Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Tattile

I'll research this case against the available sources before drafting.

Good baseline. Now let me verify the docket details, complaint contents, and the patent's provenance and IPR history.

Case Overview — Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 6:22-cv-00962 (W.D. Tex.)

The parties. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is not an operating company. It is a Canadian entity (a corporation organized under the laws of Canada, principal place of business at 560 Baker Street, Suite 1, Nelson, British Columbia) that acquires and asserts patents rather than making or selling products — the Stanford NPE Litigation Database categorizes it as an "Acquired patents" asserter, and IPWatchdog's filing roundup tags the firm as an "[IV selloff]" acquirer, i.e., a buyer of patents divested from Intellectual Ventures' portfolio. Cedar Lane's assertion program centered on image-data-processing and audio/video patents and ran at high volume through 2020–2022, almost entirely through solo practitioner Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC. Tattile s.r.l. is on the other side of that divide: a comparatively small Italian operating company in the machine-vision/intelligent-transportation space, best known commercially for automatic number-plate-recognition (ANPR) and traffic-monitoring cameras and systems. Note that the suit named only the Italian parent, not a U.S. subsidiary — I could not verify any U.S. affiliate in the record I reviewed. (Company-headquarters and product-line details for Tattile come from general commercial sources rather than a court filing; treat as background, not as a docket-verified fact.)

The patent and the accused technology. The sole patent identified in this case's metadata is U.S. Patent No. 6,972,790, "Host interface for imaging arrays" (issued Dec. 6, 2005; filed Dec. 21, 2000 as App. No. 09/742,723; priority to provisional 60/177,496 filed Jan. 21, 2000; inventor Mark Suska of Ottawa, Canada; originally assigned to Psion Teklogix Systems Inc. of Mississauga, Canada; 21 claims). In one line: it claims an interface — preferably on the camera sensor's own die — that buffers image-sensor output in a FIFO (or addressable) memory clocked by the sensor, and then signals the host processor (interrupt or bus request) when a threshold quantity of data has accumulated, so the processor can drain the buffer on its own clock. The related divisional, U.S. Patent No. 8,537,242 (filed Oct. 27, 2005; issued Sept. 17, 2013), claims the method counterpart of the same FIFO-count/limit/interrupt scheme, and Cedar Lane routinely pleaded the two together. On the accused instrumentality, the public record is thin: in Cedar Lane's parallel complaints in this campaign the body of the pleading never names products, instead incorporating by reference "Exemplary Defendant Products" identified only in claim-chart exhibits that were not publicly filed, and I could not retrieve the Tattile complaint's exhibits. So the specific accused Tattile camera or firmware is not documented in any source I could review; any description of it as an ANPR/IP camera with an onboard image-processing pipeline is inference from Tattile's product line, not from the pleadings. Likewise, the case metadata here lists only the '790, but third-party trackers catalog this same civil action under additional Cedar Lane patents (IPWatchdog's table lists the '242 alongside the '790 for 6:22-cv-00962, and Stanford's page for U.S. 6,473,527 also lists this case), so the precise claim and patent set actually served is not verifiable from the public docket materials I could access.

Posture, venue, and why it matters. Cedar Lane filed on September 16, 2022 in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas, and the docket text shows the case was "directly assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright due to previous filed cases as having same Plaintiff and patent case numbers" — a mechanical consequence of Cedar Lane's filing volume in that courtroom during the period when it was the country's dominant patent venue. Tattile was served on September 23, 2022 (answer due October 14, 2022), and before any responsive pleading Cedar Lane filed a "Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice" on October 10, 2022 (D.I. 9), with the AO 120 patent-report form sent to the USPTO on October 11, 2022 (D.I. 10). There was no answer, no motion practice on the merits, no claim construction, no transfer ruling, and no judgment. The case is therefore notable less for anything it decided than for what it typifies: it is a single tile in the 2022 Western District of Texas NPE wave, and it follows Cedar Lane's consistent file-and-dismiss template — contemporaneous suits against Fantasia, Snap, Phytech, and Excelitas in Delaware were all voluntarily dismissed within weeks. Two further points give it analytical interest. First, the '790 patent's term ran from a December 21, 2000 filing, and RPX lists it as "Expired due to Term"; by the September 2022 filing date the patent had already lapsed, so the case could only ever have reached backward-looking damages within the six-year § 286 window — a structural feature that caps settlement value in every '790 suit. Second, Tattile's appearance as a defendant here was not an isolated event: it was later named by a different assertor, Monitor Systems LLC, in the Eastern District of Texas (No. 2:25-cv-00236), illustrating how small European hardware vendors with U.S. distribution get repeatedly drawn into U.S. patent suits without ever litigating one to judgment. I found no PTAB proceeding against the '790 in the sources reviewed, but I did not exhaustively confirm that negative, and the reason for Cedar Lane's dismissal — settlement, service or jurisdictional problems with an Italian defendant, or a portfolio-wide strategic decision — is not stated anywhere in the public record.

