Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Beech Hill Securities, Inc.

I'll research this case and the surrounding context.

Case overview and background

The parties. Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian non-practicing entity incorporated in 2019 and described by NPE watchers as "one of the more prolific NPEs in the patent enforcement market" (Legal500 NPE Showcase – Cedar Lane Technologies, Oct. 6, 2022, https://www.legal500.com/intelligence/united-states/intellectual-property/npe-showcase-%E2%80%93-cedar-lane-technologies). It does not make or sell anything; it acquires patents — largely from Intellectual Ventures–origin portfolios — and litigates them through Rabicoff Law LLC (Isaac P. Rabicoff, who appeared pro hac vice here, Dkt. 6, granted Dkt. 9). Public tallies put Cedar Lane at roughly 120 docketed cases (PatSnap litigation index), hundreds of suits over five years against Amazon, Zoom, Huawei, Apple, MediaTek, TCL and others (AFR, June 22, 2025), ~193 U.S. patents of which ~191 were acquired and only ~22 remained active as of a 2022 Shenzhen IP Protection Center risk alert (http://www.sziprs.org.cn/szipr/hwwq/jfydzd/content/post_839930.html), and the title of most prolific patent plaintiff in the U.S. for 2021. It has also been sanctioned: in 2020 Judge Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) found Cedar Lane and Rabicoff had taken "objectively frivolous" positions "in bad faith" and referred Rabicoff to the court's standing committee on professional conduct (per the Legal500/JD Supra NPE Showcase). Defendant Beech Hill Securities, Inc. is a small, privately held New York broker-dealer (New York corporation, FINRA member since Sept. 29, 1989, CRD No. 24771), headquartered at 880 Third Avenue, New York, with roughly 21–50 employees and estimated revenue in the mid-eight-figure-teens of millions (Prospeo/CB Insights — commercial estimates, not audited). It does institutional equities, fixed income, municipals, options, structured products, prime brokerage, investment banking, Rule 15a-6 chaperoning and RIA platforms, clearing through Pershing (company site; SEC Rule 17a-5 filings). It is, in short, the kind of low-litigation-budget intermediary that populates the tail of a mass-assertion campaign — a markedly smaller target than same-patent co-defendants such as Citibank, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, FMR/Fidelity, BNY Mellon and TD Bank.

The patent and the accused technology. Only one patent is asserted: U.S. Patent No. 8,577,782, "Trading with conditional offers for semi-anonymous participants," filed April 8, 2010, issued November 5, 2013, classified G06Q 40/00, with an estimated expiry of April 8, 2030 (no terminal disclaimer or extension verified). Technically, the '782 patent claims a method for reintroducing counterparty-specific pricing into anonymous electronic markets: a "trading entity" (Taker) is associated with a persistent but non-identifying identifier; the system acquires that identifier's trade history; a liquidity provider receives/derives a profile containing information indicating whether the Taker's past trades "would generate a profit" (the specification's "toxic trader" versus "naive trader" distinction); and a conditional offer is generated that is made only to that trading entity and processed through an exchange handling items with a bid/offer spread, using processors "implemented at least partly in hardware" (claim 1). The accused instrumentality, as pleaded, is Beech Hill's electronic order/trading and execution activity — but the complaint is a five-page form pleading (Dkt. 1, filed Sept. 22, 2025, with Exhibit 1 = the patent and Exhibit 2 = a claim chart) that names no specific platform, system or product in its body and incorporates all technical mapping by reference to the Exhibit 2 chart; the same template is used across the campaign (see, e.g., the parallel E.D. Tex. complaints against Schwab, FMR and Cobra Trading, which likewise defer all product identification to an exhibit). Because Beech Hill never answered and no motion practice occurred, nothing in this record ever tested whether a broker-dealer's ordinary order-handling or IOI/targeted-liquidity workflow reads on the "profile … would generate a profit" and "only made to said trading entity" limitations — the two terms most likely to decide infringement.

