Untitled case

This patent infringement litigation, Case No. 2:26-cv-00810, is an active case in the Washington Western District Court, having been transferred from the Texas Western District Court. The plaintiff is Dialect LLC, identified as a Patent Assertion Entity (NPE), also commonly referred to as a patent troll. Dialect LLC's patent acquisition history, involving transfers from an operating company (VoiceBox Technologies Corp., later acquired by Nuance Communications, Inc.) to shell entities like Voice Inventions, LLC and then to Dialect LLC, is indicative of an NPE strategy. The defendant is [Meta Platforms Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Meta%20Platforms%20Inc.), a major technology operating company known for its social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and its ventures into virtual and augmented reality.

The core of the dispute revolves around U.S. Patent No. 8,447,607, titled "Mobile systems and methods of supporting natural language human-machine interactions." This patent generally describes mobile devices equipped with speech and/or non-speech interfaces designed to facilitate natural language interactions between humans and machines. It enables mobile users to submit natural language questions or commands across various domains, with the system presenting responses in a natural manner, leveraging context, prior information, domain-specific knowledge, and individual user profiles to create an intuitive user experience. While the specific accused product is not explicitly detailed in the available public information, given Meta's portfolio and the patent's scope, it is likely that the infringement allegations target Meta's voice-controlled features, AI assistants, or natural language processing capabilities integrated into its various platforms or devices.

The procedural posture shows that the case was initially filed by Dialect LLC against Meta Platforms Inc. in the Texas Western District Court (7:25-cv-00060) on February 7, 2025, before being transferred to the Washington Western District Court as 2:26-cv-00810. The Western District of Washington is notable for having its own Local Patent Rules, which govern the procedures for patent cases. This transfer from the Western District of Texas, a popular venue for patent plaintiffs, to the Western District of Washington, where Meta may have a stronger presence or preferred venue, highlights the strategic considerations in patent litigation regarding forum selection. The case is notable as a classic example of an NPE asserting patents against a large operating technology company, a common trend in the patent litigation landscape, especially concerning broadly applicable technologies like natural language processing.

The patent infringement lawsuit filed by Dialect LLC against Meta Platforms Inc. concerning U.S. Patent No. 8,447,607 has seen several key developments since its initial filing.

Filing & Initial Pleadings

The case was initially filed by Dialect LLC against Meta Platforms Inc. in the Texas Western District Court (Case No. 7:25-cv-00060) on February 7, 2025. On June 9, 2025, Dialect LLC and Meta Platforms, Inc. filed a Joint Notice of Voluntary Dismissal of certain pre-suit indirect and willful infringement claims from the complaint, without prejudice. This allowed Dialect to re-plead these allegations with specificity after fact discovery, if supported by a good faith basis. Meta was granted until June 16, 2025, to respond to Dialect's complaint.

Pre-Trial Motions of Substance

The case was transferred from the Western District of Texas to the Western District of Washington, where it was opened as case number 2:26-cv-00810 on March 2, 2026. This transfer occurred 388 days after the initial filing and before any final merits ruling, damages award, infringement finding, or validity ruling in the Texas court. The case remains active in the Washington Western District Court.

Discovery Milestones

On September 17, 2025, while the case was still in the Western District of Texas, Meta Platforms, Inc. submitted its Preliminary Invalidity Contentions.

Parallel PTAB IPR Proceedings

U.S. Patent No. 8,447,607 has been the subject of multiple Inter Partes Review (IPR) petitions at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB):

• IPR2024-00751: Filed by Google LLC against Dialect LLC on April 5, 2024. This IPR was "Not Instituted - Merits" with a termination date of October 11, 2024.
• IPR2025-00656: Filed by [Microsoft Corp.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Microsoft%20Corp.) against Dialect LLC on March 7, 2025. This IPR was "Not Instituted - Procedural" with a termination date of August 14, 2025.
• IPR2025-01332: Filed by Meta Platforms Inc. against Dialect LLC on July 25, 2025. This IPR was "Not Instituted - Procedural" with a termination date of November 20, 2025.

The fact that all IPRs related to U.S. Patent No. 8,447,607 were not instituted suggests that the PTAB found the petitioners did not meet the threshold for review, which could strengthen Dialect's position in the ongoing district court litigation.

