Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. LiveXLive Media, Inc.

Key finding already: the complaint's patent list doesn't appear to include the '147. Let me verify the docket outcome, patent titles, and the parties' profiles.

Now let me confirm the docket outcome and check the '147's actual title, plus any PTAB activity on the asserted patents.

Important correction to the existing case summary

The premise that US 6,516,147 is the patent at issue in this case does not hold up. The complaint (D.I. 1) asserts six patents, and 6,516,147 is not among them: "Plaintiff is the assignee of all right, title and interest in United States Patent Nos. 6,452,609; 6,502,194; 6,526,411; 6,721,489; 7,173,177; 7,610,394 (the 'Patents-in-Suit')." (D.I. 1 ¶ 7, via Docket Alarm). The Rule 3/AO-120 report to the PTO lists 6,452,609; 6,502,194; 6,526,411; 6,721,489; 7,173,177 (D.I. 3, UniCourt docket), and a Korean IP-dispute database transcription of the case likewise lists the six streaming/playlist patents, not the '147 (KOTRA). The '147 belongs to a different Cedar Lane family — it travels in Cedar Lane's image-capture/JPEG-interface complaints against TCL, Lenovo and Huawei alongside 6,473,527, 6,566,805, 6,972,774 and 6,972,790 (Justia docket, TCL; DocketBird, Lenovo). The '"147" attribution to this docket appears to be a database artifact and should be removed from the case profile.

Parties

Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a non-practicing entity, not an operating company. It is a Canadian corporation at 560 Baker Street, Suite 1, Nelson, British Columbia (D.I. 1 ¶ 1). Reporting places its formation in British Columbia on April 29, 2019, with attorney Greg Benoit as director, at an address corresponding to IP licensing firm Pigott & Co.; Benoit also signed as authorized person for Steephill Technologies LLC, the Delaware intermediary through which some 40 former Intellectual Ventures patents passed to Cedar Lane. Cedar Lane's Rule 7.1 disclosure states no parent or affiliate (D.I. 4). Delaware counsel of record was Raeann Warner; in parallel Cedar Lane matters the national plaintiffs' firm is Isaac Rabicoff's Rabicoff Law LLC — the complaint signature block itself was not retrieved, so firm attribution for this particular filing is inferred, not confirmed. LiveXLive Media, Inc. was, at filing, a Nasdaq-listed digital media company at 269 S. Beverly Dr., Suite 1450, Beverly Hills, California (D.I. 1 ¶ 2) that operates the LiveXLive live-music streaming platform, the Slacker internet-radio/music service (acquired December 29, 2017), and, as of July 1, 2020, PodcastOne (LiveOne 10-Q, Note 1). It renamed itself LiveOne, Inc. effective October 5, 2021, and now trades as LVO (Reuters company profile; StockAnalysis).

Accused technology and asserted patents

The accused instrumentalities are LiveXLive's web player and music-streaming service, specifically its playlist creation/editing/saving functions, its "My Library" and "now playing" interface areas, and related casting and remote-control features. The claim charts attached as Exhibits 7–12 map, e.g., claim 28 of the '609 patent (a method of operating a web page displaying multiple streaming sources, receiving a user-selected playing order, storing and displaying that order in non-overlapping areas, then presenting content in the stored order) onto the LiveXLive web player, citing Consumer Reports and LiveXLive's own support pages for "Playlists" and "My Library" (D.I. 1-7). The six patents, with one-line sketches: '609 (6,452,609) and '394 (7,610,394), both "Web application for accessing media streams" — browser-delivered media playback/playlist interface (filed 1998 and 2002 respectively); '194 (6,502,194), "System for playback of network audio material on demand" — server-side on-demand audio playback; '411 (6,526,411), "System and method for creating dynamic playlists"; '489 (6,721,489), "Play list manager"; and '177 (7,173,177), "User interface for simultaneous management of owned and unowned inventory" — a UI for managing content a user owns alongside content it does not. All six are late-1990s/early-2000s-vintage software/UX claims originating outside Cedar Lane (the complaint pleads Cedar Lane as assignee only), and reporting identifies them as former IV assets acquired in Cedar Lane's 2019 portfolio pickup.