Procedural posture, venue and why it matters. Filed September 22, 2025 in the S.D.N.Y. and assigned to Judge Gregory H. Woods (Dkt. 1; ECF designation Dkt. 8). Venue was never contested and would have been hard to contest: 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) is satisfied by Beech Hill's Manhattan headquarters. Rabicoff's pro hac vice motion was granted September 24, 2025 (Dkt. 9), and the Court set an initial pretrial conference for November 18, 2025 (Dkt. 10) — a conference that never happened. Cedar Lane filed its Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice of voluntary dismissal on October 17, 2025 (Dkt. 11), with a proposed order (Dkt. 12); Judge Woods so-ordered dismissal without prejudice on October 20, 2025 (Dkt. 13), stating that "Defendant has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment," and the AO 120 form was submitted the same day (Dkt. 14). Elapsed time: 28 days. The venue choice is itself the interesting datum: on the same day Cedar Lane filed this S.D.N.Y. case, it filed an identical '782 complaint against Citibank, N.A. in W.D. Tex. (No. 7:25-cv-00432, also voluntarily dismissed, Nov. 21, 2025), and the campaign has since run through E.D. Tex. (Gilstrap), W.D. Tex., E.D.N.Y., N.D. Ill., D. Del. and S.D.N.Y. — a deliberate spread across both plaintiff-friendly Texas dockets and the defendant's home districts, which reduces the risk that any single transferee judge or § 101 ruling stalls the whole portfolio.

Why the case is notable. Four things. (1) Campaign economics, not patent law. This is the archetype of modern nuisance-value assertion: one patent, a form complaint, no claim construction, no expert discovery, and exit within weeks. Cedar Lane "does not appear to take their cases much past the pleadings stage," and no Cedar Lane case has reached trial (Legal500 NPE Showcase, 2022); outcomes across the '782 campaign have been overwhelmingly voluntary dismissals in the 30–60 day range, with a small number of apparent settlements (e.g., Cedar Lane v. David Lerner Associates, E.D.N.Y. No. 1:26-cv-00183, closed as settled Mar. 31, 2026) and one conspicuous dismissal with prejudice of the claims against BNY Mellon (S.D.N.Y. No. 1:25-cv-09488, Jan. 30, 2026) — the only '782 exit I found that looks like a merits-driven or negotiated walk-away, and the terms are not public. (2) Sector sweep. The '782 campaign is a coordinated assertion against the securities industry's plumbing — bulge-bracket banks, retail brokers, asset managers, municipal-bond and ILS desks, and fintech/API brokers (AlpacaDB, BTG Pactual, AllianceBernstein, Raymond James, Ameritas, Horace Mann, BOKF, LaSalle St., Maxim Group, First Manhattan, Hennessy/Empire-type small brokers) — meaning dozens of small FINRA member firms face a recurring defense-cost tax for running ordinary electronic trading desks. (3) Validity exposure with no PTAB test. The claims are, on their face, strong candidates for an Alice/§ 101 challenge (targeting offers to a class of customers based on historical transaction data is a familiar commercial practice), and I found no IPR, PGR or CBM on the '782 patent in any of the sources I could reach — no petitioner (Unified Patents, RPX, or a well-funded defendant) appears to have taken the patent on at the Board, and every complaint in the campaign affirmatively asserts no prior PTAB history. That is unusual for a patent asserted this many times and is a plausible explanation for the campaign's durability: without an IPR, each defendant must buy its own

I'll research this case and its context. Let me run several searches.

Initial docket data gathered. Now let me research the broader '782 patent campaign, any PTAB proceedings, and related rulings.

Good context. Now let me dig into whether there are PTAB challenges to the '782 patent and the scale of the campaign.

Bottom line

Cedar Lane Technologies' suit against Beech Hill Securities never got past the pleadings. It lived 28 days — complaint filed 2025-09-22, voluntarily dismissed without prejudice 2025-10-20 — and generated no answer, no counterclaims, no motions practice, no Markman, no discovery, no trial, and no merits ruling of any kind. The only adjudicative act was Judge Gregory H. Woods' one-page order closing the case. The real significance of Beech Hill is not in the docket; it is as one data point in a 2025–2026 mass-assertion campaign on U.S. Patent 8,577,782 against broker-dealers and asset managers, in which near-uniform early exits (without prejudice, or with prejudice on a no-payment stipulated basis) are the norm and no defendant has yet obtained a merits win.