Sourcing notes and open items

• Docket entries and dates (filing 9/16/2022, direct assignment to Judge Albright, service 9/23/2022, D.I. 9 voluntary dismissal 10/10/2022, D.I. 10 AO 120 on 10/11/2022): Patexia Research docket for 6:22-cv-00962, https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Tattile-srl-id-[181287](/patent/181287)/documents.
• Case/patent/party cataloguing: Stanford NPE Litigation Database, https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6972790 and https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/tattile-srl; IP

I'll research this case across multiple sources.

Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 6:22-cv-00962 (W.D. Tex.)

Bottom line up front: this was a short-lived, single-patent (or two-patent) assertion in Judge Alan D. Albright's Waco division that was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice 24 days after filing — four days before the defendant's answer deadline — so it never generated an answer, counterclaim, motion, Markman ruling, discovery, trial, or appeal. The public docket shows no adjudication of any kind on the merits, and no PTAB proceeding on the '790 patent is reflected in the case record. What follows is the chronology, with an explicit flag on the one or two points I could not verify from primary documents.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

Asserted patent. The prompt metadata and IPWatchdog's 2022-09-23 Patent Filings Roundup both identify this case as an assertion of U.S. Patent No. 6,972,790 ("Host interface for imaging arrays"), acquired by Cedar Lane out of the Intellectual Ventures portfolio (original assignee: Psion Teklogix Systems Inc. (Canada)). Caveat: Stanford's NPE Litigation Database also cross-lists this exact case number on its page for U.S. Patent No. 6,473,527, which suggests more than one patent may have been pleaded in the complaint; Cedar Lane's template complaints of this era typically bundled '790 with '242 (and often '527). I could not retrieve the complaint itself (D.I. 1) through the public sources available, so the exact asserted set should be treated as '790 plus possibly '527/'242. The case was not a multi-defendant consolidated action.

No answer, no counterclaims. There is no answer, Rule 12 motion, or counterclaim in the docket. Cedar Lane dismissed before Tattile's 2022-10-14 deadline. Consequently no invalidity or non-infringement contentions were ever served or tested, and no declaratory-judgment counterclaim on the '790 patent exists.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

None. No motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, no § 1404(a)/§ 1406 transfer motion, no motion to stay pending IPR, no summary judgment motion. The only "motion" filed was Cedar Lane's own D.I. 9 self-dismissal, filed 24 days after docketing.

Strategically, the speed matters: the case was terminated before any of the pressure points that traditionally shape these W.D. Tex. campaigns — before the defendant had to plead, before the Albright court's scheduling order issued, and before any venue or foreign-service challenge could be joined. (By comparison, Cedar Lane's earlier assertion against Basler was dismissed without prejudice "after service issues" — a secondary-source characterization, darik.news summary of the campaign, so treat as unconfirmed.) Tattile is an Italian entity, and service was reportedly effected only seven days after filing, which suggests domestic service (e.g., on a U.S. affiliate/agent) rather than Hague Convention service abroad; the docket does not say how service was accomplished.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

Did not occur. No scheduling order, no joint claim-construction/pre-markman statement, no Markman hearing, no claim-construction order. There is therefore no judicial construction of any '790 term from this case to cite in later matters.

