Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Longse

I'll research this case across multiple sources.

Good initial data. Let me verify patent details, defendant profile, and any PTAB activity.

Let me verify the full patent family, PTAB history, and the campaign context.

Case Overview

Parties. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Longse Technology Limited, No. 6:22-cv-00655 (W.D. Tex., Waco Div.), is a patent-infringement suit filed June 23, 2022 and assigned to District Judge Alan D. Albright. Plaintiff Cedar Lane is a Canadian non-practicing entity incorporated in 2019 (Nelson, B.C., per a Korean IP Office survey) and founded by Greg Benoit, a lawyer with a long NPE-litigation background. It does not make or sell anything; it monetizes an acquired portfolio — reportedly ~190+ U.S. patents, the great majority acquired, with a substantial share traced to Intellectual Ventures entities (IPWatchdog docket tags read "Cedar Lane Technologies Inc [Intellectual Ventures]"; Seyfarth's "NPE Showcase" likewise notes IV provenance). Cedar Lane litigates through Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC and has been among the most prolific filers in the country — 300+ federal suits, and by Lex Machina's count the top filer of new patent cases in 2021 — typically resolving them in weeks at modest settlement values rather than litigating to judgment. Defendant Longse Technology Limited (长视科技股份有限公司; also styled Guangdong Longse Technology Co., Ltd.) is an operating company: a Shenzhen-based video-surveillance/IoT manufacturer founded in 2006 that makes IP cameras, PTZ and fisheye cameras, DVR/NVR recorders and Wi-Fi/PoE kits, sold through distributor and installer channels in 100+ countries — a value-tier competitor to Hikvision and Dahua. No defense counsel appearance is recorded on the docket.

The technology and the asserted patents. The case patent, U.S. 6,972,790 B2 ("Host interface for imaging arrays"), inventor Mark Suska (Ottawa), priority Jan. 21, 2000, filed Dec. 21, 2000, issued Dec. 6, 2005, claims an interface — preferably integrated on the same die as the CMOS image sensor — that buffers pixel data from the imaging array into a FIFO or addressable memory clocked by the sensor, and signals the host processor (interrupt or bus-request) when the buffer hits a threshold, so the host can pull data out at its own rate. In plain terms: the sensor-to-processor handshake/DMA-buffer architecture found in essentially any digital camera SoC. The complaint reportedly asserted two companion patents as well: U.S. 8,537,242 B2, a divisional of the '790 application bearing the same title (issued Sept. 17, 2013, with 1,584 days of term adjustment; at issuance assigned to Harusaki Technologies LLC, a Wilmington, Del. holding entity), and U.S. 6,473,527 B2 ("module and method for connecting an A/D conversion device and a JPEG compression device"), inventor Chia-Ying Wang, originally Mustek Systems Inc. (Taiwan), which expired June 1, 2019 and could therefore only support backward-looking damages under 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year lookback. The accused instrumentalities are not described in any public order; based on Longse's product line and Cedar Lane's parallel complaints, the targets are Longse network/IP cameras and NVR/DVR products incorporating image-sensor interfaces and JPEG/H.264-H.265 pipelines. (Caveat: the case metadata and the Stanford NPE database key this case to the '790 patent alone; the three-patent scope comes from IPWatchdog's docket roundup and Korean/Chinese government dispute-tracking records, not from a publicly available complaint text I could retrieve.)