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1. Chronological docket (S.D.N.Y. No. 1:25-cv-07840, Woods, J.)

Sources: Justia docket https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2025cv07840/[649839](/patent/649839) ; PACER Monitor https://api.pacermonitor.com/public/case/60259314/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc_v_Beech_Hill_Securities,_Inc ; RPX Empower https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/litigation/nysdce-649839-cedar-lane-technologies-v-beech-hill-securities

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2. Stage-by-stage

Filing and initial pleadings. The complaint is a five-page, single-count template pleading. Its exhibit structure (Ex. 1 = the patent; Ex. 2 = a claim chart mapping "Exemplary '782 Patent Claims" to "Exemplary Defendant Products") is identical to the form Cedar Lane used in the contemporaneous '782 filings, whose text is publicly available: a Count I allegation of direct infringement (making/using/selling/offering/importing, literally or under the doctrine of equivalents), an allegation that the defendant's employees internally test and use the accused products, an induced-infringement count running from service of the complaint and claim charts, a request for damages with interest under § 284, an exceptional-case request under § 285, and a jury demand. (Compare the identical template reproduced in Cedar Lane Techs. v. BTG Pactual US Capital, D. Del. No. 1:26-cv-01178, ECF 1, https://docketnexus.com/document/494324472/.) I have not independently reviewed Beech Hill's own ECF 1; the "Exemplary Defendant Products" in its Exhibit 2 are not publicly reported, and Cedar Lane's complaints in this campaign do not name accused products in the body.

Critically: Beech Hill never answered, never appeared (no notice of appearance appears on the docket), and never pleaded a counterclaim — so there is no invalidity, non-infringement, unenforceability, or § 101 counterclaim in this case, and no Rule 12(b)(6) or § 1404(a)/§ 1406 challenge was ever teed up.

Pre-trial motions of substance. None. No motion to dismiss, no motion to transfer venue (notwithstanding that Beech Hill is a New York broker-dealer and S.D.N.Y. was likely a convenient forum for it), no motion to stay pending IPR, no summary-judgment motion. The only motions on the docket are the ministerial pro hac vice motion (ECF 6) and the submission of the dismissal order.

Claim construction. Did not occur. No court has construed any claim of the '782 patent in this or, as far as the public record shows, in any other case in the campaign.

Discovery. None. No Rule 26(f) report was due before the 2025-11-18 IPTC, which was cancelled by the dismissal. No infringement or invalidity contentions were ever served. Strategically, this means Cedar Lane incurred essentially zero litigation cost beyond the $405 filing fee and $200 PHV fee, and no defendant has obtained discovery into Cedar Lane's damages theories, ownership chain, or the patent's priority story.

Trial / verdict / post-trial. None. No JMOL, new-trial, or § 285 fee motion was filed. Note that because the dismissal was without prejudice and no "prevailing party" judgment was entered, there was no fee-shifting vehicle — even for Beech Hill, which could in principle have sought fees as a sanction, but did not.

Final disposition. Dismissal without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i). Technically such a notice is "self-effectuating" and needs no court order (the court in the parallel Citibank case made exactly that point, citing In re Amerijet Int'l, 785 F.3d 967, 973 (5th Cir. 2015), https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/litigation/cedar-lane-technologies-v-citibank-trading-platform-patent-patsnap/); here Judge Woods nonetheless signed an order (ECF 13) and the clerk filed the AO 120 termination form (ECF 14). There was no settlement agreement placed on the record, no license, no payment disclosed, and no with-prejudice bar. Cedar Lane remains free to refile against Beech Hill at any time within the limitations/laches window; the '782 patent (claim 1, method claims directed to generating conditional offers to semi-anonymous liquidity takers based on a trade-history "profile") remains unadjudicated and, per patent-office records, in force with an estimated expiry of 2030-04-08.

