Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Qualcomm Incorporated

I'll research this case before drafting. Let me start with several parallel searches.

Key finding already: the docket shows a dismissal in June 2022, contradicting "active" status. Let me verify details and research the patents.

Case Overview — Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Qualcomm Incorporated, No. 6:22-cv-00046-ADA (W.D. Tex., Waco Div.)

Important correction before the substance: the case metadata in my brief lists this matter as "active" and lists only U.S. Patent 6,473,527 as asserted. Both need correction against the docket. First, the case is closed: Cedar Lane filed a "Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice" (Dkt. 21) on May 23, 2022, and Judge Albright granted it by text order on June 14, 2022, with the AO-120 report transmitted to the USPTO (Dkt. 22). Second, the complaint asserted three patents — the '527 together with U.S. Patents 6,972,790 and 8,537,242 — as confirmed by UniCourt's summary of the complaint and by the AO-120/Report to Commissioner filings in the many companion Cedar Lane suits. (The '527-only framing may reflect a docketing convention in the metadata source; the operative pleading was three patents.) See the docket at Unified Patents Portal and Patexia; complaint summary at UniCourt.

The parties. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian patent-assertion entity (NPE/PAE), incorporated in 2019 and run by president Greg Benoit; by IAM's account it was America's top-filing NPE in 2022, filed the most cases of any plaintiff that year, "strongly favours the Western District of Texas," and achieved a roughly 96% settlement rate across its terminated cases (IAM, "Examining the practice of Cedar Lane Technologies"). Seyfarth's "NPE Showcase" profile adds that Cedar Lane "primarily asserts patents that were originally owned by Intellectual Ventures entities," files in high-volume batches through Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC, rarely litigates past the pleadings, and that Rabicoff and Cedar Lane were sanctioned in 2020 by Judge Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) for "taking positions in his filings that were objectively frivolous … and did so in bad faith" (JD Supra/Seyfarth). Qualcomm Incorporated is the San Diego–based fabless wireless/semiconductor operating company (chipsets, licensing, Snapdragon platform) — the classic asymmetry of a one-attorney volume plaintiff against a mega-cap operating company. Qualcomm's defense team was led by Hogan Lovells (John T. Moehringer, Howard Wizenfeld, Danielle Vincenti Tully, Elana Minkoff, per pro hac vice applications at Dkts. 8–11 and the resulting orders) with Waco counsel Deron R. Dacus; Moehringer's firm bio states that Qualcomm obtained "a complete dismissal … in the Western District of Texas after motion practice challenging Cedar Lane's claims for infringement," and identifies the accused products as Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips (Hogan Lovells bio).

Accused technology and the patents. The accused instrumentalities were Qualcomm's Snapdragon system-on-chip products, i.e., component-level rather than end-user-device accusations — a notable choice, since Cedar Lane's imaging portfolio normally targets camera, scanner, and surveillance-hardware makers downstream. The three asserted patents form a single imaging/compression cluster, all asserted together across dozens of Cedar Lane suits (the '790 alone appears in roughly 52 recorded cases, per Patsnap):

• U.S. 6,473,527 — "Module and method for interfacing analog/digital converting means and JPEG compression means." A camera/scanner front-end module that buffers a small number of image lines (e.g., 8) internally and hands compression-ready 8×8 blocks directly to the JPEG engine's built-in memory, eliminating the discrete external RAM; independent claim 1 is apparatus with § 112(f) means-plus-function limitations ("read control means," "memory means," "output control means"), and claim 8 is the corresponding method.
• U.S. 6,972,790 — "Host interface for imaging arrays." Interface circuitry between an imaging/sensor array and a host processor.
• U.S. 8,537,242 — "Host interface for imaging arrays." A later-issued family member of the same host-interface disclosure.

The § 112(f) construction of "memory means" (whether it reaches any generic internal buffer or is limited to the disclosed line-count-matched buffer/read-control/output-control arrangement) is the fault line Cedar Lane's adversaries have flagged in this campaign (claim-chart analysis, e.g., Moxa, 6:22-cv-00778).

