Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. LaSalle St. Securities, L.L.C.

I'll research this case and its context before drafting the overview.

Key finding already: the docket shows this case was dismissed in March 2026. Let me verify the parties and the broader assertion campaign.

Now let me check for IPR activity on the '782 patent, substantive rulings against it, and the scale of this assertion campaign.

Case Overview — Cedar Lane Techs. Inc. v. LaSalle St. Sec., L.L.C., No. 1:26-cv-00721 (N.D. Ill.)

Status note before anything else: the case metadata in this file lists the matter as "active," but the PACER-derived docket shows it was terminated on March 5, 2026, roughly six weeks after filing. Cedar Lane filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal on Feb. 24, 2026 (Dkt. 9), and Judge John Robert Blakey entered a minute order on Mar. 5, 2026 dismissing the action without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a), striking all dates and terminating the case (Dkt. 10). No answer, no motion to dismiss, no claim construction, and no merits ruling ever issued. One litigation-data aggregator also records the dismissal text as invoking Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) with each side bearing its own costs. I flag this because any monitoring or docket-based workflow relying on the "active" flag will be wrong.

The parties. Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian corporation (principal place of business listed as 560 Baker Street, Suite 1, Nelson, BC in its complaints) incorporated in 2019 and widely characterized in the secondary literature as a high-volume non-practicing entity — Seyfarth Shaw's "NPE Showcase" series notes it sued hundreds of defendants and was, by one count reported to Chinese IP-protection authorities, the most active patent plaintiff in the U.S. in 2021. Its portfolio is largely acquired, much of it originating with Intellectual Ventures entities, and it litigates almost exclusively through Isaac Philip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Alexandria, VA), who is counsel of record here (Dkt. 2, 3) and who was sanctioned in 2020 by Judge Vince Chhabria in N.D. Cal. for frivolous positions taken in bad faith — a fact that colors how defendants and courts read these filings. Defendant LaSalle St. Securities, L.L.C. is an operating company, not an NPE: a privately held, fully disclosed introducing broker-dealer (FINRA CRD 7191, registered since 1975), organized as a Delaware LLC in April 1999 and owned by McDermott Holdings I Limited Partnership, headquartered at 940 N. Industrial Drive, Elmhurst, Illinois, supporting roughly 300+ financial advisors and reporting on the order of $10–14 billion in client assets, clearing primarily through National Financial Services/Fidelity. It is a conventional retail-advice and execution business, not a trading-technology developer — which is precisely the mismatch that defines this species of suit. Defense counsel never appeared on the docket, so none is identified.

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, application 12/756,929 (Compl., Ex. 1). Technical sketch in one line: in an anonymous electronic market, a "taker" is tagged with a persistent identifier, the liquidity provider pulls that identifier's trade history to build a profile showing whether the taker's trades would be profitable (i.e., to spot "toxic" flow), and returns a conditional bid/offer priced to that profile and routed only to that taker through an exchange with a bid/offer spread — semi-anonymity plus counterparty-specific pricing. Independent claim 1 recites the identifier/trade-history/profile/offer-only-to-that-entity sequence and, per later Cedar Lane complaints on the same patent, processors "implemented at least partly in hardware," a limitation plainly drafted with § 101 in mind. As in its sibling cases, the complaint does not name accused products in the body; it pleads generally as to "Exemplary Defendant Products" and incorporates a claim chart as Exhibit 2 (Dkt. 1, Ex. 2). Given that LaSalle is an introducing broker-dealer rather than an exchange or ATS operator, the accused instrumentality is best understood as the firm's order-handling/routing and advisor-platform stack (LaSalle has publicly touted an Advyzon-integrated advisor platform with clearing and custody integration, and Fidelity Wealthscape), but I could not verify from any public source which specific product or service Cedar Lane charted — the Exhibit 2 chart is not reproduced in the free sources I reviewed, and I will not guess at it.