Procedural posture, venue, and significance. Filed June 23, 2022, the case moved no further than service: summons issued and foreign-service papers went out via FedEx (Doc. 6–7, June 23–24, 2022); Longse waived service on July 12, 2022 with an answer due October 11, 2022 (Doc. 8); Judge Albright's updated standing orders were docketed September 16–17, 2022. On October 24, 2022, Cedar Lane filed a motion styled "Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice" (Doc. 9), and the AO-120 patent report went to the USPTO the next day (Doc. 10) — ending the case in roughly four months with no answer, no motion practice, no IPR and no merits ruling. That trajectory is the textbook Cedar Lane outcome (its Shenzhen-defendant cases reportedly closed by settlement in a median of 77 days; one 2021 settlement against Reolink, over overlapping patents including the '790, was disclosed in an IPO filing at US$10,000 for a paid-up worldwide license), and contemporaneous commentary characterized the campaign as "conventional patent-based nuisance litigation designed to generate a large quantity of modest settlements." Venue is the notable structural fact: the suit landed in Waco in the final weeks before the Western District of Texas's July 2022 order randomizing patent-case assignments across the district's judges, i.e., in the last window when a Waco patent plaintiff could count on Judge Albright's fast, plaintiff-friendly docket — a docket Cedar Lane used so heavily that Albright was identified as its single most frequent judge. Market context matters here too: the campaign ran across the 2020–2023 wave of U.S. assertions against Chinese surveillance-camera and IoT makers (Hikvision-adjacent suppliers, Zhuhai RaySharp, ZKTeco, Uniview-adjacent entities), and the '790 patent itself is now expired (commercial databases list an estimated expiration of Aug. 1, 2023), so its residual value is purely as a damages claim for pre-expiration sales — which likely explains both the low settlements and the absence of any invalidity challenge worth funding.

Sourcing notes. Docket events and dates are corroborated by Patexia/UniCourt docket extracts and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database (case 6:22-cv-00655); filing date, judge, and case number also appear in IPWatchdog's July 1, 2022 "Patent Filings Roundup" and KOTRA/KIPO dispute records. Patent bibliographic data from Google Patents, Unified Patents' patent portal, and Patsnap litigation records. Campaign background from Seyfarth Shaw's "NPE Showcase – Cedar Lane Technologies" (Oct. 6, 2022) and a Shenzhen IP Protection Center risk advisory (Oct. 20, 2022). I could not verify: the complaint's specific accused products or claim charts (Doc. 1 exhibits 1–6 are not publicly posted), any settlement amount or license in the Longse matter specifically, or any PTAB proceeding on the '790 patent (none surfaced; Patsnap records "validity challenges: none recorded"). Treat those as open questions rather than findings.

I'll research this case systematically, starting with the docket and any coverage.

Case snapshot

¹ Your metadata lists only the '790 patent. The complaint as filed actually asserted three related patents — the '790 and its divisional '242, plus the '527 — as reported in IPWatchdog's July 1, 2022 filings roundup (6:22-cv-00655, Cedar Lane / Longse, patents 6,473,527, 8,537,242, 6,972,790) and in the Korean KOTRA and Shenzhen IP Protection Center case reports. The '790 is the lead asserted patent and the one indexed in the Stanford NPE database for this case.

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Chronological development

2022-06-23 — Complaint filed (Doc. 1). Cedar Lane, a Canadian NPE based in Nelson, BC, filed a six-exhibit complaint for patent infringement in Waco, with a jury demand. Ex. 1 and Ex. 2 were the '790 and '242 patents; Exs. 3–6 included the accused-product claim charts. The pleading is the standardized Cedar Lane template used across its campaign: allegation that Plaintiff is "assignee of all right, title and interest" in the patents-in-suit; direct infringement by "Exemplary Defendant Products" identified only in the claim-chart exhibits; and induced/contributory infringement theories premised on the complaint's service constituting actual knowledge. Same day: attorney appearance (Doc. 2), Rule 7 disclosure statement (Doc. 3), summons request (Doc. 4), and AO-120 patent report to the USPTO (Doc. 5). Summons issued (Doc. 6).

2022-06-24 — Foreign service processing (Doc. 7). The clerk received service documents for foreign service via FedEx. This confirms Longse Technology Limited is the Guangzhou, Guangdong–based camera/CCTV manufacturer and that conventional Hague/foreign service, not domestic service, was required.

2022-07-12 — Waiver of service (Doc. 8). Longse executed a waiver of service; answer due 2022-10-11. This is the only defendant-side act reflected in the docket summaries — notably, Longse never retained counsel of record, answered, or pleaded counterclaims in the public record.

2022-09-16/17 — Standing-order notice. Parties directed to comply with Judge Albright's updated Standing Order Governing Proceedings – Patent Cases and the Amended Standing Order on Pretrial Procedures. In practice, this would have started the clock toward a scheduling order and a Markman hearing in the ordinary Albright track.