The plaintiff, Dialect LLC, is represented by a team of experienced patent litigators. Based on available information, key counsel include:

• Jonathan K. Waldrop - Lead Counsel

  • Firm: Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP (New York, NY and Silicon Valley, CA office)
  • Experience: Jonathan Waldrop is Chair of Kasowitz's Intellectual Property group and represents industry-leading companies in complex patent and trademark litigation, particularly involving interactive web technologies, video-on-demand telecommunications, cable technology, computer-assisted sales processes, medical devices, and gaming systems. He has a history of achieving favorable jury verdicts and has been recognized as a "Patent Troll Hunter" for his work representing tech companies against patent infringement claims. He has represented clients like Google, LG, ASUS, Uber, Adobe, and Cox Communications. Notably, he achieved a precedential victory before the PTAB, where he defeated Apple's petition for inter partes review, the first time the PTAB issued a discretionary denial based on a parallel patent action.

• Mark S. Raskin - Counsel

  • Firm: Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery (and previously Mischcon de Reya New York LLP)
  • Experience: Mark Raskin focuses on intellectual property litigation and licensing matters, with experience in patent, trademark, trade secret, and copyright disputes. He has worked on high-stakes cases for major companies across a range of technologies, including medical devices, consumer electronics, software, and telecommunications. He notably settled a multi-defendant case for $125 million. He has also represented ChanBond LLC in patent litigation against the cable TV industry and McRo, Inc. in patent litigation against video game designers.

• Daniel Scardino - Counsel

  • Firm: Scardino LLP (Austin, TX office)
  • Experience: Daniel Scardino has extensive experience in federal court intellectual property and First Amendment litigation, acting as lead lawyer in numerous patent lawsuits across various states. He has secured recoveries for his clients in excess of $150 million, including a nearly $25 million jury verdict against Apple in federal court. His practice areas include intellectual property, business, technology, and commercial litigation.

• John D. Vandenberg - Local Counsel (likely due to the transfer to Washington Western District Court)

  • Firm: Klarquist (Portland, OR, and admitted in Washington)
  • Experience: For over 35 years, John Vandenberg has litigated patents for technology clients such as Microsoft, SAP, eBay, and Nautilus. He has argued more than a dozen appeals before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and successfully argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., a significant case concerning patent claim definiteness. He is also the primary editor of an extensive summary of substantive defenses in patent infringement suits at www.patentdefenses.com.

• Justin Constant - Counsel

  • Firm: Blue Peak Law Group LLP
  • Experience: Justin Constant has appeared as counsel for Dialect LLC in other patent litigation matters, including Dialect, LLC v. [Amazon.com, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Amazon.com%2C%20Inc.) in the Eastern District of Virginia. He was also listed as counsel for Dialect LLC in correspondence related to the IPR proceedings against U.S. Patent No. 8,447,607.

• Garland Temple Stephens - Counsel

  • Firm: Blue Peak Law Group LLP (Houston, TX office)
  • Experience: Garland Stephens has represented Dialect LLC in other patent infringement cases, such as Dialect, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. He was also listed as counsel for Dialect LLC in an IPR proceeding initiated by Google LLC against Dialect LLC.

• Richard Michael Koehl - Counsel

  • Firm: Blue Peak Law Group LLP (New York, NY office)
  • Experience: Richard Koehl has represented Dialect LLC in patent litigation, including Dialect, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. He was also listed as counsel for Dialect LLC in a communication regarding Meta's IPR petitions.

It is important to note that the specific roles (e.g., lead counsel, local counsel) may evolve as the case progresses and can sometimes be inferred from firm locations relative to the court's jurisdiction. John D. Vandenberg's admission in Washington and the firm's Oregon location suggest a local counsel role for Klarquist in the Western District of Washington. Justin Constant and Garland Stephens' presence on correspondence related to the Texas case and IPRs indicate their ongoing involvement. Mark S. Raskin's and Jonathan K. Waldrop's extensive patent litigation backgrounds position them as key players in Dialect's overall litigation strategy.

I'll research the defense-side counsel of record for Meta Platforms in this case.

Let me dig into the specific defense-side filings and attorneys appearing for Meta.

Defense counsel of record — Dialect LLC v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-00810 (W.D. Wash.)

Research caveat up front: PACER is paywalled and I could not pull the complete appearance list for the W.D. Wash. docket sheet. The W.D. Tex. docket aggregators I could reach were last fully crawled in early April 2025, and the W.D. Wash. aggregate entries are partial ("45 More Attorneys Available" on UniCourt). Below I distinguish between counsel I can tie to a specific filing and counsel whose role I can only infer. No attorney below is invented; where I could not confirm a role, I say so.

