BOE et al. v. Samsung Display Co., Ltd.

I'll research this case. Note upfront that the case metadata describes a PTAB inter partes review (IPR2023-01221), not a district court infringement action — so I'll frame the overview accordingly and flag where the district-court overlay lives.

Let me get the specifics of the IPR2023-01221 docket itself and confirm the termination details.

Let me verify the '593 patent details, the IPR2023-01221 docket timeline, and the outcome of the follow-on IPR.

I'll research this case carefully. Note that the case as framed in the metadata is a PTAB IPR (IPR2023-01221), not a district court action — so I'll need to investigate both the IPR itself and the related district court/ITC litigation between Samsung Display and BOE and the other Chinese panel makers.

Excellent — this is a multi-front dispute. Let me dig deeper into each prong.

I'll research the counsel of record for the petitioners in this IPR proceeding.

Let me pull the full docket and the power of attorney document to confirm all counsel.

Threshold framing: "plaintiff" in an IPR

IPR2023‑01221 is a PTAB inter partes review, not a district‑court infringement action, so there is no "plaintiff" in the formal sense. The party on the plaintiff/claimant side is the petitioner — the joint group of Mianyang BOE Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd.; Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. (CSOT); Tianma Microelectronics Co. Ltd.; and Visionox Technology, Inc. The "defendant" is the patent owner, Samsung Display Co., Ltd. I've treated the petitioner group as the "plaintiffs" for this answer and flagged the patent‑owner side separately for contrast.

Counsel of record for the petitioners is Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Every petitioner‑side appearance in the docket is from Orrick; no in‑house attorneys and no separate per‑petitioner firms appear in the record. The proceeding was terminated pre‑institution on November 27, 2023, so the appearances are frozen as of that date.

Petitioners' counsel of record (Orrick)

Additional back‑up counsel named on the power of attorney only

The petitioner POA (Paper 3, filed with the petition on July 26, 2023) also names two further back‑up counsel who do not appear in the Board's caption on the termination decision or on the Patent Owner's service list:

• Travis Jensen (Reg. No. 60,087) — Orrick, 1000 Marsh Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025 (T61PTABDocket@orrick.com).
• H. Patrick Herman (Reg. No. 75,018) — Orrick (office address truncated in the retrieved copy of the POA; service address P52PTABDocket@orrick.com).

This is a normal POA‑versus‑caption discrepancy: power of attorney documents often authorize a broader set of practitioners than the four who actually sign and receive service in a given IPR. I'd treat Martinelli, Daybell, Hsu, and Wang as the operative counsel of record and Jensen/Herman as authorized backup.

No local counsel / no per‑petitioner counsel

Because this is a PTAB proceeding, there is no "local counsel" requirement and none appears. Likewise, despite four separate petitioner entities (BOE/CSOT/Tianma/Visionox), the record shows one joint petition prosecuted by a single Orrick team — there is no indication that any petitioner separately retained its own PTAB counsel.

Patent‑owner side (for contrast — not your question)

Samsung Display's counsel of record were David A. Garr (Reg. No. 74,932, lead) and Scott C. Weidenfeller (Reg. No. 54,531, back‑up), both of Covington & Burling LLP, One CityCenter, 850 Tenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 (SDC‑BOE‑IPR@cov.com), per Samsung Display's Mandatory Notices (Paper 7, Aug. 21, 2023) and the Board's Nov. 27, 2023 termination decision.

Parallel proceedings — same petitioner‑side bench

For context, the same BOE side appears in the related matters that Samsung Display's mandatory notices identify:

• Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. BOE Technology Co., Ltd., No. 2:23‑cv‑00309 (E.D. Tex.) — Cynthia D. Vreeland filed the Notice of Attorney Appearance for BOE Technology Co., Ltd. and Mianyang BOE Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (Dkt. 5, July 21, 2023) and moved for the § 1659(a) stay. I could not confirm her firm from the sources retrieved, so I won't state it.
• Certain Active Matrix OLED Display Panels and Modules, Inv. No. 337‑TA‑1351 (ITC) — Orrick again appeared for Mianyang BOE, with Bas de Blank identified as lead attorney for service of process on BOE (ITC Notice of Appearance, Nov. 19, 2024). Samsung Display's ITC team was Covington (Jeffrey H. Lerner) plus Quinn Emanuel (S. Alex Lasher).

Sourcing and confidence

• High confidence: the four petitioner counsel (Martinelli, Daybell, Hsu, Wang), their roles, Orrick, and the office addresses for Martinelli/Daybell. These are corroborated by three independent documents: the petitioner POA (Paper 3), the Patent Owner's certificate of service (Paper 7), and the Board's own "For PETITIONER" caption on the termination decision (Paper 10), plus a Board email (Exhibit 3001) sent to the same four firm service addresses.
• Medium confidence: Jensen and Herman as authorized back‑up counsel (POA only; not in the Board caption). Herman's office location was truncated in the copy I retrieved.
• Not established from the record: bar registration numbers for Hsu and Wang; Johannes Hsu's and Xiang Wang's specific office locations; and any in‑house counsel, none of whom appear in the PTAB filings.
• No sealed/appearance gap: nothing on the petitioner side appears to be sealed or missing. Petitioners' filings are on the public docket, and the Board's termination decision affirmatively lists the Orrick team, so this is not a case where counsel "hasn't appeared yet."