Posture, venue, and why it matters. Filed January 12, 2022 in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas before Judge Alan D. Albright — then the single busiest and fastest patent venue in the country and Cedar Lane's venue of choice — the case never reached answer. Qualcomm obtained three agreed extensions of its responsive deadline (to Mar. 24, Apr. 25, and finally May 25, 2022; Dkts. 7, 16, 18), then filed a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim with five exhibits and its Rule 7.1 disclosure on May 21, 2022 (Dkts. 19–20). Two days later, before responding, Cedar Lane filed its notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice (Dkt. 21), which Judge Albright granted on June 14, 2022. The sequence is the signature of the Cedar Lane model: extract a quick, modest license, avoid any ruling on the merits, and preserve the patents for re-assertion. The practical consequence is that no claim construction, eligibility, or validity ruling exists on the '527, '790, or '242 from this case, so the patents retain presumptive validity and remain live enforcement assets against the rest of the imaging/embedded-compression supply chain. Three further points make this case worth flagging: (1) it is one of the few data points where a large operating company refused to settle quickly and forced a pre-answer dismissal — useful benchmarking for defendants weighing a Rule 12 strategy against this plaintiff, though the dismissal-without-prejudice means Qualcomm won no merits precedent; (2) the IPR overlay is partial, not case-specific — I found no IPR petition on the '527 arising from this suit, but Cedar Lane's portfolio has been challenged by Unified Patents (e.g., IPR2020-00006, Unified Patents LLC v. Cedar Lane Technologies, FWD Feb. 12, 2021, holding the independent claim of U.S. 7,173,177 unpatentable, Unified), showing that defensively oriented challengers were actively monitoring these assets; and (3) it sits at the apex of the Waco filing boom — January 2022, months before the Judicial Conference's randomization of Waco patent case assignments and Judge Albright's mid-2022 revisions to his Governing Procedures reshaped the venue calculus for exactly this kind of volume filer.

Sourcing caveats. The dismissal, motion, and deadline dates are from the PACER-derived docket (Unified Patents Portal/Patexia) and are reliable. The "Snapdragon" identification of the accused products rests on Qualcomm's counsel's published firm bio, not on a public claim chart — the complaint's infringement charts (Exhibits 3–5) were not included in the publicly available filing text, so I cannot independently verify which Snapdragon parts were charted. I could not verify the specific chain of title for the

I'll research this case systematically, starting with the docket and case-specific records.

The docket shows an early voluntary dismissal. Let me verify the details and check for refiling and PTAB activity.

Let me verify the docket directly and check for refiling and PTAB challenges to the '527 patent.

Bottom line first

This case did not produce "key legal developments" in the usual sense — it ended four months and three weeks after filing, on a plaintiff-initiated voluntary dismissal without prejudice, before any answer, claim construction, discovery, or trial. Critically, the case metadata supplied in the prompt lists the status as "active," but the docket shows the case was terminated on 2022-06-14. The metadata remains authoritative for caption/court/case number/patent, but the operative postures are: dismissed without prejudice, no merits ruling, no claim construction, no PTAB proceeding on the '527 that I could locate.

I'm flagging this divergence explicitly rather than writing a narrative that presumes a litigated case.

