Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Johnson Controls International plc

I'll research this case thoroughly before drafting the overview.

Let me pull the actual complaint and check the patent discrepancy I'm seeing.

Key finding: the docket shows this case was dismissed in October 2025, and one database attributes a different patent. Let me verify the complaint's actual patent and the dismissal.

Case Overview

Parties. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian entity with a stated principal place of business at 560 Baker Street, Suite 1, Nelson, British Columbia — i.e., an IP-holding vehicle, not an operating company. Stanford's NPE Litigation Database classifies it as a patent asserter relying on acquired patents, and its docket footprint runs to well over a hundred infringement suits since roughly 2019 across W.D. Tex., D. Del., E.D. Tex., S.D.N.Y., W.D. Wis., E.D.N.Y. and elsewhere (see https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/cedar-lane-technologies-inc). Its sole counsel of record here is Isaac Phillip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Dkt. 2), a frequent filer whose practices drew a $1,000 Rule 11 sanction and a referral to the N.D. Cal. Standing Committee on Professional Conduct in Cedar Lane Techs. v. Blackmagic Design Inc., No. 3:20-cv-01302-VC (N.D. Cal. Nov. 19, 2020) — where the court observed that he "settles or otherwise dismisses the suits before his failure to seek admission or pay the fee is detected by the Court." That history is directly relevant to this case's trajectory. Defendant Johnson Controls International plc is the Irish-domiciled (Cork) public parent of the Johnson Controls building-technologies group — HVAC/controls, fire detection and security, with its principal U.S. operations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a security-camera line (Illustra, DSC, American Dynamics) inherited from Tyco Integrated Security. Notably, the complaint named only the plc parent, not the U.S. operating subsidiary Johnson Controls, Inc., which raises obvious § 1400(b)/TC Heartland venue and personal-jurisdiction questions that the record never reached.

Patent and accused technology — with an important caveat. The case metadata lists U.S. Patent No. 6,972,790, "Host interface for imaging arrays" (filed Dec. 21, 2000; issued Dec. 6, 2005; inventor Mark Suska) — an interface circuit, preferably on the same die as an image sensor, that buffers imaging-array data in a FIFO or addressable memory and generates an interrupt or bus-request signal to a host processor when the buffer reaches a threshold, throttling data transfer at the host's rate. Cedar Lane pairs the '790 with its continuation, U.S. Patent No. 8,537,242 (issued Sept. 17, 2013), in its standard imaging-array campaign, and the two-exhibit structure of the complaint (Dkt. 1, Exs. 1–2) is consistent with that template. However, the exact assertion set is not verifiable from the public record I could reach: the complaint text is paywalled and the RECAP entry shows only that Exhibits 1 and 2 were attached. One commercial database (Patsnap) attributes this specific docket to U.S. Patent No. 7,632,178, "Ventilation blower controls employing air quality sensors" (filed Jan. 10, 2006; issued Dec. 15, 2009; inventors Meneely et al.; estimated expiry June 6, 2026) — a retrofitting method for tying CO/smoke/humidity sensors through a relay to a ventilation system's "remote switch" high-speed terminals. That attribution is plausible on its face (it fits JCI's HVAC business and Cedar Lane's separate late-2025 ventilation wave against Broan-NuTone, Automation Components, General Tools and Ventilation Systems PrJSC), but I could not confirm Cedar Lane's chain of title: Google Patents' assignment records show the '178 going to Julio Gabe LLC in January 2022, not to Cedar Lane. Treat the '790 as the operative patent per the case metadata and treat the '178 attribution as unverified. Correspondingly, the specific JCI products accused are not identifiable from the public docket; the natural candidates given either patent are JCI's IP/security cameras and camera- or sensor-equipped HVAC controls, but that is inference, not a sourced fact.

