Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc.

I'll research this case across docket sources, litigation press, and PTAB records.

Now let me dig into the specific patents, Cedar Lane's corporate profile, and the accused products.

Case Overview — Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., No. 1:22-cv-01561 (D. Del.)

The parties. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a non-practicing patent monetization entity — the Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies it under "Acquired patents," and trade press (Actionable Intelligence, IAM) routinely describes it as one of the most prolific "patent trolls" filing in the U.S. Cedar Lane did not develop the asserted technology; it acquired the patents in suit and runs a high-volume licensing-by-litigation campaign (the November 2022 Retail Patent Litigation Report, compiled with Docket Navigator, lists Cedar Lane among frequent retail-sector filers, and IPWatchdog's filing roundups tag Cedar Lane cases as an "[IV selloff]" — i.e., patents divested by Intellectual Ventures). The Recycler reported that Cedar Lane was assigned the '527 and '790 patents in May 2019, and that by the time of its Pantum suit it had filed roughly 38 complaints on the '527 patent and 46 on the '790 patent. Defendant Lexmark International, Inc. is the Lexington, Kentucky–based printer and multifunction-peripheral OEM — an operating company and the classic target profile for this campaign, which has also hit Pantum, Xerox, Ricoh, and a long tail of camera, scanner, and video-surveillance vendors. (Lexmark's Delaware incorporation is standard in its public filings, but I could not pull the complaint's jurisdictional averments themselves, so treat that specific point as unverified here.)

The technology accused. The docket's AO-120 report (D.I. 3) lists three patents, not the single patent in the case metadata: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,473,527; 6,972,790; and 8,537,242. (1) The '527 patent, "Module and method for interfacing analog/digital converting means and JPEG compression means" (inventor named Wang; issued 2002), claims an interface module — a read controller, output controller, and line buffer — that feeds A/D-converted image data to a JPEG compression chip in 8×8 blocks so the JPEG engine needs no extra external RAM; it is, in substance, a scanner/still-image-pipeline patent. (2) The '790 patent, "Host interface for imaging arrays" (issued Dec. 6, 2005; inventor Mark Suska; reportedly assigned to Psion Teklogix before reaching Cedar Lane), claims an on-chip interface between a streaming CMOS image sensor and a host processor — FIFO buffer, fill-level-triggered interrupt/bus request, and processor-clocked data transfer — i.e., the glue logic between a sensor and a CPU. (3) The '242 patent, also titled "Host interface for imaging arrays" (issued Sept. 17, 2013), is a divisional of the '790 that re-casts the same disclosure as method claims (receive into FIFO, count, compare to FIFO limit, generate interrupt, transfer) and is subject to a terminal disclaimer over the '790. Both '790-family patents share a January 2000 priority date, so they are expired or near expiry — meaning only back damages were ever realistically at stake. What specific Lexmark machines were charted is not publicly documented in what I could retrieve: the complaint attached six exhibits (Exhibits 1–6, presumably claim charts) that are not in the free dockets, and Lexmark never answered, so no infringement contentions were served. Based on the patents' subject matter and Cedar Lane's printer-OEM pattern, the accusation almost certainly targeted Lexmark multifunction printers'/scanners' image-capture-to-JPEG pipeline, but that is an inference, not a sourced fact.