4. Discovery milestones

None. No Rule 26(f) conference, no discovery plan, no infringement/non-infringement or invalidity contentions, no third-party subpoenas reflected on the docket. The case ended roughly three weeks after service, well before the Rule 26(f) trigger.

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial setting, no verdict, no JMOL/Rule 59 motion, no § 285 fee motion. Nothing in the public record reflects a merits outcome in either party's favor.

6. Final disposition / present posture

• Disposition: voluntary dismissal without prejudice, plaintiff-initiated, at D.I. 9 (2022-10-10), with termination recorded 2022-10-11/12 (D.I. 10, AO-120 report to the USPTO). Total pendency: ~25 days; time from service to dismissal: 17 days.
• Documentation caveat: the Patexia docket extract ends at D.I. 10 (the AO-120 report) and does not show the text of a signed dismissal order; Judge Albright's practice in these cases is frequently a one-line text order adopting the proposed order. The AO-120 filing on 2022-10-11 is itself strong evidence the case was closed on that date, but I cannot quote the order's language.
• No settlement document is public. Cedar Lane's campaign-wide pattern (as tracked by the Stanford NPE database and by Chinese IP-protection-center risk alerts, which report ~325 suits and a median disposition time of ~77 days across its Shenzhen-defendant cases, "all resolved by settlement") is consistent with a quick confidential license/resolution, but nothing on this docket proves consideration was paid. The dismissal being without prejudice is equally consistent with a tactical retreat and refiling option.
• No appeal was taken; there was no final judgment to appeal.
• Present posture (as of 2026-11-07): terminated. I found no re-filed Cedar Lane suit against Tattile in the Stanford database, which lists only this one Cedar Lane–Tattile case. Separately, *Tattile was sued again in 2025 by a different NPE — Monitor Systems LLC v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 2:25-cv-00236 (E.D. Tex.)* — which is unrelated to the '790 patent but confirms Tattile remains an active target in the camera/ANPR space. Treat the E.D. Tex. 2025 case details (patents, status) as unverified beyond the Justia docket listing.

7. Parallel PTAB proceedings

None identified. No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition on U.S. 6,972,790 appears in the case record, and my searches did not surface any PTAB proceeding on that patent during the case's pendency (2022) or after. Practical consequence: no § 315(e) estoppel, no stay motion, no PTAB-driven invalidation shaped this case. I should flag that I was unable to complete a systematic PTAB docket sweep (IPR2019–IPR2023) before exhausting my search budget, so this is a negative finding from partial search, not a certified absence — if it matters for your purposes, verify against the PTAB's Patent Trial and Appeal Board Endpoint / Docket Alarm for the '790 patent.

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Analytic significance for the broader '790 campaign

1. Zero precedential value. No claim constructions, no eligibility (§ 101) ruling, no invalidity holding on the '790 patent emerged from this suit. Any defense-side argument that the '790 patent has been narrowed or invalidated cannot be sourced to this case.
2. Illustrates the "file-serve-dismiss" cadence of Cedar Lane's post-2021 W.D. Tex. wave. Contemporaneous filings in the same window — e.g., Cedar Lane v. Qualcomm, No. 6:22-cv-00046 (2022-01-12); Cedar Lane v. Konica Minolta, No. 6:22-cv-01074 (2022-10-12); Cedar Lane v. Avis Budget, No. 6:22-cv-01232 (2022-11-29) — show the same rapid-exit pattern, and the campaign was still running in 2025 (Cedar Lane v. Johnson Controls, No. 2:25-cv-00815 (E.D. Tex.), voluntarily dismissed 2025-10-06/17), which bears on any § 285 "exceptional case" or laches

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

Now let me verify the docket details and counsel's firm profile.

Let me check the full docket for any additional appearances (e.g., local counsel or pro hac vice motions).

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

Case: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 6:22-cv-00962 (W.D. Tex., filed Sept. 16, 2022; assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright). Patents asserted included U.S. Patent No. 6,972,790 ("Host interface for imaging arrays"). The case was short-lived: Tattile was served Sept. 23, 2022 (D.I. 8), and Cedar Lane filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice on Oct. 10, 2022 (D.I. 9), with the AO-120 report to the PTO sent Oct. 11, 2022 (D.I. 10).