Posture, venue, and why it matters

The case was filed October 9, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (single Wilmington courthouse; no division split), initially docketed as unassigned ("-UNA") and then assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews. Service was effected October 14, 2020 (answer due November 4), and Judge Andrews signed an unopposed extension on November 17, 2020 resetting the response date to December 21, 2020 (D.I. 7, 8). Delaware was a natural forum because LiveXLive was a Delaware corporation — it had reincorporated in Delaware on August 2, 2017 via a merger of Loton, Corp. into LiveXLive Media — which satisfies § 1400(b) place-of-incorporation venue outright, as the complaint pleads (D.I. 1 ¶ 6); Delaware also offers a fast docket and a patent-experienced bench. Beyond that, the record I retrieved goes cold: one aggregator lists the case as Closed (Ex Parte case page), but I could not retrieve the terminating docket entry, so the disposition (settlement/license, voluntary dismissal, or default) is unconfirmed and should not be characterized as a merits outcome.

The case is notable in three respects. First, it is a data point in Cedar Lane's mass-filing campaign, begun May 2019, which quickly reached roughly 70 defendants asserting overlapping subsets of nearly 40 former IV patents; LiveXLive was one of five streaming-service targets sued in October 2020 alone, alongside Deezer (D. Colo.), ViacomCBS (N.D. Ill.), DISH and Disney (W.D. Tex.) — marking the campaign's pivot from image-capture/JPEG hardware defendants to music- and media-streaming UX (Mondaq/IPWatch, Oct. 26, 2020). Second, it illustrates the era's playlist-and-streaming-interface assertion wave, in which claims of 1998–2003 vintage were mapped onto modern web players — claims that would have faced substantial § 101 and § 103 exposure had any case reached

Key finding already: the LiveXLive complaint asserted patents not including the '147 patent. Let me verify via the docket and track the outcome.

Let me pull the actual docket from CourtListener and patent litigation databases.

Analytical Memo — Cedar Lane Techs. Inc. v. LiveXLive Media, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-01370 (D. Del.)

⚠️ Threshold correction before the chronology: the '147 patent was not asserted in this case

The case metadata lists U.S. Patent No. 6,516,147 as the patent at issue. The record retrieved from the complaint (D.I. 1, filed 2020-10-09) and the Rule 5.1/AO-120 report (D.I. 3) establishes that the six patents actually pleaded are:

(D.I. 1 ¶¶ patent descriptions, Counts 1–6; D.I. 3 patent report lists '609, '194, '411, '489, '177 — the '394 was pleaded in Count 6 but is not reflected on the AO-120 form, a clerical gap worth noting.)

The existing case summary's caution — that the '147 patent was unconfirmed — should be upgraded to an affirmative negative finding: the '147 patent plays no role in Cedar Lane v. LiveXLive. The '147 patent belongs to the same ex-Intellectual Ventures portfolio Cedar Lane acquired through Steephill Technologies LLC, and was asserted in sibling campaign cases, e.g. Cedar Lane Techs. Inc. v. TCL Communication, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-00836 (D. Del. filed 2020-06-22) and Cedar Lane Techs. Inc. v. Xiaomi Inc., No. 6:20-cv-01193 (W.D. Tex. filed 2020-12-29). Any '147-specific validity or PTAB analysis must be drawn from those dockets, not this one.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

• 2020-10-09 — Complaint (D.I. 1). Filed in D. Del. with jury demand; $400 fee; twelve exhibits (Exs. 1–6 = the six patents; Exs. 7–12 = element-by-element infringement charts). Accused instrumentality: the LiveXLive web player / streaming service, specifically its playlist creation, editing, saving, and "now playing" display features. Ex. 7 charted claim 28 of the '609 patent against the web player, relying on LiveXLive's own support pages ("Playlists," "My Library") and a Consumer Reports streaming-services article as evidence. (§ 271 direct/indirect theories were pleaded generically; no product-specific damages model appears in the complaint.)
• 2020-10-09 — Rule 7.1 disclosure (D.I. 4): no parent, no publicly held affiliate.
• 2020-10-09 — Case assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews (RGA initials required on filings).
• 2020-10-14 — Service on LiveXLive; 2020-10-21 — summons returned executed (D.I. 7), original answer due 2020-11-04.
• 2020-11-17 — Unopposed extension (D.I. 8), so ordered by Judge Andrews: answer deadline reset to 2020-12-21.