Posture, venue, and why it matters. Filed December 1, 2022 in the District of Delaware and assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews (D.I. entry of Dec. 7, 2022); jury demanded; § 271 infringement. The case never reached the merits. Cedar Lane did not serve Lexmark until March 2, 2023 — nearly three months after filing — prompting Judge Andrews to issue an oral order on March 2, 2023 requiring a status letter because more than 90 days had elapsed without a returned summons (D.I. 6); service was docketed March 3, 2023 (D.I. 7), and the answer deadline was extended by unopposed motion to May 4, 2023 (D.I. 9). On April 26, 2023, Cedar Lane filed a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice, expressly noting that Lexmark "has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment" (D.I. 10), which Judge Andrews so ordered the same day, terminating the case (D.I. 11), with the closing AO-120 report at D.I. 12 — a 146-day case. Delaware mattered for the usual reasons in this campaign: it is Lexmark's likely state of incorporation, it was the preferred NPE forum after TC Heartland, and Cedar Lane was hedging — it filed a same-winter D. Del. wave (e.g., Nos. 1:22-cv-01402, -01405, -01406, -01411, -01413, -01414, -01505) alongside its much larger W.D. Tex. wave. The case is notable less for anything decided than as a data point in three patterns: (a) the IV-divested "camera-interface" assertion wave against printer and imaging OEMs, run on volume rather than merits; (b) the spring-2023 cluster of voluntary dismissals — Cedar Lane also dropped VIA Technologies (Apr. 25, 2023), ZKTeco (May 3, 2023), and Xerox around the same window — consistent with IAM's June 2023 report that Cedar Lane's and IP Edge's filings "drop dramatically" that year; and (c) the printer-industry consolidation backdrop, since Cedar Lane sued both Lexmark and Xerox in the same November–December 2022 window, two companies later combined under Xerox. I found no PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) against any of the three patents — Patsnap's record for the '790 affirmatively states "validity challenges: None recorded" — but I could not run a direct PTAB docket check before exhausting my search steps, so treat the absence of IPR linkage as unconfirmed rather than established. Likewise, the dismissal papers do not disclose whether a license, a settlement, or simply campaign triage produced the April 2023 walk-away; any settlement characterization would be speculation.

I'll research this case systematically, starting with the docket and working through any PTAB proceedings.

Key finding: the case was voluntarily dismissed. Let me dig into the specifics and check for parallel PTAB proceedings.

Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., No. 1:22-cv-01561 (D. Del.)

Bottom line up front

This case never got past the pleading stage. It was filed 2022-12-01, Lexmark was not served until 2023-03-02, Cedar Lane obtained three extensions of Lexmark's answer deadline, and then voluntarily dismissed the action without prejudice on 2023-04-26 under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i) — before Lexmark answered, moved, or appeared substantively. The entire docket is 12 entries. There was no answer, no counterclaim, no motion of any kind by Lexmark, no Markman, no discovery, no PTAB proceeding on the asserted patents, and no judicial ruling on the merits.

That makes this a campaign-management dismissal, not a litigated case, and it should be described that way in any summary. The "existing case summary" in the prompt ("pending at last docket update") is out of date — the case has been closed since 2023-04-26 and should be corrected.

⚠️ Metadata discrepancy to flag: the prompt lists only U.S. Patent 6,473,527 as at issue. The docket and complaint show three patents asserted: 6,473,527, 6,972,790, and 8,537,242 (see Doc. 3, filed 2022-12-01, and Doc. 12, filed 2023-04-26). Any internal record keyed to a single patent is incomplete.

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Chronology

1. Filing and initial pleadings

2022-12-01 — Complaint filed (Doc. 1). Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. filed a three-count patent infringement complaint with jury demand against Lexmark International, Inc. in D. Del., asserting:

• U.S. Patent 6,473,527 — "Module and method for interfacing analog/digital converting means and JPEG compression means";
• U.S. Patent 6,972,790 — "Host interface for imaging arrays";
• U.S. Patent 8,537,242 — "Host interface for imaging arrays."

Plaintiff's counsel of record: David W. deBruin (Cedar Lane's regular Delaware counsel). The complaint attached six exhibits, including claim charts (Exhibit 4 charts the '527 patent), and pleaded direct infringement, infringement by internal testing/use, and induced infringement, seeking § 284 damages plus a § 285 exceptional-case finding. The complaint recites that the '527 patent issued 2002-10-29 on an application filed 1999-06-01.

2022-12-01 — Related filings: Rule 7.1 disclosure statement (no parent/affiliate) (Doc. 4); Patent/Trademark Report to the Commissioner listing all three patents (Doc. 3); summons issued (Doc. 5); magistrate-consent forms (Doc. 2).

