Untitled case

Longhorn Automotive Group LLC, a non-practicing entity (NPE) and an entity of Alpha Alpha Intellectual Partners LLC (AAIP), has initiated a patent infringement lawsuit against Volvo Group North America, LLC, Mack Trucks, Inc., Nova Bus (US), Inc., and Prevost Car (US), Inc.. Longhorn Automotive Group LLC is also known to be backed by Chicago-based litigation funder Longford Capital Management. The defendants are prominent operating companies in the automotive, trucking, and bus manufacturing industries. The core of the dispute centers on U.S. Patent 8,085,192, which broadly describes a "system and method for remote monitoring and control of vehicles."

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division, under case number 2:26-cv-00235, on March 23, 2026. The case has been assigned to District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. The Eastern District of Texas is a favored venue for patent plaintiffs, particularly NPEs, due to its historical reputation for plaintiff-friendly rulings and a high volume of patent litigation, often resulting in higher success rates for patent holders compared to other districts.

This case is notable as it represents Longhorn Automotive Group LLC's continued strategy of asserting patents within the automotive sector, consistent with broader trends of NPE litigation in the Eastern District of Texas. While the specific accused products in this case against Volvo, Mack, Nova Bus, and Prevost are not detailed in public search results, previous litigations by Longhorn Automotive have targeted various automotive technologies, including measurement controllers and semiconductor memory modules impacting advanced vehicle features. Furthermore, U.S. Patent 8,085,192 has been the subject of an inter partes reexamination proceeding (IPR) initiated by Volkswagen AG, Volkswagen Group Of America Inc., and Audi AG, which was ultimately "Not Instituted - Procedural," indicating a prior challenge to the patent's validity that did not proceed to a full review on substantive grounds.

Key Legal Developments and Outcome

The patent infringement litigation, Longhorn Automotive Group LLC v. Volvo Group North America, LLC et al. (2:26-cv-00235 E.D. Tex.), is in its early stages. The case was filed on March 23, 2026, in the Eastern District of Texas and is currently open.

Filing & Initial Pleadings

• Complaint: Longhorn Automotive Group LLC filed the patent infringement complaint on March 23, 2026, against Volvo Group North America, LLC, Mack Trucks, Inc., Nova Bus (US), Inc., and Prevost Car (US), Inc. The complaint alleges infringement of U.S. Patent 8,085,192, which pertains to a "system and method for remote monitoring and control of vehicles."

As of May 18, 2026, public search results do not detail any further significant docket activity such as answers, counterclaims, or substantive pre-trial motions (like motions to dismiss, transfer, or stay) in this specific case. The case remains open.

Parallel PTAB IPR Proceedings

U.S. Patent 8,085,192, the patent at issue in this litigation, has previously been subject to an inter partes reexamination proceeding (IPR). Volkswagen AG, Volkswagen Group Of America Inc., and Audi AG initiated this IPR (likely IPR2023-01314, as mentioned in the case overview), which was ultimately "Not Instituted - Procedural." This indicates that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) did not proceed with a full substantive review of the patent's validity in that particular instance. The procedural denial means the merits of the patentability challenge were not decided by the PTAB.

I'll research plaintiff-side counsel specifically for this docket, building on the prior sections' flag that the earlier "Plaintiff representatives" section was corrupted.

Plaintiff Counsel of Record — Findings, Verification Status, and Limits

Bottom line: Longhorn's litigation team is well documented across its prior E.D. Tex. cases, and it is a single, repeat-player team: Fabricant LLP (Rye, NY), led by Alfred R. Fabricant, Peter Lambrianakos, Vincent J. Rubino, III, and Enrique W. Iturralde, with Texas counsel Justin Kurt Truelove. That same team is the near-certain plaintiff representation in 2:26-cv-00235. However — and this matters — I could not retrieve the actual docket sheet for 2:26-cv-00235, so I cannot give you docket-verified appearance entries (Dkt. Nos./dates) for this specific case. My tool access ended before I could pull the Justia/CourtListener RECAP docket. The table below therefore separates verified in the Longhorn campaign from verified in this case.

This section also supersedes and replaces the earlier "Plaintiff representatives" section, which the prior pass correctly flagged as corrupted.