Not found: no answer, counterclaims (invalidity/non-infringement/unenforceability), or amended complaint could be retrieved. Based on the retrieved docket, the case never progressed past the extended responsive-pleading deadline. Treat the absence of a pleading as "not retrieved" rather than "not filed" — see the gap note in §7.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

None identified. No Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, no § 1404(a) transfer motion, no motion to stay pending IPR, and no summary-judgment motion appears in any retrieved source. This is consistent with the campaign-wide pattern described by RPX in October 2020: Cedar Lane's streaming-service suits "have yet to progress much beyond pleadings" (RPX, Cedar Lane, Elsewhere Ordered To Show Cause…, 2020-10-26).

Context for why no stay motion: a stay pending IPR presupposes an instituted IPR on an asserted patent, and none is documented here (see §6).

3. Claim construction (Markman)

Never reached. No scheduling order, no Joint Claim Construction Statement, no Markman hearing, and no claim-construction order is reflected in the record retrieved. No Delaware opinion construing the '609, '194, '411, '489, '177 or '394 claims in this case exists.

4. Discovery milestones of strategic significance

None identified. Nothing indicates a Rule 26(f) conference, ESI order, or discovery dispute. The practical effect is that Cedar Lane obtained no LiveXLive source code, royalty/revenue data, or usage metrics through discovery in this case — which is the usual lever an NPE uses to price a settlement in a playlist-patent suit against a subscription streaming service.

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial date, verdict, JMOL motion, new-trial motion, or fee motion (35 U.S.C. § 285 or otherwise) appears. This case generated no merits adjudication — no validity ruling, no infringement ruling, and therefore no precedential value for the '609 playlist family.

6. Final disposition / present posture

• Third-party docket aggregators classify the case as Closed (status "Closed," cause of action "Infringement," NOS 830 Patent), and the last docketed activity surfaced in any source is the 2020-12-21 answer deadline set by the 2020-11-17 so-ordering.
• The specific terminating document — i.e., the Rule 41 stipulation of dismissal, voluntary dismissal, or dismissal order, and its date and prejudice terms — could not be retrieved and I will not guess at it. Given the campaign pattern (dismissals in the Acer, LG, Comcast, AU Optronics, Skylum, DISH, and Disney matters, all following short, pleading-stage settlements), the overwhelmingly likely disposition is a stipulated dismissal with prejudice following a confidential settlement, with no admission of liability, no license terms disclosed, and no judgment on the merits.
• No appeal exists (nothing appealable was entered, and no Federal Circuit docketing appears).
• Corporate note: LiveXLive Media, Inc. later rebranded as LiveOne, Inc. (NASDAQ: LVO); any later filings or satisfaction/release issues would appear under the new name. Confidence: high on the rebrand, but I did not verify it against a primary SEC filing in this research pass.

Bottom line on the '147 patent's "litigation context": this case does not supply any. It is a zero-precedent, pleading-stage settlement — as is true of the overwhelming majority of the ~367 cases Cedar Lane has filed since May 2019.

7. Parallel PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceedings

No IPR or PGR on any of the six patents asserted here is confirmed, and I found no evidence that any PTAB proceeding affected this litigation:

• No petition, institution decision, or final written decision on the '609, '194, '411, '489, '177 or '394 patents surfaced in searches of PTAB-related coverage.
• The absence of any stay motion on the docket (no motion to stay appears) is corroborative: had an IPR been instituted on an asserted claim, a stay motion would be the expected defense move, particularly before Judge Andrews.
• One search hit — a Patexia grouping showing Unified Patents, LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. with 1:20-cv-01370 listed among "Related Cases" — is most plausibly a patent-level grouping artifact (aggregators cluster cases by asserted patent) rather than a live APA/DJ action implicating LiveXLive's patents. I could not verify it and flag it as unreliable; it should not be treated as a PTAB or DJ proceeding absent a docket check.
• This is a genuine research gap, not a negative finding. Cedar Lane's portfolio was a well-known defensive-funding target, and the absence of PTAB activity is surprising enough that it warrants a direct check of the USPTO PTAB docketing system (P-TACTS) for each of the six patents before this conclusion is relied on.