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Chronology

1. Filing — 2022-01-12

• Dkt. 1: Complaint for Patent Infringement, filed by Isaac Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law LLC) for Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (Canadian NPE, Nelson, BC), with jury demand and Exhibits 1–6 (patents plus claim charts). Filed in W.D. Tex. (Waco), assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright; case number reflects Albright's initials per the court's standard practice. (Source: Unified Patents litigation portal, W.D. Tex. docket for 6:22-cv-00046; Patexia docket; UniCourt case summary.)
• Patents asserted in the complaint: three, not one — U.S. Patent Nos. 6,473,527 (interface module/method coupling an A/D converter to a JPEG compression device; filed 1999-06-01, issued 2002-10-29, expired 2019-06-01), 6,972,790, and 8,537,242 (both "Host interface for imaging arrays"). The prompt's metadata names only the '527, which understates the complaint's scope. (Source: UniCourt complaint summary; Unified Patents docket, CMO/report entries listing all three patents.)
• Relief sought: damages under § 284, pre/post-judgment interest, costs, and an exceptional-case finding with fees under § 285.
• The '527 is a Mustek Systems (Taiwan) original — inventor Wang Chia-Ying — acquired by Cedar Lane through the Intellectual Ventures-lineage portfolio it acquired. Because the patent expired in 2019, Cedar Lane's recovery theory is necessarily back-damages only, capped by the six-year lookback in 35 U.S.C. § 286 — a structural limitation that matters for the dismissal analysis below. (Source: Shenzhen IP Protection Center risk advisory, 2023-02-16 (secondary source, translated); USPTO assignment/face-of-patent data.)

2. Responsive pleading — answered? No.

• Qualcomm never answered and never filed counterclaims (no declaratory-judgment counterclaims for invalidity or non-infringement).
• Instead, Qualcomm (through local counsel Deron R. Dacus, with pro hac vice motions filed 2022-03-11 and 2022-03-14 for Danielle Vincenti Tully, Howard Wizenfeld, John Thomas Moehringer, and Elana Minkoff — Dkts. 8–11, with Wizenfeld's PHV granted 2022-03-15 at Dkt. 13) obtained three successive agreed extensions of its response deadline:
  • Dkt. 16 (2022-03-21) → answer due 2022-04-25
  • Dkt. 18 (2022-04-19) → answer due 2022-05-25
  • (Earlier reset: answer due 2022-03-24, entered 2022-01-31)
• Judge Albright entered his Standing Order Regarding Order Governing Proceedings – Patent Cases (OGP 4.0) on 2022-04-14 (Dkt. 17). This is the only substantive case-management order in the docket.

3. The one substantive pre-trial motion — and the immediate capitulation

• 2022-05-21 — Dkt. 19: Qualcomm's Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim (Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6)), with five exhibits; Dkt. 20: Qualcomm's Rule 7.1 disclosure statement.
• 2022-05-23 — Dkt. 21: Cedar Lane's "Motion to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)" — i.e., plaintiff pulled the case two days after Qualcomm moved to dismiss, before any opposition was due.
• 2022-06-14 — Text Order (Albright, J.): "The request to dismiss this matter without prejudice is hereby GRANTED." No conditions, no fee/cost award, no Rule 41(a)(2) terms.
• 2022-06-13 — Dkt. 22: Report on Patent/Trademark sent to the USPTO (form AO 120), closing the file.

Analytical caveat: the text of Qualcomm's Rule 12(b)(6) motion and its five exhibits is not available in the free sources I could reach (the motion itself is not in RECAP). I therefore cannot state its grounds and will not guess at them. The plausible candidates — (a) the '527's 2019 expiry collapsing the damages window under § 286, (b) § 101 subject-matter eligibility of a JPEG-interface/data-routing disclosure, (c) failure to plead pre-suit knowledge sufficient for willfulness/induced infringement, or (d) means-plus-function indefiniteness under § 112(f) for the "read control means"/"memory means"/"output control means" limitations — are hypotheses only, unsourced. The timing (dismissal 48 hours later, with a without prejudice label preserving refiling) is itself the strongest available evidence that the motion had real bite.

4. Stages the case never reached

For the record, and to answer the checklist directly:

• Motion to transfer (§ 1404(a)): none. Qualcomm is headquartered in San Diego, and a transfer motion would have been the conventional first move; it never came, presumably because the case died first.
• Motion to stay pending IPR: none — see § 7.
• Summary judgment: none.
• Markman / claim construction: none. No scheduling order issued, no Joint Claim Construction Statement, no Markman hearing, no claim construction order. Zero terms were construed. (For what the claim-construction fight would have looked like, the natural battleground is the '527's "image block" limitation — the specification ties it to "an image block of 8x8 pixels" (col. 1:45–47), and the means-plus-function control/memory limitations would have been tested against integrated SoC architectures. This is prospective, not adjudicated.)
• Discovery: no Rule 26(f) conference, no initial disclosures, no interrogatories, no depositions, no discovery disputes. The three agreed extensions consumed the entire pre-answer period.
• Trial, verdict, JMOL, new trial, § 285 fees: none.
• Appeal: none. There is no Federal Circuit docket.