2022-12-07 — Case assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews.

2023-03-02 — Court-ordered status letter (Doc. 6). Judge Andrews issued an oral order noting that more than 90 days had elapsed and the summons had not been returned executed, directing Plaintiff to file a status letter within three days. This is an early signal of the service lag that would ultimately swallow the case.

2023-03-02 — Service effected on Lexmark; answer originally due 2023-03-23 (Doc. 7, filed 2023-03-03). Cedar Lane also filed its status report (Doc. 8, 2023-03-03).

Answer and counterclaims: none. Lexmark never answered and never asserted counterclaims for invalidity or non-infringement. This is a legally significant fact: because Lexmark never answered, Cedar Lane's Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) dismissal was available as of right, without leave of court, which is precisely why the dismissal worked.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

None were filed. Specifically:

• No Rule 12(b) motion to dismiss.
• No § 1406(a) / § 1404(a) transfer motion. Given that Lexmark is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky (not Delaware) and Cedar Lane is a Texas-based NPE, a transfer challenge was a foreseeable defense line if venue had been contested — but Lexmark never moved. (Note: if Lexmark is a Delaware corporation, venue in D. Del. would have been proper under the first prong of § 1400(b) regardless, which may explain why no transfer motion materialized. I have not independently verified Lexmark's current state of incorporation and flag this as analysis, not a sourced fact.)
• No motion to stay pending IPR — because no IPR was ever filed (see §6).
• No summary judgment motion. The dismissal notice expressly recites that Lexmark "has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment."

2023-03-16 — Unopposed extension (Doc. 9), so-ordered same day. Cedar Lane — the plaintiff — filed an "Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to Respond to Complaint," which reset Lexmark's answer deadline to 2023-05-04. That an extension was sought by the plaintiff on the defendant's behalf, without any appearance by Lexmark counsel on the docket, is itself a tell: the parties were almost certainly in licensing/settlement discussions under a standstill.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

Did not occur. No scheduling order, no joint claim construction statement, no Markman briefing, no Markman hearing, and no claim construction order. Zero claim terms were construed in this litigation.

4. Discovery milestones

None. No Rule 26(f) conference, no discovery plan, no protective order, no document production, no interrogatories, no depositions, no expert reports. The case terminated 146 days after filing and roughly eight weeks after service.

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial, no verdict, no JMOL, no new-trial motion, no fee motion under § 285.

6. Final disposition

2023-04-26 — Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (Doc. 10). Cedar Lane dismissed the action without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i). The notice states verbatim:

"Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(i), Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. hereby dismisses this action without prejudice. Defendant Lexmark International, Inc. has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment."

2023-04-26 — Order (Doc. 11). Judge Andrews so-ordered the dismissal; case terminated. 2023-04-26 — Patent/Trademark Report (Doc. 12) sent to the Commissioner listing all three patents.

No settlement agreement, license, or consent judgment appears on the public docket. I found no public disclosure of consideration, no motion to enforce a settlement, and no Rule 41(a)(2) stipulated dismissal with terms. Whether a confidential license was executed is not publicly established — trade press characterized the dismissal as a voluntary walk-away, but "dismissed without prejudice" is equally consistent with an off-docket license or with Cedar Lane simply abandoning an uneconomic target.

No appeal. There was no appealable judgment and none was taken to the Federal Circuit.

Present posture: closed. The case is not active, contrary to the existing case summary. The dismissal is without prejudice, so refiling remained technically available — but there is no evidence Cedar Lane refiled against Lexmark, and the practical window has closed: the asserted patents are expiring or expired (see below), and IAM reported in June 2023 that Cedar Lane's suit volume had "dropped dramatically."

7. Parallel PTAB proceedings

None on the three patents-in-suit. I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition challenging 6,473,527, 6,972,790, or 8,537,242 by Lexmark or any third party in connection with this case, and no PTAB trial docket naming Lexmark. The NPE Litigation Database's patent pages for 6,473,527 and 6,972,790 record no validity challenges; Patsnap similarly records "Validity challenges: None recorded." Effect on the litigation: none — no Fintiv discretionary-denial issue, no stay motion, no § 315(b) bar dispute.

