Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies LLC

I'll research this case and its related litigation. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig deeper into the underlying district court litigation, the accused products, and the case's resolution.

Case overview — *Adobe Inc. v. RAH

I'll research this case, which centers on PTAB IPR2019-00646 and its relationship to the underlying district court litigation.

Now let me dig into the district court MDL and the specific case trajectory.

Let me research the dismissal, any settlement, appeals, and the parallel IPR outcomes.

Scope note

The docket you gave me is PTAB IPR2019-00646 (Adobe v. RAH Color Technologies, U.S. 7,791,761), terminated 2020‑10‑08. But "this litigation" in the ordinary sense is actually two tracks: the IPR and the parallel district court infringement case, RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Adobe Systems Inc., which began in N.D. Ill. and ended up inside MDL No. 2874 in N.D. Cal. before Judge Susan Illston. Because the outcome of the IPR drove the district court case (and vice versa on timing), I've laid both out together. Where I could not verify something from a public source, I say so explicitly.

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I. Chronology

2018 — Filing, venue fight, MDL consolidation

2018‑01‑31 — RAH Color Technologies (Dr. Richard A. Holub's licensing vehicle) sues Adobe Systems Inc. in the Northern District of Illinois, No. 1:18‑cv‑00733, before Judge Matthew F. Kennelly. Cause: 35 U.S.C. § 271; jury demand. Four patents asserted: the '761, '008 ('7,729,008), '444 ('8,416,444), and '897 ('7,312,897).
Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/illinois/ilndce/1:2018cv00733/[348752](/patent/348752)

2018‑05‑14 — Adobe serves invalidity contentions in N.D. Ill. This is a strategically significant data point: after transfer, Adobe was permitted a second round under N.D. Cal. rules (2018‑08‑23), ultimately identifying ~200 prior-art references and serving 105 invalidity charts totaling 12,565 pages. RAH flagged this volume and cost in the MDL status report as evidence of disproportionate defense spending against a portfolio whose 27 prior licenses averaged under $1M each.
Source: Joint Preliminary Status Report, MDL 3:18‑md‑02874‑SI (Jan. 2019), filed as Ex. 2012 in IPR2019‑00646 — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00646/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7791761/docs/04-12-2019-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2012-46-Exhibit_2012_Jan_7_MDL_Report.pdf

2018‑05‑28 — Judge Kennelly grants Adobe's § 1404(a) motion to transfer (Dkt.

Bottom line and a posture clarification

Two things need separating before naming names:

1. In IPR2019‑00646, Adobe is the petitioner, not a plaintiff. The Board's caption reads "ADOBE INC., Petitioner, v. RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC, Patent Owner" (Paper 38, Joint Proposed Redactions, Sept. 12, 2019; Paper 76, Joint Stipulation re Due Dates, Mar. 2, 2020). Your case metadata lists Adobe as "Plaintiff(s)," so I've treated Adobe as the party you want. There is no "plaintiff's counsel" in an IPR as a formal matter — the correct target is counsel of record for Petitioner Adobe Inc.
2. In the parallel district court litigation the roles were reversed — RAH Color Technologies was the plaintiff and Adobe the defendant, in the N.D. Cal. MDL (In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litig., No. 3:18‑md‑02874‑SI, Judge Susan Illston), which absorbed RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Adobe Inc. (N.D. Cal.) and the Wisconsin, Illinois, and other actions. Adobe's district-court team overlapped with its PTAB team. Details below, with sourcing caveats where I could not fully verify.

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Counsel of record for Adobe Inc. (Petitioner) in IPR2019‑00646

Per Adobe's Updated Mandatory Notice under 37 C.F.R. § 42.8 (Paper 30, July 15, 2019) and the signature blocks in Papers 38 and 76:

No in-house Adobe attorney and no local counsel appear on the PTAB record — PTAB practice doesn't require a local-counsel designation, and Adobe's mandatory notices identify only the Perkins Coie lawyers above. I found no sealed counsel-related filings that would hide additional appearances; the confidential material in this docket (e.g., the RPI discovery papers and the Dec. 12, 2019 discovery order, Paper 59) concerns real parties in interest and privilege, not counsel identity.

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Caveats and open items

• Possible change of lead counsel: At least one later filing signature block (a May 13, 2019 paper in the companion IPR) shows "James F. Valentine — Lead Counsel; Christopher L. Kelley — Back‑up Counsel," while the July 15, 2019 Updated Mandatory Notice shows Kelley as lead. I did not locate a formal motion to substitute counsel or an updated power of attorney effecting a change. Treat the Kelley-as-lead designation as the operative one unless a later § 42.8 notice is pulled directly from PTAB E2E. (Kelley's current "Senior Counsel" title at the firm, versus Valentine's continued partnership, is consistent with a handoff.)
• Firm name change: Perkins Coie is now branded "Ashurst Perkins Coie" following the 2025 combination; current firm bios and Chambers profiles use the combined name. The Palo Alto (3150 Porter Drive) and Madison (33 E. Main St.) addresses remain the ones used in these proceedings.
• District court counsel for Adobe: The UniCourt docket for the N.D. Cal. MDL lists a long attorney roster including Perkins Coie (Valentine, Hanewicz, Klein) plus names such as David Eiseman IV, Eric J. Ward, Thomas M. Dunlap, Randall G. Block, Gregory S. Cordrey and others. I could not verify from a primary source which of those non-Perkins‑Coie names represented Adobe versus other MDL defendants (Quad/Graphics, EFI, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberg) — the MDL lists 19+ attorneys across both sides. If you need the district-court appearance list, pull the N.D. Cal. docket (3:18‑md‑02874‑SI) directly; I'd rather flag this than guess.

