CAO Group, Inc. v. The Individuals, Corporations, ... Identified on Schedule A

I'll research this case and the '445 patent before writing the overview.

Let me dig deeper into the patent family, severances, and any PTAB activity.

Let me pull the full docket and check for parallel DJ actions and PTAB challenges.

Case Overview: CAO Group, Inc. v. Individuals ... Identified on Schedule A, No. 1:24-cv-01211 (N.D. Ill.)

The parties. Plaintiff CAO Group, Inc. is an operating technology company — not a patent assertion entity. It is a Utah corporation headquartered at 4628 West Skyhawk Drive, West Jordan, Utah, founded in 2000 by Dr. Densen Cao (Ph.D., materials science, University of Utah) after work at Fairchild Semiconductor, and it develops and manufactures dental, oral-health, and LED/optoelectronic products, holding "more than 190 issued and published patent applications worldwide." Its consumer/professional product is the Sheer White! line of teeth-whitening strips — launched for at-home use in 2010, sold through caogroup.com and, since 2010, through an exclusive distribution relationship with Henry Schein (with an in-office version added in 2015). The Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies CAO in its "Product company" asserter category, and the company is also a long-standing licensor of LED dental-curing technology. Defendants are not identified by name: the suit is a "Schedule A" mass-joinder action against dozens of anonymous e-commerce seller aliases (Fairywill, BYS Technology, OETU Health/OETU Shop, Trayknick, GD-Whitening/GD-SSS, Carbonline, Moose Store, BLUE ELF, Acupress, PURESELL, and others), a pleading device borrowed from trademark counterfeiting practice. CAO is represented by Bishop Diehl & Lee, Ltd. (Edward L. Bishop, Nicholas S. Lee, Benjamin A. Campbell, Sameeul Haque) of Schaumburg, Illinois.

The accused products and the patents. The accused instrumentalities are third-party teeth-whitening strips offered on Amazon, eBay, and Walmart that CAO characterizes as unauthorized products mimicking Sheer White! — offshore-manufactured, sold through storefronts using false or shifting seller identities, and imported into the U.S. (Compl. ¶¶ 20–28, Dkt. 1). The asserted patent family is entitled "Peroxide Gel Composition[s]," all sharing a February 8, 2006 priority date, with Dr. Cao and CAO chemist Steven D. Jensen as co-inventors: (1) U.S. Pat. No. 10,603,259 (issued Mar. 31, 2020) — a flexible, water-insoluble backing strip bearing a dried peroxide/solvent/thickener gel that is "gelatinous and viscoelastic" (the specification's memorable "gummi worms" analogy) and bends to adjacent teeth without cracking; (2) U.S. Pat. No. 10,646,419 — a continuation of the same family covering the same bleaching-device architecture; (3) U.S. Pat. No. 11,219,582 (issued Jan. 11, 2022) — adds the "gelatinous, non-coalescent, and visco-elastic" characterization with poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) or PVP as the thickening agent; (4) U.S. Pat. No. 11,826,444 and (5) U.S. Pat. No. 11,826,445 (both issued November 28, 2023 from continuations; the '445 from Application No. 18/049,843, filed Oct. 26, 2022) — near-identical siblings claiming a planar strip with the composition covering substantially all of one side, comprising a peroxide bleaching agent, water, and PVP/polyethyloxazoline, and flexing to conform to the dental arch without cracking or breaking (the '445 asserts at least claims 1–2). Notably, the '444 and '445 were not in the original complaint: CAO added them by a Third Amended Complaint (motion at Dkt. 114, filed Sept. 20, 2024), which Judge Durkin granted on Oct. 24, 2024 over defense objections about delay and the proper vehicle for new claims (Dkt. 123) — reasoning that all five patents are the same family and the same accused products. That amendment is why the Stanford database indexes this case under the '445.