Procedural posture and significance. Filed August 19, 2025 in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas, assigned to District Judge Rodney Gilstrap with Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne (No. 2:25-cv-00815-JRG-RSP). The docket then ran only eight entries: complaint, appearance, Rule 7.1 disclosure, AO 120, summons (all Aug. 19) — then Notice of Voluntary Dismissal on October 6, 2025 (Dkt. 6) and an order dismissing the case without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) on October 17, 2025 (Dkt. 7), with a closing AO 120 (Dkt. 8) (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71146609/cedar-lane-technologies-inc-v-johnson-controls-international-plc/). The metadata status in your summary — "complaint filed; summons issued" — is stale: the case is closed, 59 days after filing, before any answer, motion to dismiss, or venue fight. That is the case's real significance. It is a textbook short-fuse NPE filing: a large, deep-pocketed operating-company target, a Texas forum selected for speed rather than demonstrated ties, and a quick walk-away. Two features sharpen the point. First, Cedar Lane had already sued this same defendant on the same imaging-array family — Cedar Lane Techs. v. Johnson Controls Int'l plc, No. 6:22-cv-00539 (W.D. Tex., filed May 26, 2022), asserting the '527, '790 and '242 patents — so this was a re-assertion against a previously-sued party, which raises questions (unaddressed on this record) about claim preclusion, release, or an unrecorded license explaining both the 2022 and 2025 dispositions. Second, the '790's term has run: third-party estimates place its expiry in August 2023, meaning a 2025 complaint could at most have sought roughly six years of back damages and no prospective relief. I found no PTAB proceeding — no IPR, PGR or CBM — involving the '790, so there is no IPR linkage to report for this case; the defensive value, if any, lies in the prior 2022 suit and prosecution history rather than in AIA trial outcomes.

Sourcing caveats worth flagging to the client: (1) the asserted patent number should be confirmed against Dkt. 1 and Exhibits 1–2 on PACER before it is relied on in any filing or diligence memo; (2) the accused products are unknown from public sources; (3) the reason for the voluntary dismissal is not stated in the record — I have not speculated beyond noting the parent-only naming and the Rabicoff filing pattern; and (4) the '790 expiry date is an estimate from commercial patent data, not a court or PTO determination.

I'll research this case across the docket, PTAB, and legal press sources.

Key finding already: the case was voluntarily dismissed. Let me verify the docket details, the asserted patent, and PTAB history.

Case: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Johnson Controls International plc, No. 2:25-cv-00815 (E.D. Tex.)

Bottom line: This was a short-lived, single-patent NPE suit that never reached an answer, a Rule 12 motion, or Markman. Cedar Lane voluntarily dismissed it without prejudice roughly seven weeks after filing, and Judge Gilstrap closed the case on 2025-10-17. There is no trial, no judgment on the merits, no appeal, and no PTAB proceeding on the '790 patent that I could locate. The only substantive "legal development" is the dismissal itself, which must be read against an earlier, with-prejudice dismissal of the same defendant on the same patent family in W.D. Tex.

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1. Pre-suit context: the 2022 W.D. Tex. suit (essential background)

This matters strategically: a dismissal with prejudice of the '790 claims against JCI in 2023 would ordinarily bar re-assertion of the same patent against the same accused instrumentalities — the most plausible (though unsourced/inferential) explanation for why the 2025 refiling was pulled so quickly. Cedar Lane is a Canadian NPE (Nelson, B.C.) that acquired the Suska/Psion Teklogix imaging-interface family and has asserted the '790 in dozens of cases.

2. Filing and initial pleadings (2025)

No answer, no counterclaims, no Rule 12 motion, no IPR stay motion. The docket jumps directly from the summons to the dismissal notice — JCI never appeared in the case.

Caveat on the patent: the case metadata identifies the asserted patent as 6,972,790. One third-party database (PatsNap) records US 7,632,178 B2 ("Ventilation blower controls employing air quality sensors") for this docket, but that patent is unrelated to Cedar Lane's portfolio (listed assignee: Shtanko) and is almost certainly a data-mapping error in that source. The two-exhibit complaint structure matches Cedar Lane's standard single-patent '790 template. I could not pull the Dkt. 1 PDF from RECAP to verify the face of the complaint; treat the '790 identification as reliable per case metadata but not independently confirmed from the pleading text.