Posture, venue, and why it matters. Filed January 22, 2026 in the Northern District of Illinois, Chicago Division, assigned by random assignment to Judge Blakey with Magistrate Judge Gabriel A. Fuentes designated (Dkt. entry 1/23/2026); summons issued Jan. 23 (Dkt. 5), the Patent Office report mailed Jan. 29 (Dkt. 6), and service effected Feb. 10 with answer due Mar. 3 (Dkt. 8) — after which Cedar Lane dismissed unilaterally, before any appearance. Venue was never contestable: LaSalle's headquarters sits in Elmhurst (DuPage County), squarely inside the N.D. Ill., so 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) was satisfied on the defendant's own residence, and the case needed no venue gymnastics of the kind Cedar Lane has used in Texas (e.g., asserting foreign-corporation venue in E.D. Tex. against TD Bank, No. 2:26-cv-00044, filed the very same day). That same-day filing is the real story: this case is one unit in a coordinated '782 wave rather than a standalone dispute. The public record shows Cedar Lane asserting the '782 against a wide set of financial-services defendants across 2025–2026 — Cobra Trading (E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00223, Feb. 2025), Alterna Securities (S.D. Tex. 4:25-cv-01095, Mar. 2025), Citibank (W.D. Tex. 7:25-cv-00432, Sept. 2025), BNY Mellon (S.D.N.Y. 1:25-cv-09488, Nov. 2025), Horace Mann (N.D. Ill. 1:25-cv-14404, Nov. 2025), David Lerner Associates (E.D.N.Y. 1:26-cv-00183, Jan. 2026), TD Bank (E.D. Tex., Jan. 2026), Ameritas (S.D.N.Y. 1:26-cv-07407), and then a deliberate Delaware cluster in Sept. 2026 (BTG Pactual 1:26-cv-01178, 1:26-cv-01179, AlpacaDB 1:26-cv-01260, AllianceBernstein 1:26-cv-01261) — the last of which produced an actual answer and counterclaim, the first real sign of pushback. The recurring resolution pattern is informative: near-uniform early exits within 40–80 days, with defendants represented by sophisticated firms (Fish & Richardson in Alterna, Horace Mann, and BNY Mellon) obtaining with-prejudice dismissal of Cedar Lane's claims while preserving their own invalidity counterclaims without prejudice — an asymmetric structure strongly consistent with a paid license or covenant not to sue, though no settlement terms are public in any of these cases. LaSalle, apparently unrepresented at the time of dismissal, got the weaker version: dismissal without prejudice, meaning Cedar Lane may refile against LaSalle on the same patent within the § 286 damages window.

Why it is notable, with appropriate caution. Three things make it worth tracking. First, the § 101 pressure: the '782 is a classic financial-method claim, and every well-counseled defendant in this wave has had a credible Alice/abstract-idea motion plus an IPR threat available; the pattern of with-prejudice exits by Fish & Richardson-represented defendants, and no merits ruling anywhere, is exactly what a plaintiff does when it wants to avoid an invalidity ruling. Second, IPR linkage is absent but latent: I found no inter partes review petition against the '782 in any public source, and the complaints do not acknowledge any USPTO proceeding — so the patent remains unadjudicated on validity in every forum, which is itself the campaign's core asset and its core vulnerability. Third, the clock: the patent's estimated expiry is April 8, 2030, and the Delaware refiling cluster in September 2026 suggests Cedar Lane is working the remaining runway hard, now in a district with a deep financial-services defendant pool and a reputation for faster, more predictable patent case management than the Texas courts where the campaign started. For LaSalle specifically, the practical exposure is not this docket but the next one — the without-prejudice dismissal preserves refiling, and a mid-market broker-dealer that never appeared has not yet built the record (invalidity contentions, IPR, fee motion) that has ended other '782 suits on favorable terms.

Sourcing caveat: docket details above come from PACER mirrors (Justia Dockets, PacerMonitor, Docket Alarm/gaeflexstaging RECAP) rather than direct PACER retrieval, and the dismissal text and per-party outcomes in the sibling cases come from litigation-analytics write-ups (PatSnap Eureka, patentlitigator.com) that I have not independently confirmed against the underlying orders. The "Chief Judge" designation for Judge Blakey appears in one analytics source and I have not independently verified it. Party-characterization language ("NPE"/"PAE") reflects the cited secondary commentary, not any judicial finding in this case.

I'll research this case across multiple sources.

Executive summary

This case never became a litigated dispute. Cedar Lane filed a five‑page, one‑patent complaint on 2026‑01‑22, served the defendant on 2026‑02‑10, and then unilaterally walked away on 2026‑02‑24 via a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice of voluntary dismissal — before any answer, counterclaim, motion, or case‑management conference. The court formally closed the case on 2026‑03‑05. There is no Markman ruling, no discovery, no trial, no fee motion, no appeal, and — as best I can determine from public sources — no PTAB proceeding on the asserted patent at any time. There are no "key legal developments" in the merits sense; the development of consequence is a pre‑answer abandonment that left U.S. Patent 8,577,782 intact and re‑assertable.

