entered before any responsive deadline could reasonably have run, consistent with Cedar Lane's standard "file-and-fold" pattern in its Verizon-adjacent telecom cases. The '489 patent was one of four patents asserted in the complaint (U.S. 6,629,077; 6,721,489; 7,086,079; 8,165,867), per the KOTRA IP-dispute record for this docket and the Google Patents '489 family listing.

The only attorney of record in the case

• Isaac Rabicoff — plaintiff's counsel, not defendant's. Rabicoff Law LLC, Chicago, IL. Sole appearance (Doc. 2). Note for context: Rabicoff and co-counsel were sanctioned under Rule 11 and the court's inherent authority in Cedar Lane Techs. v. Blackmagic Design, 2020 WL 6789711 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 19, 2020), with a referral to that district's professional-conduct committee — reported in Finnegan's Westlaw Today piece and in the October 2022 "NPE Showcase" post on Cedar Lane. He is not defense counsel here and I include him only to make clear the record is one-sided.

Verizon-side counsel in other matters (context only — NOT of record here)

Because the question asks for defense counsel, the honest answer is "none in this docket." For orientation only, the following are Verizon's counsel in unrelated proceedings; none has any connection to 6:22-cv-00043 that I could verify:

• Wiley Rein LLP (Washington, DC) — long-standing Verizon Wireless patent litigation counsel; appears as Verizon Wireless's counsel in matters such as Fenner Investments v. Verizon Wireless, No. 6:11-cv-348 (E.D. Tex.) and the 2009 Eastern District of Virginia cellular-broadband trial, per PTAB expert-declaration exhibits.
• Stinson LLP (Washington, DC) — listed as "Attorneys for Verizon Communications Inc." in Verizon's Sears Holdings bankruptcy filings (S.D.N.Y. Bankr. No. 18-23538).

I would flag both as low-confidence, non-dispositive context: they establish nothing about who would have appeared in this case had it proceeded. Cedar Lane defendants in this campaign more typically retained firms such as Hogan Lovells (Qualcomm dismissal in W.D. Tex.) or Delaware/local counsel of the sort that appeared in Cedar Lane v. Opticon (Steven Balick) — again, unrelated dockets.

Verification caveats

• PACER itself is paywalled; I relied on full-docket mirrors (Patexia Research case ID 160565; UniCourt's docket extract; the NPE Litigation Database, which lists Cedar Lane filings by patent). All three agree the record ends at Doc. 9.
• Because the case was closed in February 2022, there is no possibility of a later unnoticed appearance; the absence is structural, not an artifact of a stale extract.
• If you need a certified negative, pull the PACER docket report for 6:22-cv-00043 directly and confirm there is no "Attorney Appearance" entry with a defendant-party flag — the Docket Text report will show only Rabicoff under "Attorneys."