5. Disposition and present posture

• Final disposition: dismissal without prejudice, 2022-06-14 (Albright, J.), on Cedar Lane's own motion (Dkt. 21), granted by text order. Total pendency: 153 days.
• Because dismissal was without prejudice and no answer or counterclaim was ever served, no claim-preclusion, no issue preclusion, and no merits estoppel attached to either side. Cedar Lane retained the theoretical right to refile; Qualcomm obtained no adjudication of invalidity or non-infringement and no fee award.
• I found no evidence of a refiled Cedar Lane v. Qualcomm action in my searches (2022–2026). Searches for later Qualcomm/Rabicoff matters surfaced only unrelated cases: Gamehancement LLC v. Qualcomm Inc. (W.D. Tex.; Rabicoff-counseled, unopposed stay/notice of settlement 2024-03-12) and Arm Ltd. v. Qualcomm Inc. — neither involves Cedar Lane or the '527. This should be treated as "not located," not as a confirmed negative; a PACER party search on "Cedar Lane Technologies" would be needed to close that out.
• Practically, refiling value decayed rapidly: with the '527 expired 2019-06-01 and § 286 limiting recovery to six years pre-suit, each month of delay permanently shrank the damages period.

6. Parallel PTAB proceedings

• I located no IPR, PGR, or CBM challenging U.S. Patent No. 6,473,527. No PTAB trial number, institution decision, or final written decision tied to the '527 appears in the sources reviewed. This is consistent with the docket: with a complaint served in early 2022, Qualcomm's § 315(b) one-year bar would not have run until roughly early 2023, and the case was gone by mid-2022.
• One caveat worth recording: secondary reporting (Chinese IP-protection advisory, 2023) states that Unified Patents filed an IPR against a Cedar Lane patent in October 2019 and succeeded in invalidating it. I could not verify which patent that was or whether it was the '527 — the reporting is non-specific, and I will not attribute it to the '527 without a PTAB docket number.
• Effect on the litigation: none. No stay motion, no institution, no estoppel under § 315(e).

7. Strategic read — why this resolved in 153 days

Three factors, each sourced:

1. The business model. Cedar Lane is a high-volume NPE; per Lex Machina-derived reporting, it was the single most frequent patent plaintiff in the U.S. in 2021, with roughly 80% of its cases settling and a median time-to-close near 77–90 days. It sued with 16 cases in a single week in September 2022, almost all in W.D. Tex. before Judge Albright. Its patents are IV-lineage, and the '790/'242 pair in particular has been asserted across more than a hundred district court actions each; the '527 has been asserted in roughly 124 cases per one advisory. This case fits the template: file, extract a nuisance-value settlement, dismiss.
2. Qualcomm's posture. Qualcomm did not seek transfer; it ran the clock with agreed extensions and then filed a merits-killing Rule

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

Let me get the specific docket for this case and details on Isaac Rabicoff's firm.

Bottom line

Only one attorney has appeared for Cedar Lane Technologies in No. 6:22-cv-00046: Isaac Phillip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago). He was the sole signatory on the complaint and the sole filer of the notice of appearance, and he personally filed the plaintiff's voluntary dismissal. No local counsel, no co-counsel, and no in-house counsel appeared for Cedar Lane on this docket.

