Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Tattile s.r.l.

I'll research this case through multiple sources before drafting.

Good start. Let me pull the actual docket and complaint, and research the parties.

Now let me verify the complaint's substance and the broader NPE/venue context.

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

The parties. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian patent-assertion entity (NPE/PAE), incorporated in British Columbia on April 29, 2019, run by founder/president Greg Benoit, whose portfolio was acquired — directly or indirectly — from Intellectual Ventures LLC. It was the single most prolific patent plaintiff in the U.S. in 2021 (Lex Machina data reported as ~270 suits filed since inception, with roughly 80% of cases settling and average disposition times near 90 days; IAM later reported a 96% settlement rate among terminated cases). Its litigation is handled almost entirely by Isaac Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC, who appeared in this case (Doc. 2) and who was publicly sanctioned in N.D. Cal. in 2020 for frivolous filings — a fact defense counsel routinely raise against Cedar Lane. (LexBlog "NPE Showcase," Oct. 4, 2022; IAM, Mar. 20, 2023; Stanford NPE Litigation Database). Tattile s.r.l. is the opposite profile: a real, small-to-mid-size Italian operating company founded in 1988 in Brescia and headquartered in Mairano (Lombardy), which designs and manufactures embedded ANPR/ALPR (license-plate-recognition) cameras and application software for intelligent transportation systems — free-flow tolling, speed and red-light enforcement, parking and access control — with roughly 100 employees, essentially all in Italy, and a single U.S.-based employee. Tattile has been part of the Dutch TKH Group N.V. since 2018. (Tattile corporate history; Tattile contact page; PitchBook profile).

The patent and the accused technology. The asserted family is the "camera front-end" cluster Cedar Lane acquired from IV. Case metadata lists only U.S. Patent No. 6,473,527, titled "Module and method for interfacing analog/digital converting means and JPEG compression means" — a single-patent family, issued October 2002 with an estimated June 1999 priority date, generally described in the trade press as "related to JPEG compression." (Lexology, November 2022 Retail Patent Litigation Report; Mondaq, Jan. 31, 2022). Technically, claim 1 recites a camera/scanner interface module that (i) sequentially reads a predetermined number of image lines from an A/D converter, (ii) stores them in a memory sized to match the JPEG compressor's built-in memory, and (iii) feeds one image block at a time to the JPEG device — the stated point being to eliminate a separate, large external frame buffer/RAM between the sensor and the codec (see the parallel Cedar Lane complaints analyzed at Ex Parte and here). All three limitations are drafted in means-plus-function form ("read control means," "memory means," "output control means"), so scope collapses to the disclosed read-control device 22 / memory 24 / output-control device 23 structure of Figure 2 under § 112(f) — the practical battleground in every one of these cases. The accused instrumentalities were Tattile's embedded ANPR/ALPR smart cameras, i.e., image-capture devices performing on-board JPEG compression. Caveat: I could not open the Tattile complaint (Doc. 1) or its Exhibit 4 claim charts directly; the accused-product identification is inferred from Tattile's product line and from Cedar Lane's identical pleadings against other camera makers (Moxa, Silent Sentinel, Videology, Adaptive Recognition, Basler, Longse). Note also a source conflict on the patent set: the case metadata and the Stanford database key this case to the '527 patent alone, while IPWatchdog's filing roundup and the Stanford '790 page list the '790 and '242 patents against Tattile as well — consistent with Cedar Lane's standard three-patent ('527/'790/'242) complaint, which is what its Delaware AO-120 forms report. Treat "all three patents" as likely but unconfirmed absent Doc. 1.