Counsel table

Docket grounding for the appearance

Every plaintiff-side entry in this case is attributed to Rabicoff:

• D.I. 1 — Complaint (filed Sept. 16, 2022)
• D.I. 2 — Notice of Attorney Appearance by Isaac Rabicoff on behalf of Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.
• D.I. 3 — Rule 7.1 Disclosure Statement
• D.I. 4 — Request for Issuance of Summons
• D.I. 5 — Notice of Filing of Patent/Trademark Form (AO 120)
• D.I. 6 — Notice of Related Case
• D.I. 8 — Summons Returned Executed
• D.I. 9 — Motion to Dismiss / Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice

(Source: Patexia Research docket listing for No. 6:22-cv-00962, https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Tattile-srl-id-181287/documents)

Important negatives / caveats

• No other plaintiff counsel appeared. The docket lists no second attorney, no local counsel, and no in-house counsel for Cedar Lane. This is notable because Cedar Lane frequently did use local counsel in other venues — e.g., David W. deBruin (D. Del. cases such as Cedar Lane v. DivioTec, 1:22-cv-01056) and Raeann Warner (Delaware, 2020 filings). None of those attorneys appear here.
• No pro hac vice motion appears on this docket. I found no PHV application in this case before dismissal. Rabicoff's published firm admissions list Illinois, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit, the Seventh Circuit, N.D. Ill. (Trial Bar), E.D. Tex., and W.D. Wis. — W.D. Tex. is not listed (http://www.rabilaw.com/rabicoff.html). I could not independently verify his W.D. Tex. admission status, so treat that point as unsourced; he nonetheless filed repeatedly in W.D. Tex. pro se as counsel during 2022 (e.g., Cedar Lane v. Costar Techs., 6:22-cv-00117, also before Judge Albright).
• Nothing was sealed in this case, and there is no indication counsel "had not yet appeared" — the counsel identification is complete. No defendant counsel ever appeared before dismissal.

Background on Rabicoff relevant to this campaign

• Described by Seyfarth Shaw's NPE Showcase as the attorney behind Cedar Lane's filings (16 cases filed in W.D. Tex. in the week of Sept. 12, 2022 alone), asserting patents acquired from Intellectual Ventures; the article notes Cedar Lane "does not appear to take their cases much past the pleadings stage" (JD Supra / Seyfarth Shaw, NPE Showcase – Cedar Lane Technologies).
• IPWatchdog's Sept. 23, 2022 patent filings roundup lists this exact case (6:22-cv-00962, Cedar Lane v. Tattile Srl, '790 patent) among that W.D. Tex. wave (https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/09/23/patent-filings-roundup-western-district-waters-tested-ip-edge-runs-disclosure-delaware/).
• Firm bio claims: Rabicoff Law was among Lex Machina's top 3 most active patent litigation firms in 2017; he has led licensing campaigns against Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, LG, Huawei, Samsung and Google; defeated institution of numerous IPRs/CBMs; argued before the Federal Circuit.
• Adverse history worth flagging in any diligence memo: in 2020 Judge Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) sanctioned Cedar Lane and Rabicoff under Rule 11 for "objectively frivolous" positions taken in bad faith and referred him to the court's Standing Committee on Professional Conduct; the Committee's informal resolution (approved Feb. 4, 2022) required payment of ~$9,193 in back pro hac vice fees. On Dec. 12, 2022, the Virginia State Bar imposed a public reprimand without terms, reciprocal to California's findings (https://vsb.org/Site/Site/news/summary/20221215-rabicoff.aspx). These events post-date or are contemporaneous with this Sept.–Oct. 2022 filing.

Bottom line: the sole attorney of record for Cedar Lane in this case was Isaac P. Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago), acting as lead counsel with no co-counsel or local counsel of record.

Counsel of Record — Defendant Tattile s.r.l.

Case: Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 6:22-cv-00962 (W.D. Tex., Judge Alan D. Albright), filed Sept. 15–16, 2022.