Counsel of record — Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

Relevant patent-litigation experience / notable matters (all well sourced):

• Rabicoff Law is Cedar Lane's principal outside counsel — a Shenzhen IP Protection Center risk alert (Oct. 2022) reported the firm had represented Cedar Lane in roughly 58 patent infringement suits, and Cedar Lane itself has filed 300+ patent cases nationwide, making it one of the most prolific NPE plaintiffs (top filer in 2021).
• He is a high-volume, W.D. Tex.–centric filer of patent complaints on behalf of Cedar Lane and other NPEs, typically asserting small portfolios of acquired imaging/compression patents (here, the '527 patent plus U.S. 6,972,790 and 8,537,242).
• Conduct history worth flagging: In Cedar Lane Techs. v. Blackmagic Design Inc., No. 3:20-cv-01302-VC (N.D. Cal.), Judge Vince Chhabria imposed a $1,000 Rule 11 sanction and referred Rabicoff to the N.D. Cal. Standing Committee on Professional Conduct (Order, Nov. 19, 2020), finding he was a "serial filer" who often skipped pro hac vice admission and fees. The Committee's Final Report in In re Isaac Rabicoff, No. 20-mc-80206-JD (N.D. Cal.) records an informal resolution under which he paid $9,193 in back pro hac vice fees (paid Feb. 16, 2022). A 2025 filing in a Cedar Lane matter in D. Nev. (3:25-cv-00103, Doc. 37) re-airs that history alongside a further $1,000 sanction and referral — I could not confirm from the excerpt which findings are the Nevada court's own versus quotations of the N.D. Cal. order.

Docket support / gaps

• Plaintiff's appearances: Doc. 2 only (Notice of Attorney Appearance, Isaac Rabicoff, 1/12/2022). No other attorney ever appeared for Cedar Lane; no pro hac vice motion was filed on Cedar Lane's side (contrast Qualcomm's four PHV motions, Docs. 8–11, for Danielle Vincenti Tully, Howard Wizenfeld, John Thomas Moehringer and Elana Minkoff, granted at Docs. 12–15).
• Nothing is under seal regarding plaintiff's counsel; the record is simply thin because the case was short-lived.
• Two corrections to the case metadata suggested by the docket: (1) the case is not active — Judge Albright's text order of 6/14/2022 granted Doc. 21 and dismissed the action without prejudice (AO-120 report sent to PTO, Doc. 22); the Stanford NPE database and the case-tracking services list it as closed. (2) The complaint asserted three patents — 6,473,527, 6,972,790 and 8,537,242 — not only the '527 patent. Qualcomm's response was a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss (Doc. 19, 5/21/2022) attacking the claims; Cedar Lane dismissed rather than oppose, and Cadwalader's John Moehringer (Qualcomm's lead) describes the result as a "complete dismissal."

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

Key finding: the case was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice on June 14, 2022 (Dkt. 21–22). Let me pin down each defense attorney's firm and role.

Bottom line first

This case is closed, so "counsel of record" means the attorneys who appeared during the ~5-month life of the case. Qualcomm's defense team consisted of one Texas local counsel of record plus four pro hac vice admissions, all from a single national firm:

• Deron R. Dacus (The Dacus Firm, P.C., Tyler, TX) — local counsel / counsel of record; he signed every Qualcomm filing in the case.
• John T. Moehringer — lead national counsel (per his firm bio, he takes credit for the dismissal).
• Danielle Vincenti Tully, Howard Wizenfeld, Elana Minkoff — pro hac vice, same firm.

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Docket basis for appearance (W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-00046, Judge Alan D. Albright)

Sources: Unified Patents docket portal, Patexia docket.

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Attorney-by-attorney

1. Deron R. Dacus — local counsel / counsel of record

• Firm: The Dacus Firm, P.C., 821 ESE Loop 323, Suite 430, Tyler, TX 75701 (dacusfirm.com).
• Role: E-filing attorney of record for Qualcomm in W.D. Tex.; sponsored all four PHV applications and signed the Rule 12(b)(6) motion and Rule 7.1 disclosure. This is the standard Albright-era local-counsel arrangement.
• Experience note: Board-certified in civil trial law; states he has appeared in "well over 1,000 patent cases" in the Eastern District of Texas, with patent defense verdicts including Huawei v. CNEX Labs; also local counsel to Verizon (Gibson Dunn) in the $175M Stingray/Virtual Matrix matter and to Novartis in Texas state litigation. (firm bio; Texas Lawbook)