Procedural posture, venue, and why it matters. The case sits in the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, before Judge Thomas M. Durkin (with Magistrate Judge Jeannice W. Appenteng on discovery/claim construction). CAO filed on Feb. 12, 2024 and moved rapidly for ex parte relief: the initial TRO motion was denied (Mar. 1, 2024), the court granted a TRO after a First Amended Complaint (Dkt. 25/26, Mar. 26, 2024), authorized alternative/electronic service, and entered a preliminary injunction with a sweeping asset restraint over marketplace accounts and payment processors (Dkt. 47). The case has since become a showcase for the two pressure points in "Schedule A" patent litigation. First, joinder: on June 14, 2024 Judge Durkin held that joinder was improper under 35 U.S.C. § 299, applying his own Tang v. Partnerships ... Identified on Schedule A, 2024 WL 68332 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 4, 2024), reasoning that this is not "a swarm of counterfeiters passing off their products as those of a single plaintiff" but "multiple sellers of the exact same type of product allegedly infringing on one seller's patent" — and severed GD-Whitening into a new case (Dkt. 95), which became CAO Group v. GD-Whitening, No. 1:24-cv-05129 and closed Aug. 6, 2025 (the existing case summary's other severances follow the same mechanism; I could not independently confirm the second severed case number). Second, equitable monetary relief in utility-patent cases: appearing defendants moved to modify the asset freeze on Grupo Mexicano grounds, and the court also dismissed CAO's unjust-enrichment count (Count IV) as preempted by federal patent law (Dkt. 95; see also Dkt. 51). Meanwhile CAO pressed a default-judgment program against non-appearing defendants (motion at Dkt. 70, May 23, 2024) that, as reported in secondary summaries of the entered order, awarded roughly $1,518,750 per defaulting seller (a $500,000 reasonable royalty plus $50,000 in "expected transaction costs," trebled under § 284) plus marketplace-account takedowns. On the merits track, Judge Appenteng set an aggressive schedule in March 2025: final infringement contentions Aug. 15, 2025; final invalidity/non-infringement contentions Sept. 12, 2025; claim terms exchanged Sept. 26, 2025; Part 1 fact discovery to close Oct. 24, 2025; and merits claim-construction briefing running from Oct. 31, 2025 through a joint

I'll research this case and its related proceedings systematically.

CAO Group, Inc. v. Schedule "A" Defendants, No. 1:24-cv-01211 (N.D. Ill.)

Bottom line: This was a high-volume "Schedule A" e-commerce infringement case that never reached claim construction or trial. CAO extracted early ex parte injunctive relief, lost the asset-freeze component on Grupo Mexicano grounds in May 2024, had its case pared down by a §

I'll verify the plaintiff's counsel of record against the docket and firm sources.

Key development found: a March 2025 substitution of counsel. Let me verify the current roster and whether Haque also withdrew.

Now let me check the docket entries after the withdrawal and whether new Dickinson Wright appearances were filed.

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record — CAO Group, Inc.

Important structural point found in the docket, which the earlier sections do not reflect: CAO's counsel changed firms mid-case. The four Bishop Diehl & Lee attorneys who filed the complaint were the record counsel through early 2025, but on March 7, 2025 Edward Bishop and Benjamin Campbell moved to withdraw (Dkt. 138) after Nicholas S. Lee left the firm and the representation was transferred to Lee and his new firm, Dickinson Wright, PLLC on March 6, 2025. The motion recites that "Attorney Nicholas S. Lee, who has an appearance in this matter on behalf of Plaintiff CAO Group, Inc. ... is no longer a member of Withdrawing Counsel's firm," that Lee's CM/ECF account was updated to his new contact information, and that "Plaintiff instructed Withdrawing Counsel to transfer this case to Mr. Lee and his new firm, Dickinson Wright, PLLC." Judge Durkin granted the motion, terminating Bishop and Campbell (Dkt. 138, granted minute entry; CourtListener docket for 1:24-cv-01211). The withdrawal motion is captioned in the name of "Bishop & Diehl, Ltd. (formerly known as Bishop Diehl & Lee, Ltd.)," confirming the firm itself was renamed. Notably, the motion sought withdrawal only of Bishop and Campbell — Lee (and Haque, who was of record from the outset) remained on the record, and the motion stated "It is expected that Mr. Lee and his new firm will file any additional or amended appearances as appropriate."

Counsel of record (as of case closure, Aug. 6, 2025)

Verification notes and limits

• No in-house CAO attorney appears on the docket. Dr. Densen Cao appeared as a witness (he testified at the June 27, 2024 default-judgment hearing in the companion case 1:24-cv-00901), not as counsel. The record I reviewed shows outside counsel only.
• I could not confirm that Lee or Haque filed new/amended appearances in Dickinson Wright's name in this case (1:24-cv-01211) before it closed. The withdrawal motion expressly contemplated that they would do so "as appropriate," and the public docket summaries for this case still list all four original Bishop Diehl & Lee names as "counsel for plaintiff" — a stale-index artifact of the terminated appearances. In the follow-on case, fresh Dickinson Wright appearances naming Lee and Haque are documented (1:25-cv-04054, DKts. 8–9, Apr. 14, 2025), and a third appearance (Briana Hammons) was filed July 1, 2025 (Dkt. 32). Treat the Lee/Haque-to-Dickinson-Wright transition for this case as established by Dkt. 138 plus the follow-on appearances, but the precise amended-appearance docket numbers here are unconfirmed.
• No pro hac vice admissions for plaintiff's counsel appear in the record; all four original attorneys are Illinois-barred and appeared in their individual capacities rather than by motion for admission.
• I did not locate any sealed counsel designations or protective-order "outside counsel eyes only" designations naming additional plaintiff-side attorneys. If any exist, they would be in the sealed TRO/asset-restraint papers (Dkts. 3, 26, 47).
• One secondary aggregator (patsnap) still lists the case as "recorded basis of termination: default judgment" and names only the four original attorneys; that conflicts with the August 6, 2025 administrative closing reflected in other aggregators and should be treated with caution — but it does not conflict with the case metadata and does not change the counsel analysis above.