Bottom line

No attorney ever entered an appearance for Tattile s.r.l. in this case, and there is no defense counsel of record. The case was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice roughly seven weeks after filing and about three weeks after service — before Tattile's answer deadline — so Tattile never filed an answer, a Rule 12 motion, a disclosure statement, or a notice of appearance. The docket contains only plaintiff-side filings.

Defense side (Tattile s.r.l.)

Tattile s.r.l. is an Italian company (registered/operating offices in Mairano (BS) and Tavagnacco (UD), Italy — per its ISO 9001 certificate), so there is likewise no U.S.-based in-house counsel reflected on this docket.

Because no appearance was entered, I cannot identify lead counsel, local counsel, or of-counsel for the defense without inventing names. Any pre-suit or settlement-stage engagement between Tattile and U.S. patent counsel would have occurred off-docket and is not documented in any source I could locate; I am not asserting that any such engagement did or did not happen.

The only appearance of record in the case (plaintiff side, for context)

Procedural timeline confirming no defense appearance

Docket entries as reported on the public docket abstract (Patexia Research docket for No. 6:22-cv-00962, https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Tattile-srl-id-181287/documents):

• 9/16/2022 — Complaint (Doc. 1); AO 120 patent form (Doc. 5); Notice of Related Case (Doc. 6); Summons issued (Doc. 7); Notice of Appearance by Isaac Rabicoff for Cedar Lane (Doc. 2); Rule 7 disclosure (Doc. 3). Case directly assigned to Judge Albright as related to Cedar Lane's other US 6,972,790 suits.
• 9/23/2022 — Tattile served.
• 9/30/2022 — Summons Returned Executed (Doc. 8); answer due 10/14/2022.
• 10/10/2022 — Plaintiff's "Motion to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)" (Doc. 9), filed by Rabicoff — i.e., dismissal before the defense answer deadline.
• 10/11/2022 — Report on Patent/Trademark sent to USPTO (Doc. 10); case closed.

Corroborating sources: Stanford NPE Litigation Database entries for US 6,972,790 and for Tattile s.r.l. (listing Cedar Lane Techs. v. Tattile s.r.l., 6:22-cv-00962, W.D. Tex.), https://npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/6972790 and https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/tattile-srl; IPWatchdog Patent Filings Roundup, Sept. 23, 2022 (listing the filing: "6:22-cv-00962 | Filed | Cedar Lane Technologies Inc [IV selloff] | Tattile Srl | 6972790"), https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/09/23/patent-filings-roundup-western-district-waters-tested-ip-edge-runs-disclosure-delaware/.

Caveats

• Docket coverage: The narrative above rests on the publicly mirrored docket abstract, not a live PACER pull. W.D. Tex. dockets are not always fully mirrored on CourtListener/RECAP for short-lived 2022 cases, and I could not retrieve a CourtListener docket page for 6:22-cv-00962. If a document is missing from the mirror (e.g., a one-line appearance entered between 9/23 and 10/10/2022), a direct PACER docket-sheet pull for No. 6:22-cv-00962 would be the definitive check. Nothing in the sources I found suggests such a filing exists — the docket runs uninterrupted from Doc. 8 to Doc. 9 with no defense entry.
• Not sealed: There is no indication of sealing here; the absence of defense counsel is a function of swift voluntary dismissal, not of sealed filings. Cedar Lane's campaign was overwhelmingly resolved by early dismissal/settlement (median time-to-close well under 100 days), which typically moots any defense appearance.
• Related later case (not this case): Tattile was sued again by a Rabicoff-affiliated plaintiff in Monitor Systems LLC v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 2:25-cv-00236 (E.D. Tex., Judge Robert W. Schroeder III / Mag. J. Roy S. Payne), filed Feb. 25, 2025, where Tattile's answer date was extended by unopposed motion to May 26, 2025. I was unable to verify from available sources whether defense counsel appeared in that later matter; that docket should not be used to infer counsel in 6:22-cv-00962.
• No Law360, Reuters Legal, or court-opinion coverage of this case exists to my knowledge — it produced no substantive rulings, and no opinion citation is available.