2. John T. Moehringer — lead national counsel (pro hac vice, Dkt. 10)

• Firm (at the time of this representation): Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, New York — partner and co-chair of Cadwalader's Intellectual Property Group. Note: his current profile sits at Hogan Lovells (he appears in Hogan Lovells' professional portal with an unchanged bio), so the Cadwalader affiliation reflects the March 2022 appearance, not today.
• Role: Lead merits counsel; his own bio states he "secured a complete dismissal on behalf of Qualcomm in the Western District of Texas after motion practice challenging Cedar Lane's claims," describing the accused Snapdragon chips and the three asserted patents. That is a direct match to Dkt. 19.
• Experience note: Complex patent litigation in wireless telecom, networking and medical devices, plus substantial ITC work and IP licensing/opinion practice (Fordham J.D.). (Cadwalader bio; Hogan Lovells Canada bio)

3. Danielle Vincenti Tully — pro hac vice (Dkt. 8)

• Firm (at the time): Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, New York — then special counsel. Now: Partner, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, 51 West 52nd Street, New York (moved to Orrick in 2025).
• Role: Member of the Cadwalader PHV team; no separate signed substantive filing in this docket.
• Experience note: IP litigator across pharmaceuticals, medical devices, hardware/software, telecom and digital TV; lead trial roles in C.R. Bard v. AngioDynamics (D. Del. complete defense verdict, affirmed) and Adaptix v. AT&T Mobility; listed representations expressly include Qualcomm. (Orrick profile; Lawdragon)

4. Howard Wizenfeld — pro hac vice (Dkt. 9, order at Dkt. 13)

• Firm (at the time): Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, New York — special counsel for ~18 years. Now: Partner, Wiggin and Dana LLP, New York (joined February 2026).
• Role: Member of the Cadwalader PHV team; he is the only PHV attorney whose admission order I can confirm on the docket excerpt.
• Experience note: Decades of patent litigation in electrical engineering, wireless telecom and computer science; earlier stints at Amster Rothstein & Ebenstein, Quinn Emanuel and White & Case; B.S.E.E. Columbia, J.D. Fordham, registered with the USPTO. (Wiggin and Dana announcement)

5. Elana Minkoff — pro hac vice (Dkt. 11)

• Firm: Not confirmed. The docket confirms only that she was the fourth attorney for whom Dacus moved for pro hac vice admission on 2022-03-14 (Dkt. 11), and the docket excerpt I retrieved does not include the granting order or her firm affiliation. Given that she was moved together with the Tully/Wizenfeld/Moehringer cohort and the docket's consistent pattern, she was almost certainly with Cadwalader at the time, but I could not verify that by name and will not state it as fact. Worth pulling Dkt. 11 or the corresponding admission order on PACER to confirm.

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Caveats and gaps

1. Nothing here is sealed — the docket is fully public and the case was dismissed without prejudice, so no protective-order sealing issue affects counsel identification.
2. The complaint asserted three patents (U.S. 6,473,527, 6,972,790, 8,537,242), even though the case metadata lists only the '527. The '527 is expired, per third-party reporting on Cedar Lane's campaign.
3. No in-house Qualcomm attorney appeared of record in this docket — only outside counsel.
4. No parallel PTAB IPR by Qualcomm surfaced in my search; the dismissal came quickly (about four months after appearance, roughly two months after the Rule 12(b)(6) motion), consistent with the pattern reported for Cedar Lane's campaign (median ~77–90 days to resolution, overwhelmingly by dismissal/settlement).
5. I could not retrieve the docket's own "Attorneys" pane or the Dkt. 19 brief signature block directly; the counsel list above is reconstructed from the PHV motions, the motion-to-dismiss and disclosure-statement filers, and firm biographies. Moehringer's lead-counsel designation rests on his firm's account of the dismissal, not on a court order designating lead counsel (nothing in this docket appears to do so).