3. Pre-trial motions of substance

None occurred. No motion to dismiss, no § 1404/§ 1406 transfer motion, no motion to stay pending IPR, no summary judgment motion, and no discovery motions appear on the docket. The case lasted 59 days from filing to closure.

4. Claim construction (Markman)

Did not occur. No scheduling order, no exchange of preliminary constructions, no Markman hearing, no claim construction order. (Substantively, the likely construction fights in a '790 case would have been over "a signal generator for generating a signal … in response to the quantity of data in the memory" and the FIFO-counter/threshold limitations of claim 1 — but no such dispute was ever joined here.)

5. Discovery milestones

None. No Rule 26(f) conference, no discovery plan, no initial disclosures, no written discovery or depositions of strategic significance. Cedar Lane dismissed roughly six weeks after service was effected/attempted and well before any answer deadline ripened into discovery.

6. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial setting, no verdict, no JMOL/new-trial motion, no § 285 fees motion. No judgment on the merits was entered.

7. Final disposition

• Present posture (as of 2026-11-06): closed, no appeal, no pending motions. The dismissal is without prejudice, so Cedar Lane is not legally foreclosed from refiling — but the earlier 2023 with-prejudice dismissal in W.D. Tex. on the same patent would be a substantial (likely dispositive) obstacle to any re-assertion against JCI.
• No publicly reported settlement payment, license, or take-nothing judgment accompanies the dismissal; the record basis is simply a unilateral Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice. Whether a private license precipitated the dismissal is not sourced.

8. Parallel PTAB proceedings

• No IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding on U.S. Patent 6,972,790 involving Johnson Controls was identified, and no PTAB proceeding had any effect on this litigation. No motion to stay was ever filed (consistent with there being nothing to stay for). I searched PTAB-related sources and could not locate any petition against the '790; note this is a negative finding from search rather than a docket-level PTAB confirmation.
• Practical context for why: the '790 application was filed 2000-12-21, so the patent is expired (one secondary source estimates expiry at 2023-08-01), which sharply limits both injunctive leverage and the damages window (six-year lookback under § 286) and reduces the incentive for defendants to seek PTAB review.

9. Strategic read / pattern evidence

This case was one filing in a 2025 serial-filing wave by Rabicoff Law on Cedar Lane's behalf, and its rapid voluntary dismissal is typical of that wave rather than exceptional:

• Cedar Lane v. Neosapience, No. 2:25-cv-00823 (E.D. Tex.) — filed 2025-08-20 (one day after this case), dismissed with prejudice 2026-01-14, each party bearing its own fees/costs. (PatsNap case record)
• Later 2025–2026 filings against financial institutions — e.g., Bank of America, No. 2:25-cv-01225 (E.D. Tex.) filed 2025-12-17, terminated 2026-03-12; HSBC, No. 2:25-cv-01226 filed 2025-12-17; and a cluster of S.D.N.Y./E.D.N.Y. suits against broker-dealers (Stanford NPE Litigation Database; RPX).
• The JCI docket therefore has minimal precedential or substantive value: no claim construction, no validity ruling, no damages analysis. Its only litigation significance is procedural — it shows Cedar Lane's willingness to file against a previously-released defendant in E.D. Tex. and to abandon the case within weeks, and it leaves the '790's validity and scope judicially untested in this dispute.

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Sources used: CourtListener docket, No. 2:25-cv-00815; CourtListener docket feed (entry dates); PatsNap case record for 2:25-cv-00815 (order text, dates); PatsNap case record for 6:22-cv-00539 (2022 W.D. Tex. dismissal order text); Illinois Lawyer Now, May 2022 Retail Patent Litigation Report (patents asserted against JCI in 2022); Shenzhen IP Protection Center risk alert on the '790 patent term/expiry.