I'll research the docket and appearances for defense counsel in this Schedule A case.

Good leads. Let me pull the full docket and appearance entries.

Now let me dig into each identified defense attorney and look for others.

Defense counsel of record — CAO Group, Inc. v. Schedule "A" Defendants, No. 1:24-cv-01211 (N.D. Ill.)

Framing note before the names: this is a textbook "Schedule A" docket, which means there is no meaningful defense bar to report in the aggregate. Of the dozens of seller aliases on Schedule A, only four defense practitioners ever entered appearances, covering roughly ten defendants. Everyone else defaulted — Judge Durkin's minute entries repeatedly record "No one appeared on behalf of defendants" (e.g., Oct. 15, 2024 telephonic status; Aug. 6, 2025 default-judgment hearing). The last defense appearance of record effectively ended when He Cheng's clients settled in June 2025; the Aug. 6, 2025 default judgment went against the residue, including several Urbanczyk clients.

No in-house counsel appeared for any defendant — consistent with the aliases being offshore e-commerce sellers rather than U.S. operating entities.

---

Per-attorney detail

Steven G. Kalberg — Direction IP Law (Chicago). The first defense lawyer in the case. He appeared April 3, 2024 for six seller defendants (Dkt. 28: "ATTORNEY Appearance for Defendants BYS Technology, DEEPSOUND, Carbonline, Moose Store, ACU, BLUE by Steven G Kalberg") and filed the case's first substantive defense motion — the April 29, 2024 motion to modify the preliminary injunction (Dkt. 50), arguing that an asset freeze is unavailable in a utility-patent case under Grupo Mexicano/CSC Holdings (Dkt. 50-1 at 3–8). That motion became the template for the equitable-relief challenge discussed in the earlier sections of this summary; he also filed an answer with declaratory-judgment counterclaims on non-infringement for those six defendants. He moved to withdraw August 15, 2024 (Dkt. 107) after his clients' Amazon storefronts were closed and they instructed him to suspend the representation; Judge Durkin granted the motion on August 28, 2024 and terminated him, warning the clients on the record that default could follow. His co-signatory on the withdrawal papers was David R. Bennett of the same firm, though Bennett does not appear to have separately entered an appearance here. Direction IP Law is a Chicago IP boutique; Kalberg is a repeat defense-side presence in N.D. Ill. Schedule A matters.

Adam Edward Urbanczyk — AU LLC (Chicago). Appeared for the Fairywill-affiliated cluster plus IMOSTY, beapoint, tstarlight and wendydy. He is the most institutionally experienced Schedule A defense lawyer in this group: a USPTO-registered patent attorney (B.S.M.E., Carnegie Mellon; J.D., John Marshall/UIC Law, 2009), principal of AU LLC since 2011, whose own firm bio states he has represented "thousands of defendants, including e-commerce merchants, fighting off 'Schedule A' and traditional actions." He also defended BonWeiry against CAO in the earlier related case, No. 23-cv-04131 (with Brian M. Swift of AU LLC) — a fact CAO itself used against the defense in briefing at Dkt. 51 (May 6, 2024) to argue that Schedule A sellers are repeat players who know the asset-freeze rulebook. Note: Swift's appearance in this case is not confirmed; the Dkt. 51 reference is to the 2023 case. Several Urbanczyk clients (fairywill, fairywill_global) were voluntarily dismissed in June 2024; the rest (wendydy, IMOSTY, tstarlight, beapoint) were swept into the Aug. 6, 2025 default judgment.

He Cheng — Palmer Law Group, P.A. (Fort Lauderdale, FL). Appeared for haiyi_mall and newage-store and was functionally the only active litigator on the merits: he filed the May 27, 2024 motion to vacate the preliminary injunction (Dkt. 74), the reply at Dkt. 4/96-series, an opposition to CAO's motion for leave to file the Third Amended Complaint (Dkt. 119), and an answer with counterclaims against the Third Amended Complaint (Dkt. 131), to which CAO responded (Dkt. 132). Judge Durkin set a rare two-day in-court evidentiary hearing on the motion to vacate for April 28–29, 2025 — the closest this case came to a contested merits proceeding — but CAO and the Cheng Defendants reported a settlement on April 23, 2025, the hearing was vacated, and the motion was denied as moot (June 17, 2025) after voluntary dismissal (Dkt. 55). Worth flagging for candor: the docket also shows Judge Durkin