2022-10-24 — Plaintiff's voluntary dismissal (Doc. 9). Cedar Lane filed "MOTION to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)" with a proposed order, signed by Rabicoff. Under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i), a notice filed before the defendant serves an answer or a summary-judgment motion is self-executing and requires no court order; Cedar Lane nonetheless filed it as a motion with a proposed order, consistent with its practice in other Albright cases.

2022-10-25 — Case closed for statistical/reporting purposes (Doc. 10). The "Report on Patent/Trademark sent to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office" entry indicates termination of the action. I could not locate a signed dismissal order text in the accessible sources; the AO-120 transmittal is the best available evidence that the case was closed on the docket. Caveat: I could not verify from a primary PACER pull whether an order was entered, and I could not verify whether any extension of Longse's 2022-10-11 answer deadline (which had already passed when the dismissal was filed) was granted — that gap is unexplained in the public summaries.

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Category-by-category outcome

Filing & initial pleadings. Complaint only. No answer, no counterclaims, no Rule 12 motion. Longse's non-appearance beyond a service waiver is the single most consequential fact in the case: it eliminated any opportunity for an invalidity challenge, a § 101 motion, or a transfer/venue fight in the district court.

Pre-trial motions of substance. None. No motion to dismiss, no § 1404(a) transfer motion (a live possibility given Longse's Chinese domicile and minimal U.S. presence), no motion to stay pending IPR, no summary judgment. The only "motion" is the plaintiff's own Rule 41 dismissal.

Claim construction (Markman). Not reached. No scheduling order, no joint claim construction statement, no Markman order. Accordingly there is no W.D. Tex. claim-construction ruling on the '790 patent in this case to cite.

Discovery milestones. None of record. No Rule 26(f) conference, no infringement or invalidity contentions, no document production, no depositions. Given the timing (dismissal ~6 weeks after the answer deadline and ~5 weeks after the standing-order notice), discovery had not meaningfully begun.

Trial, verdict, post-trial motions. None. No trial setting, no verdict, no JMOL, no new-trial or § 285 fee motion. No attorney-fee award to either side.

Final disposition. Dismissal without prejudice at Plaintiff's request, 2022-10-24, with the case terminated by 2022-10-25. Because the dismissal was without prejudice, Cedar Lane retained the ability to re-assert the '790 patent against Longse — a hallmark of its campaign model. There was no consent judgment, no license of record, and no public settlement agreement, so the economic terms (if any) are not documented in the court file. By contrast, in the parallel Cedar Lane action against Shenzhen-based Reolink Digital (W.D. Tex., filed 2021-06-11 on the same '790/'242/'867 family), a public IPO disclosure revealed an August 9, 2021 settlement of US$10,000 plus a perpetual worldwide license and dismissal (IPRdaily summary). That figure is a useful — but not confirmed — benchmark for what a Cedar Lane nuisance-value resolution looked like in this period; nothing in the Longse record establishes a comparable payment.

Present posture. Closed. No appeal (no appealable judgment, and in any event Longse never appeared). Docket last substantive activity October 2022.

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Parallel PTAB proceedings

I searched PTAB/PTO sources and secondary coverage for IPR or PGR petitions against US 6,972,790 and found no inter partes review or post-grant review proceeding instituted or even instituted-adjacent to this case. There is no stay motion, no IPR-based invalidity theory, and no Federal Circuit or PTAB decision touching this litigation. Consequences for the case: none — the litigation ended on Plaintiff's initiative before any PTAB proceeding could have affected it.

Important limit on that finding: my searches did not surface a docket-level confirmation of the complete absence of IPR activity on the '790. Cedar Lane's family has been litigated in the hundreds of cases, and I cannot rule out an unrelated petitioner's IPR on the '790 (or on the '527/'242) that simply did not appear in these results. Treat "no IPR" as my best-supported finding rather than a certified one; it should be confirmed against PTAB Patent Trial & Appeal System docket data for the '790 patent number before being relied on in a filing.