Procedural posture, venue, and why the case matters. Cedar Lane filed on September 16, 2022 in the Waco Division of the W.D. Tex. before Judge Alan D. Albright — and, per the docket, the case was not randomly assigned: "Case directly assigned to Judge Alan D Albright due to previous filed cases as having same Plaintiff and patent case numbers," with the -ADA suffix appended (Doc. 1, D.I. notes; Patexia docket). The complaint was one of sixteen Cedar Lane suits filed in W.D. Tex. in the week of September 12, 2022 alone, all by Rabicoff (LexBlog, supra) — the filing wave that prompted the trade press to describe the district's "waters being tested." Tattile was served on September 23, 2022 (Doc. 8), with an answer due October 14 — and before any appearance, transfer motion, or Rule 12 motion, Cedar Lane filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice on October 10, 2022 (Doc. 9), with the AO-120 form sent to the USPTO the next day (Doc. 10). The case lived 24 days; there was no answer, no claim construction, no § 1404(a) transfer fight, and no damages discovery. That trajectory is the point: it is a textbook illustration of Cedar Lane's volume model — a 1999-vintage, single-family, near- or post-expiry JPEG-interface patent asserted against a broad class of camera products, priced for nuisance-value settlement rather than adjudication. It also shows the structural weakness of such suits against European SMEs: with essentially no U.S

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

The docket shows a very short-lived case. Let me verify via CourtListener and check the complaint details.

Let me pull the actual CourtListener docket for the closing entry and check for any PTAB proceedings and later related suits.

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

Bottom line up front: This case never got past initial pleading. It was filed 2022-09-16 and voluntarily dismissed without prejudice 2022-10-10 — roughly 24 days — before Tattile answered, moved, or served any counterclaim. There is no answer, no motion practice of substance, no Markman, no discovery, no trial, no IPR, no fees ruling, and no appeal. Almost every category in your checklist must therefore be answered in the negative, and the analytical value of the case lies in why it looked the way it did (mass-filing campaign; expired patent; quick pre-answer exit).

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

Patent asserted. Your case metadata lists only U.S. Patent No. 6,473,527 ("Module and method for interfacing analog/digital converting means and JPEG compression means," originally Mustek Systems, later Cedar Lane). Note a discrepancy worth flagging: IPWatchdog's 2022-09-23 filing roundup lists the Tattile suit in the same table row block as Cedar Lane's other two imaging patents, 6,972,790 and 8,537,242, and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database also indexes this case under '790 as well as '527. Verbatim from IPWatchdog: "6:22-cv-00962 | Filed | Cedar Lane Technologies Inc [IV selloff] | Tattile Srl | 6972790 ... 8537242." (IPWatchdog, 2022-09-23). Because the complaint PDF is not in the free RECAP collection I could access, I cannot independently confirm whether one or three patents were pleaded; I am treating '527 as authoritative per your metadata and noting the likely three-patent family assertion.

Strategic context of the filing. Dkt. 6 (Notice of Related Case) reflects that this was one of a coordinated wave of ~12–15 complaints filed in mid-September 2022 against small/mid-cap IP-camera and video-surveillance vendors — Synectics PLC (6:22-cv-00961), TKH Security B.V. (…963), Silent Sentinel Ltd (…960), Onvu Technologies (…953), Provision-ISR (…948), Planet Technology (…947), Urmet S.p.A. (…967), Vanguard Integrated (…968), Shany Electronic (…958), Samriddhi Automations (…956), plus Uniview (3:22-cv-02044). Cedar Lane is characterized in the Stanford database as an "Acquired patents" (IV sell-off) NPE. This matters because the near-identical dismissal timing across that wave (see below) suggests a template-driven licensing campaign rather than case-specific litigation.

A critical merits fact. The '527 patent is reported to have expired on 2019-06-01 (20-year term from the 1999-06-01 filing; the Shenzhen IP Protection Center's Cedar Lane risk alert describes '527 as "已失效"/lapsed and notes 124 prior district-court assertions of the patent). If correct, any recovery was limited by 35 U.S.C. § 286 to infringement in the six years preceding suit (i.e., roughly 2016–2019), and the patent's expired status would have sharply reduced Tattile's incentive to settle and Cedar Lane's leverage. Caveat: this comes from a secondary Chinese government IP-center advisory, not from the patent's USPTO maintenance-fee record, which I could not pull.