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1. Plaintiff-side counsel — verification table

Sources: PatSnap litigation intelligence party/counsel tables for Longhorn v. Mitsubishi Group, No. 2:24-cv-00685 (naming Fabricant, Iturralde, J.A. Rubino, Truelove, Park, Mondelli, Lambrianakos, V.J. Rubino III, and the firms Fabricant LLP, Fabricant Rubino & Lambrianakos LLP, Rubino IP, Rubino Law LLC, Truelove Law Firm) — PatSnap; PatSnap, Longhorn v. Mazda. Signature block and P.R. 3-1/3-2 Notice of Compliance in Longhorn Automotive Group LLC v. Volkswagen AG, No. 2:24-cv-00933-JRG — PTAB exhibit 1557967. Fed. Cir. entries of appearance for Longhorn as respondent in In re Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., No. 26-123 — Fed. Cir. docket; CourtListener 26-123.

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2. Experience notes (grounded, with citations)

• Alfred R. Fabricant (NY Bar 2219392) — Founding partner of Fabricant LLP; the constant across every Longhorn assertion campaign in E.D. Tex. (Hyundai/Kia/Nissan 2:24-cv-00554; VW/Audi 2:24-cv-00933; Mazda 2:24-cv-00686; Mitsubishi 2:24-cv-00685; Volvo Car 2:24-cv-00603). Appears on Longhorn's appellate papers in the Federal Circuit. Deep bench in NPE-side patent prosecution and reexam practice.
• Enrique William Iturralde — The team's appellate advocate: argued for the appellant in Fed. Cir. No. 22-1361 (nonprecedential Rule 36 disposition, Apr. 10, 2023), with Fabricant, Lambrianakos, and V.J. Rubino also on the brief (Fed. Cir. opinion). Entered appearance for Longhorn as respondent in Fed. Cir. 26-123 (Jan. 8, 2026). The 26-123 record also shows him as one of the three Longhorn appellate counsel of record.
• Vincent J. Rubino, III (NY Bar 4557435) — Routine signatory on Longhorn's E.D. Tex. filings, including the April 8, 2025 Notice of Compliance confirming service of P.R. 3-1/3-2 contentions on Volkswagen's counsel. Practical significance: he is the attorney who has been drafting and serving this portfolio's infringement contentions, which is the work product the Volvo defendants will face next.
• Peter Lambrianakos (NY Bar 2894392) — E-filer of record on the Fed. Cir. 26-123 entries (docket Nos. 7 and 9, Jan. 8, 2026), i.e., the day-to-day handling attorney on the appellate track.
• Justin Kurt Truelove — The Texas-side signature on Longhorn's complaints/filings; fills the local-counsel slot that Judge Gilstrap's practice expects. Caveat: I could not verify his office city from the sources reached; do not assume Tyler/Longview/Marshall without checking the docket signature block.
• Caution flag on the trial team (allegation, not a finding): In AGIS Software Development LLC v. Google, Google alleged that Rubino and Iturralde violated a protective order by participating in reexam claim amendments after receiving Google's "Highly Sensitive Material," and sought to bar enforcement of the reexamined claims on inequitable-conduct grounds. See the complaint excerpt at RXPX. This is an adverse party's allegation in an unrelated case — not a court finding — but it is a recurring attack line against this team and worth knowing before depositions or a § 285 fight.

Firm structure note: "Fabricant LLP," "Fabricant, Rubino & Lambrianakos LLP," "Rubino IP," and "Rubino Law LLC" appear interchangeably in PACER-derived counsel fields for Longhorn — same team, different d/b/a and billing entities depending on the filing. For a Rule 4/26(f) service list, use the Rye, NY address and the individual e-mail handles (e.g., vrubino@fabricantllp.com, ffabricant@fabricantllp.com, plambrianakos@fabricantllp.com) that appear in the firm's E.D. Tex. signature blocks.