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What must be verified directly on PACER/P-TACTS (I could not resolve these)

1. The terminating order in 1:20-cv-01370: document number, date, Rule 41 mechanism, and prejudice/costs terms — likely a short docket, so a single PACER pull would settle it. Also whether the dismissal was of all six counts or if any count (e.g., the '394) was dismissed earlier.
2. Whether an answer/counterclaim (D.I. ~9–10) was ever filed between 2020-12-21 and dismissal — this determines whether invalidity contentions ever attached.
3. LiveOne, Inc. SEC 10-K/10-Q "Legal Proceedings" disclosures for FY2021–FY2022, which would confirm the existence and rough timing of a settlement (and occasionally the amount) even where the docket is bare.
4. P-TACTS check for IPR/PGR filings against the six asserted patents, 2020–2022.
5. Any sua sponte dismissal for failure to prosecute — a live possibility given Cedar Lane's contemporaneous Rule 15/prosecution problems before Judge Chhabria in Cedar Lane v. Blackmagic Design (N.D. Cal.), where on 2020-10-01 the court struck a third amended complaint, dismissed the induced/contributory claims, and ordered Cedar Lane to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute and why counsel should not be sanctioned (RPX, 2020-10-26). That order — and the parties' ensuing stipulation of dismissal with prejudice — is the single most useful credibility datapoint about Cedar Lane's conduct in this period, even though it arises in a different case and a different patent.

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Recommended correction to the case file

Replace the current summary with: *"Cedar Lane's D. Del. suit against LiveXLive (No. 1:20-cv-01370, filed 2020-10-09, J. Andrews) asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 6,452,609, 6,502,194, 6,526,411, 6,721

Let me dig into the docket entries and verify the attorneys' firms and roles.

Let me pull the full docket for this case and check the complaint's signature block.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

Bottom line: Only one attorney formally appeared for Cedar Lane in this case — Raeann Warner of Jacobs & Crumplar, P.A. (Wilmington, DE), acting as Delaware local counsel. Cedar Lane's usual outside patent counsel, Isaac P. Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago), is identified by contemporaneous press coverage as co-counsel on the complaint, but I found no notice of appearance or pro hac vice motion for him on the public docket before the docket went dormant. No in-house counsel appeared (Cedar Lane is an NPE with no litigation department of record).

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1. Raeann Warner — local counsel of record (only formal appearance)

Source for appearance and address: CourtListener RECAP, D.I. 6 and the firm's signature block in the Rule 7.1 disclosure (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.71073/gov.uscourts.ded.71073.1137.15.pdf); docket entries reproduced at https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-cedar-lane-technologies-inc-v-livexlive-media-inc-[701883](/patent/701883).

2. Isaac P. Rabicoff — plaintiff-side patent counsel (named in press, not shown appearing)

Support: Law Street Media (Oct. 12, 2020) states "Cedar Lane Technologies is represented by Jacobs & Crumplar, P.A. and Rabicoff Law LLC" (https://lawstreetmedia.com/news/tech/livexlive-media-sued-for-infringement-of-playlist-streaming-patents/); for the sanction history, the Blackmagic order text and Standing Committee final report are quoted at https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/nevada/nvdce/3:2025cv00103/[173189](/patent/173189)/37/0.pdf.

Caveats on sourcing

• No verified signature block from D.I. 1. The complaint text I retrieved (Docket Alarm) is truncated before the signature page; the only signature I could verify is Warner's on the Rule 7.1 disclosure. The inference that Rabicoff drafted but did not enter an appearance rests on (a) the absence of D.I. 6–8 filings by him and (b) his documented practice of settling/dismissing before pro hac vice scrutiny — not on a negative docket search of PACER itself. Treat as probable, not confirmed.
• No order of dismissal verified. Third-party aggregators list the case as "Closed" and the docket's last public activity is the 11/17/2020 extension order; I could not retrieve a dismissal/stipulation entry. If a dismissal was filed, it would have been signed by Warner.
• Patent discrepancy worth flagging for the case summary: the docket's Rule 3 patent report (D.I. 3) lists 6,452,609; 6,502,194; 6,526,411; 6,721,489; 7,173,177, and the complaint pleads six counts adding 7,610,394. U.S. Patent No. 6,516,147 does not appear anywhere in this complaint's counts or the Rule 3 report. The '147 patent was asserted in other Cedar Lane suits, so its inclusion in this case's patent field appears to be an attribution error — the existing summary's "not confirmed" caveat should be upgraded to "not asserted here," pending a read of the full D.I. 1 signature/relief pages.