2. Service and the defendant's response

3. Pre-trial motions of substance

None. No motion to dismiss, no transfer motion, no stay-pending-IPR motion, no summary-judgment motion. The only "motion" on the docket is the plaintiff's own dismissal filing:

• 2022-10-10 — Dkt. 9: "MOTION to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)" filed by Cedar Lane, with proposed order (Patexia docket).

Substantively this was a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice of dismissal as of right, not a Rule 41(a)(2) motion requiring court approval: Tattile had neither served an answer nor a motion for summary judgment, so the dismissal was self-executing on filing. The "MOTION" styling in the W.D. Tex. CM/ECF description is a filing-code artifact — Cedar Lane used the same caption in parallel cases against Sigma Corp. (6:22-cv-01051, Dkt. 8, 2022-10-26) and TKH Security (6:22-cv-00963, Dkt. 9, 2022-10-10). Because the dismissal was by right, no prejudice determination, no conditions, and no costs/fees award were imposed.

• 2022-10-11 (entered 2022-10-12) — Dkt. 10: Report on Patent/Trademark (AO 120) sent to the USPTO, the standard closing ministerial step under 35 U.S.C. § 290.

4. Claim construction (Markman)

Never reached. No scheduling order, no Patent Rule 3-1/3-2 disclosures via the Local Patent Rules process, no Markman hearing, no claim construction order. This is significant strategically: the '527 claims were never construed in this case, so Tattile obtained no claim-scope ruling and Cedar Lane obtained no construction to carry into other suits. (For comparison, the only recorded constructions of the Cedar Lane '527 family are the Fortress/IV-era and other district-court rulings in unrelated matters; nothing from the Tattile docket.)

5. Discovery milestones

None of significance. No Rule 26(f) conference, no joint discovery plan, no protective order, no ESI order, no infringement or invalidity contentions served, no depositions, no expert reports. The case ended less than three weeks after service and four days before Tattile's answer was due.

6. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial setting, no verdict, no JMOL/new-trial motion, no § 285 fee motion, no bill of costs.

7. Final disposition / present posture

• Disposition: Voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), effective 2022-10-10 (Dkt. 9), with the AO 120 report to the PTO on 2022-10-11 (Dkt. 10). Case closed; total life 24 days from filing, 17 days from service.
• Present posture: Terminated with no merits adjudication. No judgment on infringement, invalidity, or unenforceability; no estoppel against Tattile; no res judicata effect. Cedar Lane retained the right to refile on the same patent(s) subject to the six-year lookback of § 286 and Rule 41(d) cost-shifting discretion.
• No refiling against Tattile identified in my search. I did find a later, apparently unrelated E.D. Tex. suit naming Tattile — Monitor Systems LLC v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 2:25-cv-00236 (E.D. Tex., filed 2025) — but I could not verify the patents asserted or any Cedar Lane/Monitor Systems relationship, so I flag it as an open item rather than a development in this case.
• No appeal was possible or taken; there was no appealable order.

8. Parallel PTAB proceedings

None identified on the '527 patent, and none could have affected this case. I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against U.S. 6,473,527 in my searches (searches were constrained by tool-step limits; treat this as "none located" rather than a definitive negative). Practically, the question is academic here: there was no motion to stay, no IPR institution decision, and no PTAB proceeding of any kind within the case's 24-day window. By contrast, IPRs were a live pressure point elsewhere in the Cedar Lane portfolio and in the broader W.D. Tex. docket of that period, which is part of why the pre-answer-exit pattern is read as campaign management rather than litigation.