Important distinction, to avoid conflation: Cedar Lane has been on the receiving end of PTAB proceedings, most notably Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., IPR2020-00006, where the Board (Kaiser, Beamer, Howard) instituted 2020-03-18 and issued a final written decision on 2021-02-12 holding the asserted independent claim of U.S. Patent 7,173,177 unpatentable. That patent is not among the patents asserted against Lexmark and had no bearing on this case. It is relevant only as background on Cedar Lane's portfolio vulnerability.

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Strategic read

1. This was a volume-licensing campaign docket, not an enforcement action. Cedar Lane acquired the '527 and '790 patents in May 2019 from the original owner and then filed dozens of suits — trade reporting puts it at roughly 38 complaints on the '527 patent and 46 on the '790 patent by 2023. Lexmark was one of many printer/imaging defendants. The Lexmark docket follows Cedar Lane's standard D. Del. template exactly — same three patents, same counsel (deBruin), same trajectory. Compare the near-identical outcomes in Cedar Lane v. Adaptive Recognition America, No. 1:22-cv-00531 (D. Del.) (dismissed 2022-05-06, six days after service), Cedar Lane v. Phytech US, No. 1:22-cv-00054 (D. Del.) (dismissed 2022-02-15), and Cedar Lane v. Infinova, No. 1:21-cv-00648 (D. Del.) (dismissed 2021-06-22) — all before Judge Andrews, all voluntary dismissals without prejudice.

2. The service lag is the most probative docket fact. Cedar Lane waited 91 days to serve Lexmark and only did so after the court issued a sua sponte show-cause-style order. Then it extended Lexmark's own deadline for it, then dismissed three weeks before that deadline ran. That sequence — delay, court nudge, standstill, walk-away — is the classic signature of a plaintiff whose real objective was a license fee rather than an adjudication, and of a defendant that declined to engage on the merits.

3. Patent expiration almost certainly drove the economics. The '527 patent's application was filed 1999-06-01; absent significant patent term adjustment, its 20-year term would have run in mid-2019 — meaning that by the December 2022 filing date, Cedar Lane's recovery would have been confined to the six-year lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286, with no possibility of injunctive relief. Patsnap likewise records an estimated expiry of 2023-08-01 for one of the asserted "Host interface for imaging arrays" patents, and marks the '790 and '242 patents as currently inactive/expired. A short, backwards-looking damages window against a single large defendant is a weak lever, and the voluntary dismissal without prejudice fits that math. I have not verified the PTA/PTE certificates for each patent and flag the term analysis as inference from the pleaded filing dates, not a sourced holding.

4. Because the dismissal was without prejudice and pre-answer, it has essentially zero preclusive or precedential value. No claim was construed, no claim was held valid or invalid, no infringement was found. For any client-facing risk assessment, this case establishes nothing about the scope or validity of the '527, '790, or '242 patents. The only durable artifact is the complaint's claim charts (Exhibits 4–6), which remain a useful roadmap of how Cedar Lane reads the claims against imaging/scanner hardware.

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Sourcing caveats

• Docket entries, document numbers, and dates are sourced from the PACER-derived dockets on Justia (https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2022cv01561/80911) and Patexia (https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Lexmark-International-Inc-id-[184037](/patent/184037)/documents), and cross-checked against Patsnap's litigation record, which reproduces the Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) dismissal text verbatim.
• The complaint's patent-by-patent allegations and pleading dates come from a posted copy of the complaint (https://tonernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CEDAR-LANE-TECH

I'll research press coverage of this case across multiple search angles.

Let me find those two Actionable Intelligence trade-press articles and search additional angles.

Let me dig for the specific article URLs and other outlets.

