Plaintiff

Piper Networks, Inc.

2 cases as plaintiff.

Cases
2
Active
0
2 closed
Filed
2023
Top venue
PTAB
1 case
Also appears as a defendant in 4 cases → View as defendant

Company profile

I'll research this company before writing the profile.

Company overview. Piper Networks, Inc. is a private, venture-backed rail technology company founded in 2011 and headquartered at 3636 Nobel Drive, San Diego, California; it is a Delaware corporation with additional listed locations in New York, Texas, Georgia and Delaware. Founder and CEO is Robert Hanczor (Ph.D.). Ownership is private — no public ticker and no disclosed parent. Third-party aggregators (Crunchbase, Kona Equity, ZipRecruiter) place headcount in the roughly 11–50 band and revenue in the low single-digit millions, but these are unverified estimates; the company publishes no audited figures.

Products / operations. Piper describes itself as a rail engineering solutions provider and systems integrator, with five product lines: Vital Train Positioning, Maintenance of Way (MOW) Protection, Automatic Train Protection (ATP), Grade Crossing Safety, and Passenger Information Display Systems (PIDS). Its core technology is the Rail Positioning System (RPS), built on Ultra-Wideband radios, GPS-RTK, and TrackSight LiDAR positioning. Named deployments include Amtrak MOW vehicle protection (Limits Compliance and Collision Avoidance System), MTA New York countdown clocks and UWB signaling work, and a ~$113 million MBTA Green Line Train Protection System (GLTPS) contract awarded in February 2025. Piper is an operating company, not an NPE.

Patent-litigation posture. Two-way but predominantly defensive: four tracked cases as defendant and two as plaintiff/petitioner. Its "plaintiff" appearances are joint inter partes review petitions (with Siemens Mobility, Hitachi Rail GTS USA, and Humatics) against Metrom Rail's UWB/GPS collision-avoidance patents. Its defendant appearances are Metrom Rail infringement suits. Venues are D. Mass., S.D.N.Y., and D. Del. — not the Eastern District of Texas.

Notable cases. Metrom Rail, LLC v. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority et al. (D. Mass. 2025) alleges Piper's RPS/ATP-O/GLTPS infringes Metrom's patents; the court transferred the claims against Piper to S.D.N.Y. and severed/stayed the MBTA claims. Related: Metrom Rail v. Siemens Mobility et al. (D. Del. 2022) and Metrom Rail v. Ground Transportation Systems USA / Hitachi Rail GTS USA (D. Del. 2023). Metrom itself sells the AURA CAS collision-avoidance product, so these are competitor-versus-competitor disputes rather than NPE assertions.

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Siemens Mobility, Inc. et al. v. Metrom Rail, LLC

Final Written Decision - appealed
Docket:
IPR2023-00470
Filed:
2023-01-13
Terminated:
2024-06-18
Patents:8812227
π Siemens Mobility, Inc.π Ground Transportation Systems USA Inc.π Humatics Corp.π Piper Networks, Inc.π Thales USA, Inc.Δ Metrom Rail, LLC

Inter partes review petition filed by Siemens Mobility, Ground Transportation Systems USA, Humatics, and Piper Networks against Metrom Rail's '227 patent. The Board's June 18, 2024 Final Written Decision held claims 1-28 of the '227 patent unpatentable as obvious; the decision was appealed.

Siemens Mobility, Inc. et al. v. Metrom Rail, LLC

final written decision; on appeal
Docket:
IPR2023-00468
Filed:
2023-01-13
Terminated:
2024-06-18
Patents:9043131
π Siemens Mobility, Inc.π Ground Transportation Systems USA, Inc. (now Hitachi Rail GTS USA Inc.)π Humatics Corp.π Piper Networks, Inc.Δ Metrom Rail, LLC

Inter partes review of U.S. 9,043,131. The Board instituted on all challenged claims 1-20 and found claims 1-16 unpatentable as obvious, while claims 17-20 were not shown unpatentable. This proceeding was appealed and addressed in Federal Circuit Case No. 24-2223.