I flag up front that I could not access PACER directly. The docket reconstruction below rests on third‑party mirrors (Justia, a docket‑update mirror, PacerMonitor, CourtListener/RECAP) plus litigation‑analytics write‑ups. Where a fact comes only from an analytics vendor's AI‑generated blog (PatSnap Eureka), I say so.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

Plaintiff is described in the complaint as a Canadian corporation (Nelson, British Columbia). The '782 patent, "Trading with conditional offers for semi-anonymous participants," issued 2013‑11‑05 from App. No. 12/756,929 (filed 2010‑04‑08), meaning the asserted asset has an estimated expiration of 2030‑04‑08 — a fact that matters to why a plaintiff might prefer a fast, cheap exit and a later re‑assertion to an adverse eligibility ruling.

Sources: Justia docket (last retrieved 2026‑01‑22) https://dockets.justia.com/docket/illinois/ilndce/1:2026cv00721/[493726](/patent/493726); docket‑update mirror with entries through 3/5/2026 https://gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com/cases/Illinois_Northern_District_Court/1--26-cv-00721/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc._v._LaSalle_St._Securities_L.L.C/; PacerMonitor https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/62683889/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc_v_LaSalle_St_Securities,_LLC.

Answer / counterclaims: none. No defense appearance, no answer, no Rule 12 motion, and no counterclaims (invalidity or DJ) were ever filed. No defense counsel of record appears on any docket mirror. LaSalle St. Securities, L.L.C. — a Chicago retail brokerage — was never represented on the docket before the case closed.

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2. Pre‑trial motions of substance

None. No motion to dismiss (including no § 101/Alice motion), no motion to transfer under § 1404(a), no motion to stay pending IPR (there was no IPR to stay for), no motion for judgment on the pleadings, no summary judgment motion, no discovery motions. The case never reached a Rule 16 scheduling order; the only court‑set deadline (status report, 2026‑03‑30) was struck when the case was terminated.

This is worth emphasizing because in the parallel '782 campaign, § 101 and IPR‑threat leverage is precisely what appears to have driven outcomes. In Cedar Lane v. Horace Mann Educators, No. 1:25‑cv‑14404 (N.D. Ill.), also in this district, Cedar Lane stipulated to dismissal with prejudice in January 2026 against a Fish & Richardson‑represented defendant; in Cedar Lane v. BNY Mellon, No. 1:25‑cv‑09488 (S.D.N.Y.), the dismissal was likewise with prejudice against Fish & Richardson‑represented defendant. (Secondary/analytics sourcing only — PatSnap Eureka write‑ups, which characterize counsel involvement and are not docket‑verified.)

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3. Claim construction (Markman)

Did not occur. No Markman scheduling, no joint claim construction statement, no Markman hearing, no claim construction order. The case was 42 days old at closing. I found no claim construction ruling on the '782 patent in any other case in the campaign either — which is the analytically significant point: after dozens of '782 assertions, there is still no public claim construction or § 101 ruling on the patent, so its scope remains untested.

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4. Discovery milestones

None of strategic significance. The only "discovery" event is service of process (2026‑02‑10). No Rule 26(f) conference, no initial disclosures, no written discovery, no depositions, no ESI protocol. The defendant's Rule 12(a) response deadline had not even run when the case was dismissed.

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5. Trial, verdict, post‑trial motions

None. No trial date was ever set; no verdict; no JMOL/Rule 59 motion; no § 285 fee motion by either side. Notably, the dismissal notice affirmatively allocated fees: "Each party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees" — so there is no fee exposure running in either direction.

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6. Final disposition

The notice text, as reproduced by PatSnap (secondary source, but quoted verbatim as docket text): "Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(i), Plaintiff hereby dismisses this action without prejudice. Defendant has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment. Each party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees."

Two sourcing notes: (a) some analytics databases record the case's closing date as 2026‑03‑05 (the court's termination minute entry) while the operative dismissal date as a matter of law is 2026‑02‑24, since a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice is self‑effecting absent contrary court action; (b) the dismissal is without prejudice to re‑filing, and I found no re‑filing by Cedar Lane against LaSalle St. Securities as of 2026‑11‑13 in any district — though absence of a re‑filing cannot be confirmed exhaustively from open sources.

Appeal: none (no appealable judgment).