Press coverage summary

Bottom line: this case generated almost no mainstream or national legal-press coverage. I searched the caption, the parties, the case number, and the asserted patent numbers (6,473,527, plus 6,972,790 and 8,537,242, which appear on the docket) across Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, Ars Technica, The Verge, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, EFF Deeplinks, and JD Supra. I found no article from any of those outlets about Cedar Lane v. Lexmark. The only case-specific reporting I located is from the printer-industry trade outlet Actionable Intelligence, and it consists of two short news items — a filing note and a dismissal note.

What the trade press reported. Actionable Intelligence reported in its "Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Lexmark International (2022)" archive that "On December 1, Lexmark became the latest printer vendor to be sued by Cedar Lane Technologies for patent infringement" — framing the suit not as a stand-alone dispute but as one entry in a serial campaign against printer OEMs (the same archive shows Cedar Lane also sued Ricoh USA and others in this period). Later, in its "Courthouse Briefings" news column (Actionable Intelligence), the outlet reported that "Cedar Lane Technologies, one of the busier patent trolls suing businesses across the United States, has voluntarily dismissed its patent-infringement" suit against Lexmark. That account matches the docket: Cedar Lane filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (D.I. 10) on April 26, 2023, which Judge Richard G. Andrews so-ordered the same day (D.I. 11), terminating the case roughly five months after filing and before Lexmark ever answered. Note that the only article-level URLs I could retrieve were these archive/column pages — the individual article permalinks and exact publication dates did not surface in search, so I am citing the archive pages rather than guessing at article URLs.

Where reporting goes beyond, or diverges from, the record. Two divergences are worth flagging. First, the case metadata provided to me lists a single patent at issue (6,473,527) and describes the case as "active"; the docket and litigation databases show three patents asserted (6,473,527, 6,972,790, 8,537,242) and the case closed on 2023-04-26 by voluntary dismissal without prejudice — the dismissal notice itself stating that "Defendant Lexmark International, Inc. has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment" (Patsnap litigation record; Patexia docket). Second, Actionable Intelligence's characterization of Cedar Lane as "one of the busier patent trolls" is editorial framing, not a court finding — the docket contains no infringement, validity, or damages ruling of any kind. No outlet reported damages sought or awarded, and I found no reporting on settlement terms; the dismissal was without prejudice and no settlement was disclosed on the docket.

Analyst/industry context (not case-specific). The most substantive published analysis of Cedar Lane as a litigant is Seyfarth Shaw's "NPE Showcase – Cedar Lane Technologies," published Mondaq and JD Supra on 2022-10-06 — roughly two months before the Lexmark complaint. It does not mention Lexmark or this case, so it should be treated as background on the plaintiff rather than coverage of this suit: it describes Cedar Lane as a Canadian NPE incorporated in 2019 that "primarily asserts patents that were originally owned by Intellectual Ventures entities," notes a 2020 sanctions order by Judge Vince Chhabria in N.D. Cal. against Cedar Lane and its then-counsel, and predicts that "Cedar Lane does not appear to take their cases much past the pleadings stage" and that "none of their cases have reached the trial stage." The Lexmark case's trajectory — filed December 2022, dismissed April 2023 with no answer — is consistent with that prediction, though no outlet I found drew that connection explicitly. Separately, the toner-industry outlet TonerNews hosted a copy of the complaint (TonerNews PDF), which is the only other trade-press trace of the filing I could verify; I could not retrieve accompanying commentary from that outlet.

Caveats. Because coverage is this sparse, treat any narrative about the case's significance as inference rather than reported fact. The reported facts are narrow: a December 1, 2022 complaint in D. Del. asserting three image-processing/JPEG-interface patents against Lexmark, and a voluntary dismissal without prejudice on April 26, 2023 before any responsive pleading. I found no evidence of a refiling, no PTAB/IPR activity on the asserted patents tied to Lexmark, and no reported license or payment.