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Strategic read

This case is a data point in the Cedar Lane volume-filing model rather than a merits contest. Cedar Lane (founded 2019; ~325 district-court filings by late 2022, per the Shenzhen IP Protection Center warning, which specifically flagged the parallel 6:22-cv-01079 suit against a Shenzhen company on the identical '6473527/'8537242/'6972790 trio) filed in Waco before Judge Albright, obtained a service waiver from a Chinese defendant that never appeared, and dismissed without prejudice roughly four months later. The absence of any defense-side filing means the '790 patent emerged from this case with no adjudicated validity, enforceability, or claim-construction ruling — no estoppel, no IPR estoppel, and no negative precedent. The only public records generated were the complaint, the waiver, the dismissal, and the AO-120 report.

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Source and verification notes

• Grounded: filing date, case number, judge, complaint exhibits, waiver of service and answer deadline, dismissal date and without-prejudice character, AO-120 transmittal, plaintiff's counsel, and the three asserted patents — from the docket summaries reproduced at Patexia, UniCourt, Stanford NPE Database case page and patent page, and IPWatchdog's 2022-07-01 roundup.
• Not verified (flagged, not asserted): whether a signed Rule 41 order exists on PACER; whether any

I'll research this docket and counsel appearances.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

Case: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Longse Technology Limited, No. 6:22-cv-00655 (W.D. Tex., Waco Div., Judge Alan D. Albright), filed June 23, 2022. (The docket caption names the defendant as Longse Technology Limited; the case is the one indexed in the Stanford NPE database under US 6,972,790.)

Bottom line

Only one attorney ever appeared for Cedar Lane on this docket: Isaac P. Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC. No second plaintiff's attorney, no local counsel, and no in-house counsel appear in the publicly available docket. There were no pro hac vice motions, no motions for leave to appear, and no substitutions before the case was voluntarily dismissed.

Docket support

• Dkt. 1 — Complaint for Patent Infringement, filed 6/23/2022, e-signed by Isaac Rabicoff; fee receipt 0542-16176017. Filed against Longse Technology Limited and captioned in W.D. Tex. — Waco Division before Judge Albright. (docket text via Patexia; UniCourt docket summary)
• Dkt. 2 — NOTICE of Attorney Appearance by Isaac Rabicoff on behalf of Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., filed 6/23/2022 (the operative appearance; no sponsoring/local counsel joined it).
• Dkt. 3 — Rule 7.1 Disclosure Statement (filed by Rabicoff); Dkt. 5 — AO 120 patent/trademark form (Rabicoff).
• Dkt. 8 — Waiver of Service returned executed 7/12/2022; Longse's answer was due 10/11/2022. No defense counsel appearance is shown on the public docket — the case was resolved on Cedar Lane's own motion before any answer.
• Dkt. 9 — "MOTION to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)" filed 10/24/2022 by Rabicoff for Cedar Lane; Dkt. 10 — AO 120 report to USPTO, 10/25/2022. The case thus terminated roughly four months after filing, with no claim construction, no IPR, and no merits ruling.

Caveats / sourcing notes

• Scope of patents: Your metadata lists only the '790 patent, but the complaint in fact asserted three patents — US 6,473,527, US 6,972,790, and US 8,537,242 — as reported in IPWatchdog's filing roundup for the 6/23/2022 Waco filings and in the Korean IP-protection database summary of the case. (IPWatchdog)
• No sealed or withheld appearances: Everything on this docket is public; nothing was filed under seal, and there is no indication of any attorney whose appearance was sealed. However, the free/aggregator dockets (Patexia, UniCourt, CourtListener RECAP) can lag PACER; I could not pull the native PACER docket sheet for this answer, so a PACER pull would be the final confirmation that no additional appearance (e.g., a short-lived notice of appearance by another Rabicoff Law associate) was filed.
• Admission status: The docket shows a direct notice of appearance with no pro hac vice motion, which is notable because Rabicoff's published bar admissions list Illinois, the Federal Circuit, Seventh Circuit, E.D. Tex., N.D. Ill., and W.D. Wis. — not W.D. Tex. He filed dozens of Cedar Lane cases in Waco in 2021–2022, so he likely holds or obtained W.D. Tex. admission; I could not verify the mechanism, so treat that point as unsourced.
• No in-house counsel: Cedar Lane (a Canadian entity at 560 Baker St., Suite 1, Nelson, BC, per its complaints) is a patent-assertion entity that litigates exclusively through outside counsel; no Cedar Lane employee-attorney appears on this docket.
• Firm background: Rabicoff Law was listed among Lex Machina's top three most active patent litigation firms in 2017; Rabicoff argued before the Federal Circuit and authored an amicus brief on § 101 representative claims. (rabilaw.com bio)

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

The docket suggests the case may have ended before any defense appearance. Let me verify the full docket.