Items I could not verify: the face of the Dkt. 1 complaint (asserted patent and accused products); whether any license or payment underlay the dismissal; and a definitive PTAB docket check for the '790. These are flagged rather than assumed.

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

Note: the docket shows this case was already voluntarily dismissed. Let me verify the docket details and research plaintiff's counsel.

Plaintiff's counsel of record — Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc.

Important threshold point on case status: Before addressing counsel, note that the case metadata in the prompt ("Complaint filed; summons issued") is stale. The docket shows the case was already voluntarily dismissed. Plaintiff filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal on Oct. 6, 2025 (Dkt. 6), and Judge Gilstrap entered an Order Dismissing Case on Oct. 17, 2025 (Dkt. 7), dismissing all claims without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) and directing the Clerk to close the case. See CourtListener docket for No. 2:25-cv-00815, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71146609/cedar-lane-technologies-inc-v-johnson-controls-international-plc/. Because the case closed in 59 days and Johnson Controls apparently never appeared or answered, the plaintiff's-side roster of counsel is very thin — a single attorney.

Counsel of record

Docket support for the sole-counsel finding: Every plaintiff-side entry in No. 2:25-cv-00815 is signed/attributed to "(Rabicoff, Isaac)": Dkt. 1 (Complaint, filed 8/19/2025, receipt ATXEDC-11035009, with Exs. 1–2 and civil cover sheet); Dkt. 2 (Notice of Attorney Appearance by Isaac Phillip Rabicoff on behalf of Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., 8/19/2025); Dkt. 3 (Fed. R. Civ. P. 7.1(a)(1) Disclosure Statement); Dkt. 4 (Notice of Filing of Patent/Trademark Form AO 120); Dkt. 6 (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal, 10/6/2025). No other attorney appearance, pro hac vice motion, or designation of local counsel appears on the public docket.

Points worth flagging (with sourcing limits)

1. No local counsel of record in E.D. Tex. Unlike most out-of-state plaintiffs in Judge Gilstrap's court, Cedar Lane did not retain East Texas local counsel here — Rabicoff e-filed and appeared directly, and no pro hac vice motion appears on this docket. That pattern is consistent with his other E.D. Tex. filings for Cedar Lane (e.g., Cedar Lane Techs. v. Unitech America, No. 2:21-cv-00387, where Rabicoff's appearance and dismissal stipulation are the only plaintiff-side entries). I could not verify from a public source whether he holds full E.D. Tex. bar admission versus an administrative pro hac vice arrangement; treat that as unconfirmed.

2. No in-house counsel. Cedar Lane Technologies is a Canadian-origin monetization entity/NPE (the Korean IP-protection database KOTRA describes it as "캐나다 / NPE"). No Cedar Lane in-house attorney has appeared in this or its sibling suits.

3. Related-matter co-counsel (not of record here). Third-party litigation data (Patsnap) lists Benjamin Charles Deming (DNL Zito) alongside Rabicoff for Cedar Lane in a different E.D. Tex. case, Cedar Lane Techs. v. FMR Corp., No. 2:25-cv-00232. I did not find any appearance by Deming in No. 2:25-cv-00815, and I could not independently confirm his firm or role from a primary source — so do not import him into this case's caption without checking the FMR docket directly.

4. Prior suit against the same defendant. Cedar Lane previously sued Johnson Controls in W.D. Tex., No. 6:22-cv-00539 (filed 5/26/2022), asserting US 6,473,527, 6,972,790, and 8,537,242 (per KOTRA's dispute database). The 2025 E.D. Tex. complaint was widely characterized as a re-filing of that campaign. I was unable to verify counsel of record in the 2022 W.D. Tex. action within research limits — flag as unconfirmed.

5. Patent-identification discrepancy in this case. The case metadata here lists US 6,972,790, while Patsnap's litigation record for No. 2:25-cv-00815 lists US 7,632,178 B2 ("ventilation blower controls employing air quality sensors," expired ~June 6, 2026). Both patents are Cedar Lane ventilation/HVAC assets, and the complaint's exhibits are captioned generically ("Exhibit 1," "Exhibit 2"), so the public docket text alone does not resolve which patent was attached. Verify against the complaint PDF (Dkt. 1) before relying on either.