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3. Why this case ended the way it did

I found no public record of the reason for the dismissal — no stipulation, no press coverage, no Law360 report of a Beech Hill settlement. (Law360's case page shows only the 2025-09-22 filing: https://www.law360.com/cases/68d174d466e1b00c56487023.) Three facts, however, are well documented and frame the inference:

1. Timing. The case was filed 2025-09-22 and dismissed 2025-10-20 — 28 days, 27 days after the summons issued, and three days after Cedar Lane filed the notice. Notably, the docket extract shows no return of service; if Beech Hill had not yet been served, the dismissal was even cheaper for Cedar Lane than it appears. (I flag this as unverified — the Just

I'll research the counsel of record for Cedar Lane Technologies in this case.

Let me verify the docket details and pull the complaint itself, plus research counsel backgrounds.

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

Case No. 1:25-cv-07840 (S.D.N.Y.) · Judge Gregory H. Woods · closed 10/20/2025

Summary finding

Only one attorney appeared for the plaintiff in this case. The docket reflects no local counsel, no second attorney from the Rabicoff firm, and no appearance of record by any other firm. There were no sealed filings and no in-house counsel appearance — the entire plaintiff-side record consists of papers filed by Isaac P. Rabicoff.

Counsel table

Docket grounding

• Dkt. 1 (9/22/2025) — Complaint against Beech Hill Securities with Exs. 1–2 (the '782 patent and a 19-page claim chart), filed by Rabicoff. He also filed the civil cover sheet (Dkt. 2), Rule 7.1 statement (Dkt. 3), summons request (Dkt. 4), AO 120 (Dkt. 5), and the PHV motion with his own declaration and certificate of good standing (Dkt. 6).
• Dkt. 9 (9/24/2025) — "ORDER granting #6 Motion for Isaac P. Rabicoff to Appear Pro Hac Vice" (text-only order by Judge Woods).
• Dkt. 11–13 (10/17–10/20/2025) — Rabicoff filed the Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice of voluntary dismissal and proposed order; Judge Woods signed the dismissal without prejudice on 10/20/2025.
• Dkt. 14 — AO 120 case-termination form.

Docket source: Justia docket sheet, https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2025cv07840/649839; PACER Monitor, https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/60259314/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc_v_Beech_Hill_Securities,_Inc.

Points a reader should not miss

1. No local counsel of record is visible. S.D.N.Y. practice normally contemplates a member of the Court's bar sponsoring a pro hac vice admission (Local Civ. R. 1.3), yet the docket shows no separate notice of appearance by any New York attorney and Rabicoff himself filed every paper. This mirrors his filings in other S.D.N.Y. Cedar Lane matters (e.g., Cedar Lane v. General Electric, 1:23-cv-03313, where the PHV motion was likewise granted with no local-counsel entry). I could not retrieve the full PHV declaration (Dkt. 6-1) through free sources, so a named local sponsor, if any, may appear inside that attachment — I am not asserting one exists.
2. No co-counsel. In some Cedar Lane matters Rabicoff has appeared alongside other firms (e.g., a W.D. Pa. case listing "Rabicoff Law; Napoli Shkolnik"). Nothing of the kind appears here; the per-firm reporting for this case lists plaintiff's counsel simply as "Rabicoff Law" (Lexology/Docket Navigator, September 2025 Retail Patent Litigation Report, https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8a4e06a8-3568-45f0-905f-8c9d363b63cf).
3. Defense side never appeared. No answer, no appearance, no motion by Beech Hill Securities before the dismissal — consistent with the notice's recital that "Defendant has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment."
4. Case context. This was one of a Sept. 22, 2025 batch of '782-patent suits Rabicoff filed in S.D.N.Y. against broker-dealers/asset managers (Clear Street, 1:25-cv-07846; Cantor Fitzgerald; City National Rochdale; Corinthian Partners; and others), with a parallel W.D. Tex. suit against Citibank. The 28-day file-to-dismissal cycle is characteristic of this campaign.