Bottom line

There is no counsel of record for the defendant. In Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Longse Technology Limited, No. 6:22-cv-00655 (W.D. Tex., Judge Alan D. Albright), the docket shows no appearance, answer, Rule 7.1 disclosure, motion, or any other filing by or on behalf of Longse — no lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel, or identified in-house lawyer. The only attorneys who ever appeared in the case were plaintiff's counsel.

I want to be precise about how confident I am: I could not pull the raw PACER docket sheet directly, but the full document list is reproduced by two independent docket aggregators (Patexia and UniCourt, both sourced from the W.D. Tex. CM/ECF feed), and both terminate at Dkt. 10 with plaintiff's Rule 41 dismissal. If a defense attorney communicated with plaintiff's counsel or negotiated the dismissal without entering an appearance (common for a foreign defendant served by waiver), that would not appear on the docket and I cannot source it.

Docket chronology (the evidentiary basis for the finding)

Sources: Patexia document list for No. 6:22-cv-00655 (https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Longse-Technology-Limited-id-[164511](/patent/164511)/documents); UniCourt docket summary (https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-cedar-lane-technologies-inc-v-longse-technology-limited-[1227152](/patent/1227152)); Stanford NPE Litigation Database case entry (https://npe.law.stanford.edu/case/[257439](/patent/257439)).

What this means for your counsel table

• No lead counsel, no local counsel, no of-counsel, no in-house attorney ever appeared. The defendant is a Chinese entity (Longse Technology Limited, Guangzhou) and the case was dismissed roughly three weeks after the answer deadline, without any defensive pleading.
• The dismissal was without prejudice and at plaintiff's instance under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i)-style notice, so there is no opinion, claim construction, or fee order naming defense counsel anywhere in this case.
• Do not populate a counsel row for this case. Any name inserted here would be fabricated. If your dataset needs a value, the correct entry is "no appearance entered — case voluntarily dismissed 10/25/2022."

Corroborating context and caveats worth flagging

1. Patent count discrepancy with your case metadata. The complaint actually asserted three patents — U.S. 6,473,527, 6,972,790, and 8,537,242 (all "Host interface for imaging arrays" family, plus the '527). The docket/AO-120 filing and the Stanford DB link all three, and IPWatchdog's July 1, 2022 filings roundup lists all three for this case number (https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/07/01/patent-filings-roundup-centripetal-sees-iprs-microsoft-engineer-sues-seven-waco/). You may want to correct the "Patents at issue: 6972790" field.
2. Filed as part of a same-day wave. Cedar Lane filed this suit alongside a companion case against Lorex Technology Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00654 (W.D. Tex.), also before Judge Albright, also on the '790/'242/'527 family — useful if you're looking for a comparable case in which defense counsel did appear.
3. Why it was dismissed is not on the record. For similarly situated Chinese camera makers in the Cedar Lane campaign, plaintiffs typically dismissed after a small settlement/license (e.g., the Reedone/Reolink entity paid $10,000 and took a worldwide license in the 2021 Waco suit, per Chinese IPO-disclosure reporting: https://ciipr.njust.edu.cn/15/ae/c11094a333230/page.htm). I have no source confirming a settlement, license, or payment as to Longse — treat that as unknown.
4. No parallel PTAB activity located naming Longse as petitioner against the '790 patent. Longse does not appear as a petitioner in the '790 IPR set in my searches; if you need that verified, the PTAB P-TACTS party search would be the authoritative check.

Suggested next step to close the gap definitively: pull the PACER docket report for 6:22-cv-00655 (W.D. Tex.) and check the "Attorneys" / party-flags section of the docket header, which lists every attorney who has appeared. Given the document list ends at Dkt. 10, I expect the header to list only Isaac Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law LLC, Chicago) for plaintiff and no defense counsel.