Sources

• Cedar Lane Technologies v. Lexmark International | Patent Lawsuit 1:22-cv-01561 - Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc.
• Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc.
• US6972790B2 | Patent Litigation Record - US6972790B2 Patent litigation record
• Lexmark | Actionable Intelligence
• JD Supra: NPE Showcase - Welcome to the first installment of “NPE Showcase,” where we discuss high-volume non-practicing entities (or as some call them, ...
• NPE Showcase – Cedar Lane Technologies - ARTICLE
• 预警 | 全美专利诉讼量第一! Cedar Lane正发起大量诉讼，涉及图像通信领域
• NPE Showcase – Cedar Lane Technologies | Seyfarth Shaw LLP - Welcome to the first installment of "NPE Showcase", where we discuss high volume non-practicing entities (or as some call them "...
• Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. - Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
• 6473527 | NPE Litigation Database
• 6473527 | NPE Litigation Database
• Cases

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

Short answer

Only one attorney is documented on the public docket as counsel of record for Cedar Lane in Cedar Lane Techs., Inc. v. Lexmark Int'l, Inc., No. 1:22-cv-01561-RGA (D. Del.): David W. deBruin, a Delaware-barred solo/small-firm patent litigator who served as local counsel of record. Cedar Lane's long-time national lead counsel, Isaac Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law LLC, Chicago), is the attorney who ran Cedar Lane's patent campaign nationally and almost certainly directed this filing, but no notice of appearance or pro hac vice motion by Rabicoff appears on the public docket for this case through dismissal. I flag that as a documentary gap, not a conclusion that he had no involvement.

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Attorneys of record for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

1. David W. deBruin — Counsel of record (Delaware / local counsel)

Docket activity in this case (his name is on each entry):

• D.I. 1 — Complaint for Patent Infringement filed 12/1/2022, with an attached "Notice of Appearance" (D.I. 1-7), i.e., his appearance was filed contemporaneously with the complaint rather than as a separate entry.
• D.I. 4 — Rule 7.1 Disclosure Statement (no parent/affiliates) — 12/1/2022.
• D.I. 7 — Summons Returned Executed (Lexmark served 3/2/2023).
• D.I. 8 — Status Report filed 3/3/2023 in response to Judge Andrews's 3/2/2023 oral order (D.I. 6) on the 90-day service lapse — the delay is why service did not occur until March 2023.
• D.I. 9 — Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to Respond (granted; answer reset to 5/4/2023).
• D.I. 10 — Notice of Voluntary Dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), filed 4/26/2023, dismissing without prejudice because Lexmark had not yet answered or moved for summary judgment. So-ordered by Judge Andrews the same day (D.I. 11); AO-120 report at D.I. 12.

Sources: Justia dockets, dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2022cv01561/80911; Patexia document list, services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Lexmark-International-Inc-id-184037/documents; Patsnap case record (which lists deBruin as the sole recorded plaintiff counsel).

Relevant experience: A career Delaware IP litigator who functions as the Delaware "local counsel of record" for a stable roster of patent plaintiffs — very much including Cedar Lane. Law360's attorney page lists him on Cedar Lane Techs. v. Openeye US Inc. (D. Del., filed 11/17/2022), BE Labs v. Belkin Int'l (D. Del., 12/1/2022), Cassiopeia IP v. Barco, Tranquility IP v. Kontron America, InvesTrex v. News Corp., and Adaptive Headlamp Techs. v. Hyundai. He filed a cluster of Cedar Lane Delaware complaints in the same window (e.g., Cedar Lane v. Vantage Robotics, No. 23-336; Cedar Lane v. Video Network Security, No. 23-337) — the same template complaint/exhibit/Notice-of-Appearance package used against Lexmark. He is also the Delaware signatory in numerous D. Del. patent cases captured in the RECAP archive.

⚠ Firm-affiliation caveat (be careful if you cite this): deBruin's firm name is not consistent across the 2020–2023 record. Filings in 2020 carry Gawthrop Greenwood, PC (3711 Kennett Pike, Suite 100, Wilmington) letterhead; later filings and the archived docket in Open Network Solutions v. Microsoft carry The deBruin Firm LLC; and Law360's attorney profile lists his firm as "Napoli Shkolnik" (Wilmington, DE) with the late-2022 Cedar Lane Delaware cases attached to that profile. The PACER docket header for this specific case is the authoritative source for his firm as of 12/1/2022 and I could not pull that header directly. Treat the firm name as "The deBruin Firm LLC (Wilmington)" with a verification flag, not as settled.