Bottom line

I could not verify any counsel of record for LiveXLive Media, Inc. in this case, and I will not name attorneys I cannot source. The docket record I was able to retrieve for No. 1:20-cv-01370 (D. Del.) ends at a November 17, 2020 text order and contains zero defense-side appearances, answers, or motions. No law firm, no attorney name, and no appearance entry for LiveXLive appears in any source I could reach (UniCourt's D. Del. docket mirror, DocketAlarm, CourtListener's D. Del. miscellaneous-docket captures, Law Street Media's case write-up, IPWatchdog's filing roundup, or the Patexia case page).

What the docket actually shows

The last fully retrievable docket state (UniCourt mirror, "last updated from U.S. District Courts on 12/08/2020") contains only plaintiff-side activity:

• D.I. 1 — Complaint for patent infringement, jury demand, filed 10/09/2020 by Raeann Warner (Jacobs & Crumplar, P.A.) and Isaac Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law LLC, "Pro Hac Vice admission pending"). Both are plaintiff's counsel, not defendant's.
• D.I. 6 — Notice of Appearance by Raeann Warner on behalf of Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (plaintiff).
• D.I. 7 — Summons returned executed; LiveXLive served 10/14/2020, answer originally due 11/04/2020.
• D.I. 8 — Unopposed motion to extend time to respond to complaint, filed by Cedar Lane (plaintiff), granted by Judge Richard G. Andrews on 11/17/2020; LiveXLive's answer deadline reset to 12/21/2020.

That D.I. 8 is an unopposed motion filed by plaintiff is itself a signal: it is consistent with defense counsel having communicated with plaintiff's counsel about an extension without yet entering an appearance — a very common Delaware practice where a defendant retains counsel and negotiates an extension before filing a Rule 12 motion or answer. But no appearance had been docketed as of that snapshot.

Post-December 2020 docket is not confirmed. A third-party docket index (ai-lab Patexia-style D. Del. case page) lists 1:20-cv-01370 as "Status: Closed," which suggests the case terminated (very likely by stipulated dismissal, consistent with Cedar Lane's rapid settle-and-dismiss pattern in this campaign — e.g., its Acer and LG cases were "stayed pending dismissal" after settlement, per the October 2020 RPX/Thomson-type roundup reprinted on Mondaq). I could not retrieve the dismissal entry itself, and I found no evidence of who, if anyone, appeared for LiveXLive before dismissal. If the case was dismissed before an answer was filed, there may never have been defense counsel of record at all — which would explain the absence.

Two corrections to the case record you should carry forward

1. The patent metadata appears wrong. Your metadata lists 6,516,147 as the patent at issue. The complaint in 1:20-cv-01370 asserts six different patents: 6,452,609; 6,502,194; 6,526,411; 6,721,489; 7,173,177; and 7,610,394 — confirmed independently by the D.I. 3 Report to the Commissioner of Patents, the Law Street Media write-up, and the Mondaq case roundup. No. 6,516,147 does not appear in this complaint. This is consistent with — and probably the cause of — the existing case summary's inability to "confirm that the '147 patent was asserted." It wasn't, at least not in the original complaint. The existing summary should be revised to state that the '147 is not among the patents-in-suit here, and the patents column changed to the six listed above.
2. Status should move off "not confirmed." The case is reported closed by at least one docket aggregator, but the terminating document was not retrievable in this session, so I'd characterize it as "reported closed (dismissal entry unverified)" rather than confirmed.

To close this out properly

PACER access to the D. Del. docket for 1:20-cv-01370, documents #9 and forward, is the only reliable way to answer your question. Specifically request: any D.I. entry styled "NOTICE of Appearance" or "MOTION for Pro Hac Vice Admission" filed on behalf of LiveXLive Media, Inc. between 11/2020 and the termination date, plus the terminating order or stipulation of dismissal (which will name signatory counsel for both sides). A secondary route is Judge Andrews's chambers copies or the court's automated docket feed via PACER Case Locator; CourtListener's RECAP archive does not appear to have this docket indexed under its own number (it surfaces only as attachments on the D. Del. miscellaneous docket 1:99-mc-09999).

I am not asserting that LiveXLive was unrepresented — only that no defense appearance is captured in any source available to me, and that I will not supply names, firms, or offices without a verifiable docket entry.