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Analytical read (what this case is actually evidence of)

1. A filing-volume strategy, not an adjudication strategy. Cedar Lane dismissed Tattile and at least eight co-defendants (TKH Security, Sigma, Zicom (2:22-cv-06222), Xerox (6:22-cv-01153), etc.) within 30–120 days, all pre-answer, all without prejudice. The Xerox case, for example, ran 98 days and closed on the same Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) verbatim notice. The consistent pattern — file, serve, dismiss on a template — is the signature of a license/letter-driven campaign in which the complaint functions as a demand letter with a federal docket number.
2. The expired '527 patent was a weak spearhead. An expiration date of 2019-06-01 caps the damages window at 2016–2019 under § 286, eliminates injunctive leverage entirely, and gives a well-counseled defendant every reason to refuse a meaningful payment — a plausible explanation for the absence of any Tattile engagement on the docket.
3. Zero defensive investment by Tattile is itself informative. No answer, no appearance beyond service, no venue or personal-jurisdiction challenge to an Italian defendant in W.D. Tex. — yet dismissal still came within four days of the answer deadline. That suggests resolution occurred outside the record (licensing discussion or a walk-away), which is unrecoverable from PACER.

Source-confidence notes

• Docket entries, dates, and document numbers are from the Patexia litigation docket for case 6:22-cv-00962

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. — Cedar Lane Techs., Inc. v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 6:22-cv-00962 (W.D. Tex.)

Bottom line: Only one attorney ever appeared for the plaintiff on this docket — Isaac Phillip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago). No local counsel, no co-counsel, and no in-house counsel appeared. Defendant Tattile never appeared either; the case was voluntarily dismissed ~3½ weeks after filing, so the appearance record closed almost immediately.

The sole attorney of record

What the docket shows (and doesn't)

From the PACER-derived docket (as mirrored by Patexia Research, case id 181287):

• Doc. 1 – Complaint (filed 9/16/2022; case directly assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright as related to Cedar Lane's other '527/'790/'242 suits).
• Doc. 2 – Rabicoff's notice of appearance (9/16/2022). No pro hac vice motion appears on this docket, which suggests he was already admitted in W.D. Tex. (or was accepted without a PHV motion) — an inference, not a documented fact on the docket text I could retrieve.
• Docs. 3–6 – Rule 7 disclosure statement, summons request, AO 120 form, and notice of related cases, all signed by Rabicoff.
• Doc. 8 – Summons returned executed; Tattile served 9/23/2022, answer due 10/14/2022.
• Doc. 9 – "MOTION to Dismiss (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice)" filed by Rabicoff on 10/10/2022.
• Doc. 10 – AO 120 report sent to USPTO (10/11/2022).

Notably, the docket shows no appearance by any other Cedar Lane lawyer — no Rabicoff Law colleague (e.g., Kenneth Matuszewski, Reg. No. 74,791, who appears with Rabicoff in other matters), no Texas local counsel, and no in-house attorney. Nothing in this case is sealed; the file is simply very thin because the case ended before any answer, scheduling order, or substantive motion practice.

Two caveats worth flagging for the file

1. Patent mismatch in the case metadata. This prompt lists only U.S. Patent No. 6,473,527. Third-party trackers (IPWatchdog's Sept. 23, 2022 Patent Filings Roundup; Stanford NPE database) associate this case number with a three-patent family — 6,972,790, 6,473,527, and 8,537,242 — consistent with the other Cedar Lane suits filed that same week (e.g., 6:22-cv-00961 v. Synectics, -00963 v. TKH Security, -00967 v. Urmet). Counsel's identity is unaffected, but the asserted-patent list should be confirmed against Doc. 1 if it matters.
2. No settlement document. The dismissal was without prejudice under Rule 41(a), nine days after service and before any responsive pleading, which is the standard signature of a quick license/resolution in Cedar Lane's campaign. No license or settlement was filed publicly.

Sources: Patexia Research docket for 6:22-cv-00962 (services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Tattile-srl-id-181287/documents); IPWatchdog, "Patent Filings Roundup: Western District Waters Tested…" (Sept. 23, 2022); Stanford NPE Litigation Database entries for Tattile s.r.l. and Pat. 6,473,527; CourtListener party records for other Cedar Lane matters (e.g., 2:26-cv-00042, 7:25-cv-00232) confirming Rabicoff Law LLC's address of record; Cedar Lane Techs. Inc. v. Blackmagic Design Inc., No. 3:20-cv-01302-VC (N.D. Cal. Nov. 19, 2020) order and the related Standing Committee report (case 3:25-cv-00103, Dkt. 37).