Sourcing caveats

• Attorney identity, firm, and admissions are well sourced (docket entries cited above; CourtListener party record listing "Isaac Phillip Rabicoff, (773) 669-4590, Rabicoff Law LLC, 4311 N Ravenswood Ave, Suite 315, Chicago, IL 60613 — ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED").
• The description of Rabicoff's broader patent-litigation practice rests on aggregated docket/reporting sources (PACER Monitor, CourtListener, Lexology/Docket Navigator, Law.com Radar) rather than a single authoritative firm biography; I did not verify a firm-website bio page for him and have not attributed specific published decisions to him that I could not confirm in the searches above.
• Bar admissions and law-school background were not verified and are therefore omitted rather than guessed.

I'll research the docket and counsel for this case.

Bottom line

No attorney appeared for the defendant. Beech Hill Securities, Inc. never filed a notice of appearance, answer, or motion in this action, and the docket contains no counsel of record for the defense side. The case was closed before any defense appearance was entered.

Docket evidence

The full docket (14 entries total, per Justia's PACER-derived docket sheet and PacerMonitor's mirror) contains no defense filings:

The dismissal order itself confirms the absence of any defense participation: "Defendant has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment. Plaintiff has voluntarily dismissed this case without prejudice under F.R.C.P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i)." (Dkt. 13, 10/20/2025.)

Corroborating third-party docket aggregators also list no defense counsel:

• Justia Dockets (docket last retrieved 10/20/2025): plaintiff counsel only — https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2025cv07840/649839
• PacerMonitor case 60259314: under "Defendant — Represented By," no firm or attorney is listed; the only "Represented By" entry is Isaac Rabicoff for the plaintiff — https://api.pacermonitor.com/public/case/60259314/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc_v_Beech_Hill_Securities,_Inc
• Patsnap Litigation / RPX Empower case records: defendant's "Counsel" field reads "Not recorded" — https://eureka.patsnap.com/resources/blog/litigation/cedar-lane-technologies-v-beech-hill-securities-patent-dispute-patsnap/ ; https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/litigation/nysdce-649839-cedar-lane-technologies-v-beech-hill-securities

What I could not confirm (and will not guess)

• Whether Beech Hill retained counsel informally. Nothing on the docket shows a stipulation, extension of time, or pre-motion conference request — the usual fingerprints of an appearance-ready defense — and no proof of service appears either. The 28-day life of the case (filed 9/22, dismissed 10/17–10/20) is consistent with dismissal before formal service/response, but I have no filing that affirmatively establishes service status. Treat that as inference, not fact.
• Identity of any firm advising Beech Hill outside the record. None is reported in Law360's case page (https://www.law360.com/cases/68d174d466e1b00c56487023), the Lexology/September 2025 retail patent litigation round-up (which lists "Cnsl: Rabicoff Law" — plaintiff side only), or the Stanford NPE Litigation Database entry for patent 8,577,782.
• Whether any entry is sealed or restricted. The public docket sheet shows nothing sealed; I could not run a live PACER docket report myself, so a sealed filing cannot be ruled out 100%, though a sealed defense appearance in a 28-day case with a Rule 41(a)(1) dismissal is very unlikely.

Practical verification steps if you need a belt-and-suspenders cite

1. Pull the live PACER docket report for 1:25-cv-07840 (Dkt. 1–14) and confirm no "Notice of Appearance" or "Answer" entries; the Justia snapshot is current only through 10/20/2025.
2. Check the SDNY CM/ECF "attorneys" tab for the defendant party — an appearance that was later withdrawn would still show.
3. If you're probing whether a refiled or companion suit exists, note that Cedar Lane has asserted US 8,577,782 against a cluster of broker-dealers in S.D.N.Y. in the same period (Cantor Fitzgerald, City National Rochdale, Clear Street, Corinthian Partners, per the September 2025 round-up), plus Bank of America in E.D. Tex. and Raymond James in W.D. Tex. Counsel identified in those companion matters would be a lead worth chasing — but attributing any of that counsel to Beech Hill in this case would be speculation, and I have not verified defense appearances in those dockets either.

Recommendation for the case write-up: state affirmatively that the record contains zero defense counsel of record — a notable feature for any recidivism/filing-pattern analysis of Cedar Lane's 8,577,782 campaign, since it suggests the Beech Hill suit was resolved or abandoned at the demand-letter/informal stage rather than litigated.