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3. What I could not verify, and exactly where to look

I did not obtain the 2:26-cv-00235 docket sheet. The aggregator page for the case exists and carries an "Attorney" field, but the field's contents were not rendered in the retrievable text (Ex Parte case page). Law360's March 25, 2026 coverage (Gina Kim) reports the filing but its body — which would typically name plaintiff's counsel — is paywalled (Law360). To close the gap, pull these entries:

1. Dkt. 1 — the complaint's signature block (will show Fabricant LLP + Truelove, and confirm pro hac vice designations).
2. Notice of Attorney Appearance entries for Fabricant, Lambrianakos, V.J. Rubino, Iturralde, Truelove.
3. Fed. R. Civ. P. 7.1 corporate disclosure for Longhorn — useful for confirming the Alpha Alpha Intellectual Partners / Longford Capital affiliation asserted in the case overview.
4. Pro hac vice motions — because the Fabricant team is New York-barred, each attorney will have a pro hac vice motion in this case; those motions list the attorney's bar number and confirm who is actually appearing here versus merely being campaign counsel.

No sealed-materials issue is apparent. The complaint is publicly filed and has been analyzed publicly (element-by-element claim charts are visible at the complaint analysis page), so the absence of counsel information is a function of indexing/paywalling, not sealing.

One name I am not asserting: the Fed. Cir. 26-123 docket entry for the January 8, 2026 extension motion reads "MOTION of Respondent Longhorn Automotive Group LLC, John A. Squires and Petitioner Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.…" — John A. Squires may be an additional Longhorn appellate attorney, but the entry is ambiguous and I have no firm or role for him. Do not list

I'll search for the docket and defense-side appearances. Let me run several targeted queries in parallel.

Good leads on the docket. Now let me try to pull the actual docket sheet and defense appearances.

Bottom line

I could not verify any attorney of record for the defendants in No. 2:26-cv-00235. No accessible source I reached — PACER-indexed aggregators (Justia, CourtListener, Patexia, UniCourt, Ex Parte/AI-Lab), Law360's coverage, or secondary trade press — displays a defense-side attorney list for this case. The Ex Parte docket page for 2:26-cv-00235 has an "Attorney" field, but the indexed content returns no names. I am therefore not naming defense counsel, because naming them without a docket entry would require inventing them.

What is confirmed about the case posture: the complaint was filed 03/23/2026 (Dkt. 1), NOS 830, against Volvo Group North America, LLC, Mack Trucks, Inc., Nova Bus (US), Inc., and Prevost Car (US), Inc. Law360 covered the filing on 3/25/2026 (Gina Kim, "Volvo Accused Of Infringing LED Headlight, GPS System Tech," Law360). As of the last contemporaneous reporting (Chinese-language trade press, ~3/26/2026, citing Bloomberg), "Volvo has not yet publicly responded to the complaint" — i.e., no answer or appearance had been filed at that point.

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Explicit disclaimer of the earlier, unsourced defense roster

The previously generated "Defendant representatives" section — naming Kirkland & Ellis and Winston & Strawn attorneys (including "Jeanne M. Gills," "Michael A. Berta," "Michael R. Rueckheim," "George C. Lombardi") and Gillam & Smith as local counsel — is not corroborated by anything I found. It should be treated as unverified and not cited. Two specific problems:

1. No docket entry supports it. I could not locate a Notice of Attorney Appearance, an answer, a Rule 7.1 disclosure, or an unopposed extension application naming any of those attorneys in 2:26-cv-00235.
2. The names appear to be recycled from unrelated dockets. My searches surfaced Michael R. Rueckheim, Matthew Hopkins, David P. Enzminger, Maureen L. Rurka, Juan C. Yaquian and Matthew R. McCullough (all Winston & Strawn) together with Jennifer Haltom Doan / Joshua Reed Thane / Mariah Leigh Hornok (Haltom & Doan) and Jack Wesley Hill (Ward, Smith & Hill) — but only inside a PTAB exhibit filed in an unrelated Tesla IPR (IPR2025-01034, Ex. 10064, pp. 640–641), which reproduces a multi-defendant E.D. Tex. docket excerpt with several "TERMINATED" entries. I could not establish which case that excerpt belongs to, and it is emphatically not evidence of an appearance in 2:26-cv-00235. This is the most likely source of the earlier section's Winston & Strawn names, and it is a misattribution risk.