6. Dismissal posture. The Oct. 17, 2025 order recites: "Plaintiff represents that the above-captioned case is voluntarily dismissed WITHOUT PREJUDICE … all pending claims and causes of action … are DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE … The Clerk of Court is directed to CLOSE the above-captioned case." No attorney-fee or sanction ruling against Rabicoff appears on the docket. Note the short fuse (complaint 8/19 → dismissal notice 10/6) suggests a quick settlement/license or a strategic refiling, but the public record does not state a reason — do not assume one.

Bottom line

If you need a single name for a caption or service list: Isaac Phillip Rabicoff, Rabicoff Law LLC, 4311 N. Ravenswood Ave., Suite 315, Chicago, IL 60613 — lead and only counsel of record for Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc. There is no local counsel, no of-counsel, and no in-house appearance in No. 2:25-cv-00815, and nothing was sealed that would hide additional counsel.

I'll verify the docket and search for any defense-side appearance in this case and in the related 2022 W.D. Tex. action.

Docket confirms only eight entries and no defense-side filing. Let me check whether JCI ever appeared in the 2022 W.D. Tex. case, and research who typically defends Johnson Controls in patent suits.

Two strong leads: JCI's E.D. Tex. defense team in the parallel Alpha Modus and Stingray IP cases. Let me pull those dockets for names and firms.

Bottom line

There is no counsel of record for the defendant in this case. None. Johnson Controls International plc never appeared, never answered, never sought an extension, and never filed a corporate disclosure or pro hac vice application. The defense side of the docket is literally empty. Any name offered as "defense counsel of record" for No. 2:25-cv-00815 would be fabricated.

This is not a sealing problem or a RECAP gap — it is the substance of the docket. The full eight-entry docket contains no defense-side filing of any kind:

Sources: CourtListener docket, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71146609/cedar-lane-technologies-inc-v-johnson-controls-international-plc/; PACER Monitor case page, https://api.pacermonitor.com/public/case/59628764/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc_v_Johnson_Controls_International_plc; CourtListener docket feed, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71146609/feed/.

Why there was no appearance

Two structural reasons, both visible on the face of the record:

1. No proof of service was ever filed. The clerk issued summons on 2025-08-19 (Dkt. 5), but there is no "Summons Returned Executed" and no waiver-of-service entry anywhere on the docket. For an Irish-domiciled public limited company, service would have run through the Hague Service Convention (as it did in the 2022 suit, where the clerk twice mailed a foreign-service packet to Dublin — Dkt. 7, 8, 9, 10 in No. 6:22-cv-00539). Plaintiff dismissed on day 48, well inside the 90-day Rule 4(m) window, so no answer deadline ever ripened.
2. The complaint named only the plc parent, not Johnson Controls, Inc. or Sensormatic Electronics, LLC — a § 1400(b)/TC Heartland and personal-jurisdiction problem that JCI would have litigated immediately had it appeared.

The same pattern repeated in the 2022 W.D. Tex. precursor, No. 6:22-cv-00539 (Judge Albright): that docket's fourteen entries are also entirely plaintiff-side and clerk-side — complaint, Rabicoff appearance, Rule 7 disclosure, AO 120, summons, foreign-service packets to Dublin, alias summons, a September 2022 voluntary dismissal without prejudice (Dkt. 11), and the February 2023 "Unopposed Motion to Dismiss … with Prejudice" (Dkt. 12–13) signed only by Rabicoff. No JCI appearance exists there either. (https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Johnson-Controls-International-plc-id-[163960](/patent/163960)/documents.) Flag: the 2023 order is styled "unopposed," but because no defense appearance was ever entered I read that as "no opposition because no one had appeared," not as a stipulation by JCI counsel. That is inference, not a sourced fact.