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7. Parallel PTAB proceedings on the '782 patent

I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding — instituted or even petitioned — on U.S. 8,577,782. Searches of PTAB‑tracking coverage and Cedar Lane's PTAB history surfaced only Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., IPR2020‑00006, which challenged a different Cedar Lane patent, U.S. 7,173,177; the Board instituted on 2020‑03‑18 and held the challenged claim unpatentable in a final written decision on 2021‑02‑12 (Unified Patents insights, https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2021/2/12/cedar-lane-patent-held-unpatentable). That is a useful data point about Cedar Lane's vulnerability before the Board, but

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

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

Bottom line: Exactly one attorney has appeared for the plaintiff in this case. There is no second chair, no local-counsel pairing, and no in-house appearance. The same lawyer signed the complaint, the Rule 7.1 disclosure, and the eventual notice of dismissal.

⚠️ Status flag before the roster: although the case metadata describes this matter as "active," the N.D. Ill. docket shows it was dismissed without prejudice on March 5, 2026 (Dkt. 9, Notice of Voluntary Dismissal filed 2/24/2026; Dkt. 10, minute entry dismissing under Rule 41(a) and terminating the case). That is consistent with the prompt's own note that the file contains only a complaint and claim chart — no answer, no motion practice, no claim construction. See Justia docket; PacerMonitor; full docket mirror.

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Plaintiff's counsel

Docket footprint in this case (all signed "s/ Isaac Rabicoff"):

• Dkt. 1 — Complaint for Patent Infringement, jury demand, with Ex. 1 (US 8,577,782) and Ex. 2 (claim chart) — filed 1/22/2026
• Dkt. 2 — Attorney Appearance for Plaintiff — 1/22/2026
• Dkt. 3 — Rule 7.1 / L.R. 3.2 Notification of Affiliates — 1/22/2026
• Dkt. 9 — Notice of Voluntary Dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) — 2/24/2026

Relevant patent-litigation experience (one-line-per-item):

• Runs one of the highest-volume patent-assertion practices in the country — Rabicoff Law was ranked among Lex Machina's top 3 most active patent litigation firms in 2017, and he has led licensing/enforcement campaigns against Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, LG, Huawei, Samsung and Google (firm bio).
• Cedar Lane is his signature client. He filed the bulk of Cedar Lane's hundreds of suits (e.g., 16 cases in the single week of Sept. 12, 2022, in W.D. Tex.), and he is plaintiff's counsel across the parallel '782 campaign — Cedar Lane v. Morgan Stanley, v. Maxim Group, v. First Manhattan Securities, v. Spartan Capital, v. Raymond James, etc. See Stanford NPE Litigation Database, US 8,577,782.
• PTAB experience is real and substantive: he has defeated institution of multiple IPRs and CBMs as lead counsel, including denial of institution on all claims in a Mastercard-filed CBM; he argued the Federal Circuit appeal in the SportBrain Holdings reissue/IPR line and filed a Federal Circuit amicus brief on representative claiming under § 101.
• Adverse history worth knowing (both well sourced, and both bear on this campaign): in 2020 Judge Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) sanctioned Cedar Lane and Mr. Rabicoff, finding filings "objectively frivolous" and made "in bad faith," and referred him to that court's standing committee on professional conduct (NPE Showcase – Cedar Lane Technologies); and on December 12, 2022 the Virginia State Bar imposed a public reprimand without terms (agreed disposition) for violating California's rules on meritorious claims, candor to the tribunal, and misconduct (VSB notice).

Attorneys who did not appear

• No additional plaintiff counsel — no pro hac vice motions and no co-counsel appearances appear on the docket (10 total entries, the last being the dismissal order). Nothing is sealed; the file is fully public.
• No in-house counsel for Cedar Lane — Cedar Lane is a Canadian NPE with no legal department on the record here.
• No defendant counsel of record. LaSalle St. Securities never entered an appearance or answered (summons returned executed 2/10/2026, answer due 3/3/2026 — Dkt. 8 — but dismissal followed on 2/24/2026), which is what permitted the unilateral Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) dismissal.

Sourcing caveat: the attorney identity, firm, and filings are grounded in the Justia/PacerMonitor docket entries and the docket mirror cited above; the Chicago office address is taken from Mr. Rabicoff's signature blocks on contemporaneous federal filings and PTAB papers (e.g., D. Colo. filing; PTAB submission). I did not find a PACER-generated image of the Dkt. 2 appearance itself, so the address on that specific filing is inferred from his standard block rather than read directly off the document.