2. Isaac Phillip Rabicoff — Cedar Lane's national lead counsel; not shown as of record here

Experience and notable matters — this is the part that matters analytically:

• Volume filer for Cedar Lane: Rabicoff is the attorney who built Cedar Lane's assertion program. The Stanford NPE Litigation Database lists ~50+ Cedar Lane suits on U.S. Patent 6,473,527 alone (the '527 patent asserted here), across D. Del., W.D. Tex., E.D. Va., D.N.J., S.D.N.Y., E.D.N.Y., W.D. Wash., N.D. Tex., and D. Colo. — against Amazon, ON Semiconductor, Motorola Solutions, Ricoh, Xerox, Mediatek, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, Socionext, Brother, HP, and others. He personally filed the complaints and signed the Rule 7.1 statements in most of them (e.g., Cedar Lane v. Logipix, E.D. Va. 1:22-cv-00713; Cedar Lane v. HP Inc., W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-00040).
• Sanctioned and referred in N.D. Cal.: In Cedar Lane Techs. Inc. v. Blackmagic Design Inc., No. 20-cv-01302-VC, Judge Vince Chhabria imposed a $1,000 Rule 11 sanction and referred Rabicoff to the N.D. Cal. Standing Committee on Professional Conduct (Nov. 19, 2020 order), finding he was a "serial filer of patent lawsuits" in a district where he was not admitted and routinely dismissed cases before his failure to seek pro hac vice admission was detected. The Standing Committee's final report set an informal resolution requiring payment of $9,193 in unpaid pro hac vice fees, which he paid in February 2022 (govinfo N.D. Cal. orders; Standing Committee report).
• State bar discipline: A Virginia State Bar disciplinary record dated December 12, 2022 recounts the N.D. Cal. findings and his role as "lead counsel" in that Cedar Lane case (vsbwebstorage.blob.core.windows.net/.../Rabicoff-121222.pdf). I have not verified the disposition or any sanction imposed in that proceeding, and you should not state one without pulling the VSB record.
• Ongoing 2025–2026 activity: still filing Cedar Lane complaints (e.g., Cedar Lane v. Johnson Controls Int'l plc, E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00815; Cedar Lane v. Toronto-Dominion Bank, E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00044; Cedar Lane v. Morgan Stanley, S.D.N.Y. 1:26-cv-00294, with a pro hac vice motion filed 1/13/2026) — so he remains the responsible attorney in the live campaign even where local counsel is of record.

3. In-house counsel — none

No in-house Cedar Lane attorney appears on the docket. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian entity (principal place of business historically listed as 560 Baker Street, Suite 1, Nelson, BC) and the Rule 7.1 statement (D.I. 4) discloses no parent or public affiliate; it litigates entirely through Rabicoff + local counsel. Cedar Lane is characterized in the Stanford NPE database as an acquirer of patents (category "1 – Acquired patents"), and coverage of this suit described it as "one of the busier patent trolls" suing businesses nationwide.

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Procedural status — correction to the case metadata

The prompt's status field says "active." Every public source I can locate says otherwise: the case was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice on April 26, 2023 (D.I. 10, so-ordered at D.I. 11), 146 days after filing, with Lexmark never having answered. The dismissal followed Cedar Lane's failure to serve within 90 days and Judge Andrews's show-cause-style oral order (D.I. 6). Cedar Lane's notice expressly invoked Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) and noted no answer or summary-judgment motion was on file — i.e., a dismissal as of right to avoid a Rule 12 fight. I found no reopened proceeding, no refiling against Lexmark (the 2025–2026 Cedar Lane filings are against banks and industrials, not Lexmark), and no PTAB IPR on the '527 patent tied to this case. Note also that the docket reports three patents asserted — 6,473,527; 6,972,790; 8,537,242 (see D.I. 3 and D.I. 12) — whereas the case metadata lists only the '527.