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The names that would appear if this were refiled — clearly labeled as inference, not counsel of record

Because the client will inevitably ask "who do we serve / who do we expect across the table," here is JCI's actual East Texas patent-defense roster, drawn from two other cases in the same courthouse — including one before the same judge/magistrate pair.

1. Stingray IP Solutions LLC v. Johnson Controls Int'l plc, No. 2:22-cv-389-JRG-RSP (E.D. Tex.), consolidated into No. 2:22-cv-420-JRG-RSP — same judge (Gilstrap), same magistrate (Payne) as our case

Source documents: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--22-cv-00420/Stingray_IP_Solutions_LLC_v._Resideo_Technologies_Inc._et_al/docs/26.pdf and .../docs/38.pdf (Notices of Appearance); https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/2:2022cv00420/[218217](/patent/218217) (lead-case docket).

2. Alpha Modus, Corp. v. Sensormatic Electronics, LLC et al, No. 2:25-cv-01003 (E.D. Tex.) — the most probative comparator, because it is contemporaneous

JCI was sued again in the same district about two months after this case closed, and this time it appeared:

Source: https://cdn.pacermonitor.com/public/case/60447333/Alpha_Modus,_Corp_v_Sensormatic_Electronics,_LLC_et_al.

Why this matters to the client: in Alpha Modus — a Gilstrap-division patent suit against the same Irish parent plus its Sensormatic subsidiary — JCI retained a Potter Minton local team and national patent counsel within two weeks of service. In our case JCI retained nobody, because (on the record as it stands) it was likely never served. The contrast is a useful tell about how thin this filing was.

3. Other JCI patent-defense relationships in the background (not E.D. Tex., offered only as context)

• Honigman LLP (Detroit/Michigan) publicly states it "defended Johnson Controls in a three-week patent infringement trial involving its HomeLink® universal garage-door opener system and encryption technology, resulting in invalidating several patents and a nominal verdict against JCI on the remaining patent claim." (https://www.honigman.com/practices-intellectual-property-litigation-services) — JCI's most significant patent trial win in the public record, but no evidence of any role here.
• Dickinson Wright PLLC (Ann Arbor/Detroit) appears as counsel for Johnson Controls, Inc. in unrelated matters. Historical/general, not patent-specific to this docket.
• On the plaintiff side of Johnson Controls Technology Co. v. Willow Technologies, No. 1:21-cv-01796 (D. Del.), JCI used Stephen A. Marshall, Indranil Mukerji, and Linda Chang (pro hac vice) with Adam Poff as Delaware counsel — i.e., JCI keeps a distinct national IP-suit bench for its offensive cases. Not relevant to this docket.

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What I could not verify

• Whether service was ever attempted or effected on JCI in No. 2:25-cv-00815. No proof-of-service entry exists on the public docket, and I could not pull the summons-return image from RECAP. My conclusion that JCI was likely never served is an inference from the absence of any return, not a documented fact.
• Any engagement letter, tolling agreement, or standstill between Cedar Lane and JCI that would explain the dismissal. Nothing in the record.
• Current firm/office for Janine Alison Carlan and Julie Vernon — the "Arent Fox, LLP – DC" label is docket-data-derived. Verify against the Alpha Modus pleadings or the ArentFox Schiff website before putting either name on a service list or a conflict check.
• Whether Michael E. Jones personally represented JCI (as opposed to co-defendants Resideo/Ademco) in the Stingray lead case. He appears on shared signature blocks; the clean JCI-specific appearances are Hassett and Thames.

Practical recommendation

For a service list or caption in No. 2:25-cv-00815, the correct entry is "Defendant Johnson Controls International plc — no appearance entered." If the client needs a realistic projection of opposing counsel in any refiling, the two names to plan around are Shaun W. Hassett and E. Glenn Thames, Jr. of Potter Minton, P.C., Tyler, Texas, with national patent counsel likely drawn from the ArentFox Schiff team (Carlan/Vernon) that JCI used in Alpha Modus — subject to the verification caveats above.