I'll search for the docket and counsel information.

Key finding so far: the docket appears to show no defense appearance at all. Let me verify and check for any defendant counsel in related matters.

Let me verify the full docket entry list to confirm no defense appearance was ever filed.

Bottom line

There is no counsel of record for LaSalle St. Securities, L.L.C. in this case — none ever appeared. The docket for Cedar Lane Techs., Inc. v. LaSalle St. Securities, L.L.C., No. 1:26-cv-00721 (N.D. Ill.) contains no attorney appearance, no Rule 7.1 disclosure, no answer, and no motion filed on the defendant's behalf. The case was dismissed on Cedar Lane's unilateral notice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) before the answer deadline ran, so no defense attorney was ever required to — or did — enter an appearance on the public record.

I therefore cannot give you names, firms, or experience notes without inventing them, which I won't do.

What the docket actually shows

Sources: Justia docket (retrieved 1/22/2026, plaintiff-side entries only) https://dockets.justia.com/docket/illinois/ilndce/1:2026cv00721/493726; full entry list mirror https://gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com/cases/Illinois_Northern_District_Court/1--26-cv-00721/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc._v._LaSalle_St._Securities_L.L.C/; PACER Monitor https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/62683889/Cedar_Lane_Technologies_Inc_v_LaSalle_St_Securities,_LLC (lists "Represented By: Isaac Philip Rabicoff, Rabicoff Law LLC" only).

Notably absent from the docket, in a case where the defendant was served and had 21 days to respond: any notice of appearance (local or pro hac vice), any unopposed extension of time to answer, any Rule 7.1 corporate disclosure, any consent-to-magistrate form, or any defense filing of any kind. That is consistent with a pre-answer business resolution (license/settlement) rather than litigation-defense activity. PatSnap's secondary case write-up reaches the same conclusion ("the case closed before the defendant formally appeared"; "the absence of listed defense counsel here is notable") — https://eureka.patsnap.com/resources/blog/litigation/cedar-lane-vs-lasalle-st-securities-voluntary-dismissal-in-fintech-trading-patent-case-patsnap-eureka/ — though that source is AI-generated and I treat it as corroboration only, not authority.

Two flags for the file

1. Status discrepancy. The case metadata supplied to me says "active," but the docket reflects termination on 3/5/2026 (DE 10) and term flags AO279/TERMED. I've deferred to the docket on this point; the metadata appears stale.
2. Off-record counsel may exist. It is entirely possible LaSalle's in-house legal/compliance personnel or outside counsel negotiated the pre-suit or post-service resolution without ever filing an appearance — that is the norm for Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) walk-aways. Nothing about that would appear in PACER. So the accurate statement is: no counsel of record exists, not no lawyer was involved.

If you need the name anyway — where to look

• PACER direct pull of the full docket (the free mirrors above all stop at DE 10, but a fresh PACER run is the only way to confirm nothing was filed after 3/5/2026).
• LaSalle's in-house legal/compliance department. LaSalle St. Securities, LLC is a FINRA-member broker-dealer headquartered at 940 N. Industrial Dr., Elmhurst, IL 60126 (the firm's principal address per Illinois/Florida registration records and its own site). A patent demand letter in this campaign would most likely have been routed to its legal/compliance function rather than to outside patent counsel.
• Plaintiff's counsel's files. Cedar Lane's counsel (Rabicoff Law LLC) would have corresponded with whoever represented LaSalle in the settlement discussion; that correspondence is not public but would be discoverable in any refiled action.
• Refiling watch. Because the dismissal was without prejudice, Cedar Lane can refile against LaSalle on US 8,577,782 (claim chart already prepared, attached as Ex. 2 to DE 1). If it does, defense counsel of record will appear in the new docket within days of service.

Context on the campaign (not attributable to LaSalle)

For what a defense lineup in this assertion campaign typically looks like: in parallel Cedar Lane suits on the same '782 patent, defendants have retained AmLaw defense firms — e.g., Excylyn Janaize Hardin-Smith and Neil J. McNabnay of Fish & Richardson appeared for Oppenheimer & Co. (S.D.N.Y. 1:26-cv-00297, answer/counterclaims at DE 14) and American Century Investment Services (S.D.N.Y., answer at DE 14, PHV motion at DE 15) respectively. I want to be explicit: there is no evidence in the record linking Fish & Richardson, or any other firm, to LaSalle St. Securities. I mention it only because a refiled case would plausibly draw the same defense-side bench.