One caution on role labels: my role assignments (lead vs. back‑up) follow the POA and the Board's caption. The Board caption does not itself mark lead vs. back‑up, but the POA designates Martinelli as lead and the other three as back‑up, and I've carried that designation through.

Bottom line: the petitioners (BOE, CSOT, Tianma, Visionox) were represented exclusively by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP — lead counsel Richard F. Martinelli (New York), with back‑up Donald Daybell (Irvine), Johannes Hsu, and Xiang Wang, and authorized backup Travis Jensen (Menlo Park) and H. Patrick Herman.

I'll research the docket and counsel for the patent owner/defendant in IPR2023-01221.

Found the key filing. Let me get the full text of Samsung Display's mandatory notice and verify counsel details.

Let me verify the full docket for IPR2023-01221 and check for any additional counsel or power of attorney filings.

Counsel of Record — Samsung Display Co., Ltd. (Patent Owner / "Defendant")

Threshold framing note. IPR2023-01221 is a PTAB inter partes review, not a district-court infringement action. There is therefore no "plaintiff" and "defendant" in the Rule 12 sense. The adverse party here — the one answering BOE/CSOT/Tianma/Visionox's petition — is Samsung Display Co., Ltd. as Patent Owner. That is the entity whose counsel I identify below. Counsel of record in a PTAB proceeding is fixed by the Patent Owner's Mandatory Notices under 37 C.F.R. § 42.8(b)(3), which is the authoritative source here.

Lead Counsel

• David A. Garr — Lead Counsel; Registered Patent Attorney, Reg. No. 74,932.
  • Firm / office: Covington & Burling LLP, One CityCenter, 850 Tenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 (dgarr@cov.com; (202) 662-5250).
  • Note: Long-time Covington patent litigator and one of Samsung Display's principal PTAB counsel; represented SDC as intervenor in MiiCs & Partners Am., Inc. v. Toshiba Corp., 274 F. Supp. 3d 247 (D. Del. 2017), and has handled numerous SDC IPRs (e.g., Solas OLED, Samsung Display v. Pictiva Displays) and E.D. Tex. matters for Samsung.

Back-Up Counsel

• Scott C. Weidenfeller — Back-Up Counsel; Reg. No. 54,531.
  • Firm / office: Covington & Burling LLP, One CityCenter, 850 Tenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 (sweidenfeller@cov.com; (202) 662-5923).
  • Note: Former Vice Chief Administrative Patent Judge of the PTAB (2017–2021) and former USPTO Solicitor's Office appellate counsel; rejoined Covington in 2021 and now anchors the firm's PTAB practice. He has since been designated lead counsel for Samsung Display in other, later IPRs (e.g., IPR2026-00129), reflecting the two lawyers' interchangeable roles on SDC's PTAB bench.

Service Contact

• Patent Owner consented to electronic service at the case-specific address SDC-BOE-IPR@cov.com, in addition to individual counsel emails.

Authority: Samsung Display Co., Ltd.'s Mandatory Notice (Paper 7, filed Aug. 21, 2023), identifying Garr as Lead Counsel and Weidenfeller as Back-Up Counsel — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2023-01221/Mianyang_BOE_Optoelectronics_Technology_Co._Ltd._v._Samsung_Display_Co._Ltd/docs/08-21-2023-Patent_Owner/Notice__Mandatory_Notice-7-Notice__Mandatory_Notice.pdf

What is not present in this proceeding

• No local counsel. PTAB practice does not use local counsel, and none appears on the IPR2023-01221 docket.
• No named in-house counsel. The Mandatory Notice lists only outside Covington counsel; no Samsung Display in-house attorney was designated of record.
• No additional back-up counsel. Although Covington later added Jared R. Frisch and Derek J. Andros as pro hac vice back-up counsel for SDC in the companion IPRs (see SDC's Updated Mandatory Notices in IPR2023-00941, Aug. 20, 2024), no analogous update was filed in IPR2023-01221 — the proceeding was terminated on November 27, 2023, before institution, so the two-attorney Garr/Weidenfeller designation is the complete and final counsel-of-record listing.
• Practitioner-of-record breadth. Covington acts for SDC under USPTO Customer No. 26853; the Mandatory Notice lists the two designated attorneys, and I did not retrieve a separate Power of Attorney specific to IPR2023-01221 that would enumerate the full customer-number roster. If one was filed, it would simply reinforce Covington as the firm of record.

Sourcing caveats

• The counsel identities and addresses above are drawn verbatim from the Patent Owner's Mandatory Notice as indexed on Docket Alarm. I was unable to reach PACER/PTAB's own docket page to independently cross-check the paper numbering within the allotted steps.
• No substantive opinion or merits ruling issued in IPR2023-01221 (it terminated procedurally before institution), so there is no counsel-attributed opinion to cite for this proceeding itself.
• I did not find any filing indicating that Samsung Display changed counsel in this IPR prior to termination, and the Board's own Nov. 21, 2023 email (Exhibit 3001) was copied to "Garr, David" and "Weidenfeller, Scott," corroborating that these were the attorneys handling the matter at termination.

Bottom line: Samsung Display's counsel of record in IPR2023-01221 was Covington & Burling LLP (Washington, DC) — David A. Garr as lead counsel and Scott C. Weidenfeller as back-up counsel, with case service through SDC-BOE-IPR@cov.com.