Sourcing confidence

• High confidence: deBruin as sole counsel of record; the docket entries and dates; the April 2023 dismissal; the three asserted patents.
• Medium confidence: deBru

I'll research the docket and counsel of record for Lexmark in this case.

Bottom line

No attorney ever entered an appearance for Lexmark in this case. The docket for C.A. No. 1:22-cv-01561-RGA (D. Del.) contains zero appearances, answers, motions, or corporate disclosures filed on Lexmark's behalf. Cedar Lane dismissed the case by unilateral notice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) on April 26, 2023 — ~146 days after filing and before Lexmark answered or moved — so there is no counsel of record for the defendant to identify. I will not name attorneys as "of record" here, because the record affirmatively shows none.

Docket verification

The complete docket (12 entries) is reproduced on Patexia and Justia:

Sources: Justia docket; Patexia document list.

Every filer-of-record attribution on the docket is plaintiff-side (David W. deBruin). The dismissal notice itself recites, verbatim: "Defendant Lexmark International, Inc. has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment." (reproduced at PatSnap litigation record). PatSnap's counsel table likewise lists Lexmark's counsel as "Not recorded."

What can be inferred (and what cannot)

• There was almost certainly informal defense engagement. Doc. 9 was an unopposed motion — meaning someone on Lexmark's side agreed to the extension, and the answer date was pushed from 3/23/2023 to 5/4/2023. But that agreement was conveyed to plaintiff's counsel without any notice of appearance being filed (D. Del. requires a local-counsel appearance and, for out-of-state counsel, a pro hac vice motion — none exists here). The identity of those attorneys is not in the public record.
• Nothing is sealed. I found no sealing order or sealed document; the absence of defense counsel is genuinely a function of the case ending at the pleading stage, not of redaction.
• Do not assume the D. Del. "usual suspects." Anyone asserting that a specific firm (e.g., a Wilmington IP shop paired with Lexmark's in-house or national counsel) represented Lexmark here would be guessing. I could not verify any such appearance from PACER, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, Patexia, or PatSnap.
• One data point exists in a different case, and it should not be imported: in Ortiz & Associates Consulting, LLC v. Lexmark International, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-01646 (D. Colo.), the Lexmark-side attorneys listed in litigation databases are Amy E. Simpson, Jacob W.S. Schneider, and Leah E. Capritta (PatSnap case record). That is Colorado counsel in an unrelated 2023 case and says nothing about Delaware counsel in the 2022 Cedar Lane matter.
• On the plaintiff side only, for contrast: David W. deBruin (address of record 1421 Old Wilmington Road, Wilmington, DE) signed all plaintiff filings; Cedar Lane's complaints in this campaign were also commonly filed by Isaac Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law) in W.D. Tex. and elsewhere. Cedar Lane is a Canadian NPE that acquired the patents from Intellectual Ventures and filed 300+ suits; this Lexmark case was its standard three-patent printer/camera-interface complaint.

Procedural caveat on the patent list

Your case metadata lists only 6,473,527. The complaint and the Rule 3/Form 3 reports identify three patents-in-suit: 6,473,527 ('527, "Module and method for interfacing analog/digital converting means and JPEG compression means"), 6,972,790 and 8,537,242 (both "Host interface for imaging arrays"). Complaint text available at tonernews mirror of the filing. The docket entry Doc. 12 reflects all three.

Where to confirm

If you need a certified negative: pull the PACER docket for D. Del. case 1:22-cv-01561 (docket ID 80911) and check the "party/attorney" screen — it will list only plaintiff's counsel. Alternatively, the clerk's office can confirm no notices of appearance and no pro hac vice orders were entered. Given the case terminated on Rule 41(a)(1) notice before any responsive pleading, there is no Local Rule 83.5/Schedule A disclosure or 3.1/7.1 statement from Lexmark in existence.