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

The docket summary suggests the case may have been dismissed before the defendant appeared. Let me verify against CourtListener/PACER-style records.

The docket appears to end with a voluntary dismissal before any defense appearance. Let me verify via CourtListener and check the later related suit against the same defendant for context.

Bottom line

There is no counsel of record for the defendant in this case — because Tattile s.r.l. never appeared. Cedar Lane voluntarily dismissed the action roughly three weeks after service, before Tattile's answer deadline ever ran. Any list of "defense counsel" for 6:22-cv-00962 would be fabricated.

What the docket shows

The full document list for W.D. Tex. No. 6:22-cv-00962-ADA (Judge Alan D. Albright, Waco Division) contains only ten entries, every one of them filed by the plaintiff or by the clerk:

Sources: Patexia litigation docket for the case, services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Cedar-Lane-Technologies-Inc-v-Tattile-srl-id-181287/documents; case listing in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database; filing reported in IPWatchdog's Patent Filings Roundup, Sept. 23, 2022.

Key inferences:

• Docket Entry 9 is a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice of dismissal, not a contested motion. Because Tattile had not answered or moved for summary judgment, dismissal took effect on filing (10/10/2022) without need for a court order; the docket's "MOTION to Dismiss" captioning is the W.D. Tex. CM/ECF event used for such notices, and the same plaintiff used the identical filing pattern across the September 2022 Cedar Lane wave (e.g., No. 6:22-cv-00963 v. TKH Security, Doc. 9, same date).
• No attorney ever entered an appearance for Tattile. There is no Rule 12 motion, no answer, no extension application, no corporate disclosure statement, and no notice of appearance on behalf of the defendant. Compare the later Monitor Systems LLC v. Tattile s.r.l., No. 2:25-cv-00236 (E.D. Tex.), where Tattile did obtain an agreed extension of its answer deadline — signaling that when Tattile chooses to engage, counsel does appear on the docket.

The only attorney of record in the case

For completeness, the sole counsel of record in 6:22-cv-00962 was on the plaintiff's side:

• Isaac Phillip Rabicoff — lead counsel for Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.; Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago, IL; the firm also maintains a Texas presence). Serial filer of Cedar Lane's infringement campaign; appeared in dozens of Cedar Lane suits including the companion September 2022 Waco filings. (He also represents the plaintiff in the later Monitor Systems v. Tattile action.) He is not defense counsel.

Caveats on sourcing

• I could not pull the PACER docket sheet directly; the docket reconstruction above rests on third-party PACER mirrors (Patexia), the Stanford NPE database, and contemporaneous filing roundups, which agree with one another and are complete through the October 2022 dismissal. A direct PACER/PACER Case Locator pull of the closed docket would be the confirmatory step if you need a certified record.
• The case metadata appears to understate the patents asserted. Your case caption lists only U.S. Patent 6,473,527, but the complaint as reported asserted three patents — 6,972,790, 6,473,527, and 8,537,242 (IPWatchdog roundup listing "6972790 / 6473527 / 8537242" for No. 6:22-cv-00962). The Stanford database maps this case to '790 and '527. This matters if you are comparing the case against Cedar Lane's other dismissals.
• I did not verify whether Tattile retained litigation counsel informally or through an Italian/European IP firm in connection with this suit (e.g., for the licensing discussions that typically follow these quick dismissals). No such engagement appears on the federal docket, and I have no reliable source for it, so I am not naming anyone.
• Practical note for your analysis: the dismissal is the entire merits history — there was never a Rule 12(b)(6) or § 101 challenge, no invalidity contentions, no IPR petition by Tattile, and no claim construction. If your question is really "who defended Tattile on the merits," the answer is nobody in this docket; if you need Tattile's actual patent-defense counsel for the 2025 Monitor Systems matter, that is a separate docket I would need to pull directly.