Confirmed appearances for Meta

That single entry (Dkt. 160) is the strongest evidence that Fenwick & West is Meta's defense firm of record in the transferred case, and that its Seattle office is staffing the W.D. Wash. venue (consistent with Meta's substantial Seattle engineering presence — a natural local-counsel posture after the transfer from W.D. Tex.).

Counsel whose Meta role is probable but NOT verified

• Melissa Richards Smith — UniCourt's docket entry for 2:26-cv-00810 lists her under a separate "Other Attorneys" heading, while the "Plaintiff Attorneys" block separately lists Justin Constant, Heng Gong, Garland T. Stephens, William D. Ellerman, Shuya Yang, and Mark D. Siegmund. Because the plaintiff-side roster is separately accounted for, her placement suggests she appears for Meta, but I could not confirm this from a primary filing. She is a well-known Texas patent litigator (Gillam & Smith LLP, Marshall, TX) who frequently serves as local/regional counsel for defendants; if she is on the defense team, her retention likely dates to the W.D. Tex. phase of the case. Verify against the PACER appearance list before relying on this.
• Lisa Nguyen — identified as "Petitioner Counsel" for Meta in its parallel PTAB proceedings against Dialect (e.g., IPR2025-01333, IPR2025-01336, per PTAB case-tracker aggregations), with Wayne Helge listed for Dialect. This appears to be Meta's post-grant/PTAB team and may overlap with the district-court team, but the firm affiliation is not confirmed in anything I retrieved. Note the outcome context already in this case file: those Meta IPRs were denied institution (IPR2025-01332 terminated 11/20/2025; IPR2025-01336 institution denied 2/10/2026; IPR2025-01334 discretionary denial 12/18/2025), so this team's district-court role is the live question.
• Fenwick & West's national IP litigation group (Mountain View / San Francisco) — Fenwick litigators, notably David J. (Joe D.) Hadden, Saina Shamilov, Ravi Ranganath, Todd Gregorian, and Michael Sacksteder, are the firm's marquee patent trial bench and Law360 lists Hadden and Johnathan Chai on Dialect, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. (E.D. Va., May 2023) — i.e., Fenwick has already litigated against this same plaintiff for another large-platform defendant. I would expect them on Meta's lead team here, but I found no Meta-specific docket entry naming them, so treat as expectation, not fact.

In-house counsel

None identified. No Meta in-house attorney (e.g., a Meta Legal IP-litigation counsel) appears by name in any filing I could retrieve (the W.D. Wash. response, the W.D. Tex. claim-construction brief, or the PTAB papers). Meta's PTAB filings include notices of power of attorney (e.g., "Power of Attorney of Meta ('209)," 8/19/2025), but I could not open the documents to extract the designated names.

What I could NOT confirm, and what to check next

1. The full W.D. Wash. appearance list. Docket entry numbering runs at least to Dkt. 164 (8/28/2026), so Meta has been actively litigating the venue for months; a Notice of Appearance or corporate disclosure statement for Meta with a complete signature block should exist early in the W.D. Wash. docket (post-3/2/2026 filing).
2. Whether Fenwick has an Oregon/Washington local-counsel co-counsel — applying W.D. Wash. LCR 83.1 (local rules require local counsel for out-of-district firms), which is also relevant given that John D. Vandenberg (Klarquist, Portland/admitted in Washington) is positioned as plaintiff-side local counsel per the section above. Meta has not, to my knowledge, publicly retained a Klarquist-type local firm; Fenwick's own Seattle office may satisfy the local-counsel requirement.
3. The W.D. Tex. appearance entries from Feb.–April 2025 (the justia docket for 7:25-cv-00060 shows attorney-appearance filings around 3–7 April 2025 on the plaintiff side; Meta's corresponding entries and its Answer/Invalidity Contentions signature blocks would name its original defense team, including any Texas local counsel).
4. Signature blocks on Meta's W.D. Tex. filings — e.g., Defendant Meta Platforms, Inc.'s Opening Claim Construction Brief (7:25-cv-00060, Doc. 96, filed 11/21/2025, attached as Ex. 2010 in IPR2025-01334) — which is the most likely single document to reveal Meta's full lead + local counsel roster.

Practical note for the file: the defense-side picture that is provable today is narrow — Fenwick & West (Seattle) is demonstrably Meta's counsel in the W.D. Wash. case as of August 2026. Any statement that Fenwick's Mountain View trial partners, a Texas local-counsel firm, or Meta in-house counsel are "of record" should be sourced to a docket entry before being relied on.