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What the record does and does not support

Why the gap exists (and it is a gap, not a null result): I am reporting as of October 2026, roughly seven months after filing. In E.D. Tex. practice, the first defense-side filing is typically an Unopposed Application for Extension of Time to Answer — which names defense counsel as filer before any formal appearance. In Longhorn's related member case against Mazda (2:24-cv-00686), that filing was Dkt. 11, filed by Matthew Satchwell for Mazda on 1/2/2025, followed by consolidation and a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. A functionally identical docket sequence almost certainly exists here and would name the Volvo Group team — but the free aggregators index this case only at the metadata level, and the full PACER docket sheet was not retrievable through the tools available to me. The absence of a name in my results is an access limitation, not a finding that no counsel has appeared.

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One point of context that cuts against easy inference

Don't assume the defense team from Longhorn's 2024 Volvo suit carries over. That case — Longhorn Automotive Group LLC v. Volvo Car Corporation et al., No. 2:24-cv-00603-JRG (E.D. Tex., filed 7/30/2024, also before Judge Gilstrap) — is against Volvo Car Corporation / Volvo Car USA (the passenger-car company, Gothenburg, separate ownership from Volvo Group since 2010). The 2026 suit targets the Volvo Group commercial-truck and bus side (Volvo Group North America, Mack, Nova Bus, Prevost, all Greensboro, NC-centered for North America). Different corporate families generally means different in-house legal departments and frequently different outside counsel. The 2026 complaint cites the 2024 Volvo Car case only as notice supporting willfulness. I found no sourced basis for attributing the Volvo Car defense team to these defendants.

Likewise, the IPR petitioner counsel of record for Volkswagen in IPR2025-00925 on the '192 patent is listed as "Cook, Elliot et al" (PTAB docket) — that is VW's team in a different case and says nothing about Volvo Group's district-court counsel.

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Verification path (in priority order)

1. PACER docket for 2:26-cv-00235 — pull the full sheet and read, in order: any "Unopposed Application for Extension of Time to Answer" (names defense counsel as filer), any "NOTICE of Attorney Appearance," and each defendant's Fed. R. Civ. P. 7.1(a)(1) Disclosure Statement (in a parent/sub structure like Volvo Group, the disclosure statement is where in-house counsel and corporate parentage surface).
2. Check for a consolidation order. Four related Longhorn matters were consolidated into a lead case in 2024 (2:24-cv-00933-JRG). If the 2026 Volvo Group case is consolidated or transferred, the operative defense roster may be docketed only in the lead case.
3. Check for a § 1404(a) transfer motion or § 1406 motion. Volvo Group's North American operations are in Greensboro, NC; a transfer motion to M.D.N.C. is the kind of filing that would generate press and identify lead defense counsel. I found none — but confirm.
4. Confirm the division/judge. The prior "Case overview" says Sherman Division but assigns Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who sits in Marshall. Every prior Longhorn E.D. Tex. case is captioned Marshall Division with a "-JRG" suffix. This inconsistency is unresolved and matters for local-counsel identification (Sherman/Plano firms vs. Marshall firms).
5. Law360 / Bloomberg Law docket tracking for the case — both maintain appearance-level docket summaries behind their paywalls and would be the fastest secondary confirmation.

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Contradictions to flag against the earlier sections

• Patent count. Case metadata lists only U.S. 8,085,192, but the complaint asserts four patents: 8,085,192 ('192), 8,810,803 ('803), 7,987,002 ('002), and 7,513,238 ('238). One Chinese-language account lists 8,265,353 ('353) in place of '803; the English-language complaint analyses and the P.R. 3-1 contentions in the related case both confirm '803, so the '353 reference appears to be an error.
• IPR outcome characterization. The prior section describes the VW IPR as "Not Instituted – Procedural." More precisely: IPR2025-00925 (VW Group of America, filed 4/24/2025, on the '192 patent) was denied institution on 9/12/2025 under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a) discretionary denial; VW's Request for Director Review (10/14/2025) was denied 11/12/2025. That is a discretionary denial tied to the parallel district court schedule, not a purely procedural defect — a distinction that matters if the 2026 defendants file their own IPR and face Fintiv-style timing arguments.
• Judge/division mismatch as noted in item 4 above.