Key record cites

• Paper 30, Petitioner Adobe Inc.'s Updated Mandatory Notice (July 15, 2019) — lead/back-up counsel designations.
• Paper 38, Joint Proposed Redactions to Decision to Institute (Sept. 12, 2019) — service list with full Perkins Coie addresses.
• Paper 59, discovery order (Dec. 12, 2019) — discussed in Jones Day PTAB blog, "A Compelling Decision."
• Paper 76, Joint Stipulation re Due Dates (Mar. 2, 2020) — same counsel block.
• Final Written Decision (Oct. 8, 2020) — claims 7, 8, 10, 11, 13 unpatentable; claim 15 not shown unpatentable.
• MDL No. 2874, Dkt. 51 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 8, 2019) — James F. Valentine assigned as liaison counsel.

If your real target is the N.D. Cal. infringement action (where RAH is plaintiff and its counsel was Global IP Law Group — Irwin Park as lead, with David Berten, Alison Richards and others), say so and I'll build the equivalent table for that side; those names are confirmed on the PTAB service lists as Patent Owner's counsel but I have not verified their district-court appearance records here.

I'll research the docket and counsel appearances for this IPR.

Counsel of Record — RAH Color Technologies LLC (Patent Owner / defending party)

Posture note: this is not a district‑court infringement action; it is an IPR before the PTAB. The "defendant" in the sense you mean is the Patent Owner, RAH Color Technologies LLC (a Virginia LLC managed by inventor Dr. Richard A. Holub). RAH's entire PTAB team came from one firm — Global IP Law Group, LLC, 55 W. Monroe Street, Suite 3400, Chicago, IL 60603 — the same firm that represented RAH in the parallel N.D. Cal. litigation and MDL. There is no "local counsel" role at the PTAB; the rules instead require a registered practitioner as lead counsel, with litigation counsel appearing pro hac vice as back‑up.

Sources / docket grounding

• Paper 10, Patent Owner's Amended Mandatory Notice (Apr. 11, 2019): Irwin Park, lead counsel, Reg. No. 68,865; Ragnar Olson, back‑up, Reg. No. 58,684 — both at Global IP Law Group, Chicago.
• Papers 6 & 7 (Mar. 12, 2019): Motions for pro hac vice admission of Berten and Richards, with Declarations Exs. 2001–2002; Board Order Granting Patent Owner's Motions for Admission Pro Hac Vice of David P. Berten and Alison A. Richards (Apr. 1, 2019, per PTAB docket index), authorizing them as back‑up counsel only and requiring a power of attorney and updated mandatory notices.
• Papers 76 (Mar. 2, 2020) and 86 (Mar. 27, 2020), joint stipulations: signature/service blocks list all four Global IP Law Group attorneys (ipark@giplg.com, rolsan@giplg.com, dberten@giplg.com, arichards@giplg.com). Adobe's filings likewise certify service on "attorneys of record for Patent Owner: Irwin Park, Ragnar Olson, David P. Berten, Alison A. Richards."
• Paper 119, Final Written Decision (Oct. 8, 2020); Paper 115, consolidated hearing transcript (May 28, 2020).

Things I could not confirm / caveats

• No in‑house counsel appeared. Dr. Holub is RAH's principal and a declarant/consultant in the record, but I found no pro se or in‑house appearance by him or any RAH employee.
• Kristina Martin (kmartin@giplg.com) appears on the parties' service e‑mails transmitting filings, but she does not appear in any signature block as counsel of record. She is most likely a firm paralegal/legal assistant; I would not list her as counsel without a docket confirmation.
• I found no withdrawal, substitution, or change of RAH's PTAB counsel between the Feb. 1, 2019 petition and the Oct. 8, 2020 FWD — the same four attorneys are served through the final papers.
• I did not verify individual firm biography pages or the precise paper number of the pro hac vice order (the order date, Apr. 1, 2019, comes from a PTAB docket index rather than the order text I retrieved). No sealed filings obscured counsel's identity here; the only sealing in this IPR concerned the Preliminary Response, Patent Owner Response, and an institution‑decision version, all of which were later made public (Papers 25, 28, 62, 74).
• For completeness, the petitioner side (Adobe Inc.) was represented by Perkins Coie LLP — Christopher L. Kelley (lead, Reg. No. 42,714), James F. Valentine, Wing H. Liang, Andrew N. Klein, and Christopher G. Hanewicz (Palo Alto, CA and Madison, WI).