Litigation

Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Turing Video et al.

closed

1:22-cv-01402 through 1:22-cv-01414

Court
D. Del.

Patents at issue (1)

8537242

Summary

Cedar Lane filed a series of D. Del. cases in October 2022 against these defendants on the '242; all closed per Unified Patents patent-specific docket list.

Case overview & background

Plain-language overview of the case: parties, accused product, patents at issue, and why the suit matters.

I'll research this case and its context. Let me start with several searches in parallel.

Key finding: dockets list '790 and '242 together. Let me verify the defendant-to-case-number map, judge, and IPR history.

Key legal developments & outcome

Major rulings, motions, claim construction, settlements, and the present posture or final disposition.

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

Let me pull the actual docket and check for PTAB proceedings.

Now let me get the Turing Video docket specifics and check patent term/PTAB status.

Bottom line

This is not really a litigated case in the conventional sense — it is one docket in a mass NPE filing wave that was resolved entirely by voluntary dismissal before any defendant answered on the merits. No answer, no counterclaims, no motion to dismiss/transfer/stay, no Markman, no summary judgment, no discovery fight, no trial, and no IPR/PGR. The only "legal developments" of substance are (a) the filing itself as part of a coordinated multi-defendant campaign, (b) a Delaware procedural wrinkle under Judge Andrews's service-deadline practice, and (c) the Rule 41 dismissal with prejudice on 2023-10-13.

Sourcing caveat up front: I could not retrieve the full PACER docket for 1:22-cv-01402 itself (no RECAP/CourtListener capture for this specific case number was returned). Where I describe mid-case docket activity I am relying on the sister dockets in the same wave (which I could retrieve) and I flag that inference explicitly.

1. Filing & initial pleadings

Date Event
2022-10-26 Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. files eleven parallel § 271 complaints in D. Del. — 1:22-cv-01402 through 1:22-cv-01414 — one per defendant, each with jury demand, Rule 7.1 disclosure ("no parents or affiliates"), and AO-120 report to the PTO. 1:22-cv-01402 is captioned against Turing Video, Inc.
2022-11-02 Cases assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews; docket notation: "Associated Cases: 1:22-cv-01402-UNA et al." — i.e., 01402 is treated as the lead/first-filed number of the associated group.

Patents asserted. The case metadata lists only the '242 (U.S. 8,537,242, "Host interface for imaging arrays," issued 2013-09-17, a divisional of U.S. 6,972,790). In practice the October 2022 wave pleaded a three-patent family: U.S. 6,473,527 ("Module and method for interfacing analog/digital converting means and JPEG compression means"), U.S. 6,972,790, and U.S. 8,537,242. Turing Video's docket is reported as asserting three patents ('790, '242, '527); the '242 and '790 are the same specification (apparatus claims in '790, method claims in '242). See Patsnap case record, 1:22-cv-01402; sister-case AO-120 forms listing all three patents, e.g. Autel Robotics, 1:22-cv-01411 D.I. 8.

Provenance of the portfolio. IPWatchdog's Patent Filings Roundup of 2022-11-03 logged 1:22-cv-01402 and tagged Cedar Lane as an "[IV selloff]" plaintiff — the asserted family came out of the Intellectual Ventures portfolio. IPWatchdog, 2022-11-03. Stanford's NPE Litigation Database likewise categorizes Cedar Lane as an "acquired patents" asserter. NPE DB, patent 8537242.

Counsel. Plaintiff: David W. deBruin, Napoli Shkolnik LLC (Delaware appearances; earlier Texas-filed Cedar Lane suits used Isaac Rabicoff / Rabicoff Law). Defendant-side counsel for Turing Video is not recorded in the sources I could reach — I will not guess.

Pleading quality. The complaints are bare-bones: they identify "Exemplary Defendant Products" only by reference to exhibits, assert that the products "practice the technology claimed," and do not identify specific asserted claims. That pleading style is documented in the parallel complaint analysis for Cedar Lane's Lorex suit. Complaint analysis, 6:22-cv-00654.

No answer or counterclaims were ever filed in 01402. The case terminated by unilateral notice, which under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) is only available before the defendant serves an answer or MSJ — and Cedar Lane's notice tracks that language.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

None. There is no record of a Rule 12(b) motion to dismiss, a § 1404/1406 transfer motion, a motion to stay pending IPR, or any summary judgment motion in 1:22-cv-01402. The only motion practice in the wave was housekeeping:

  • 2023-01-27 — Judge Andrews enters oral orders in the sister cases: "More than 90 days have elapsed since the Complaint was filed, and summons have not been returned executed. Plaintiff is now directed to file a status letter within 3 days." (e.g., Watts Innovations, 1:22-cv-01404 D.I. 6). This is the closest thing to judicial pushback in the whole wave — the court noticing that Cedar Lane was sitting on unserved complaints.
  • 2023-02-02 — Cedar Lane files status reports in the associated cases (D.I. 8 in 01403, 01404, 01405).
  • 2023-02-17 / 2023-03-17 — Plaintiff moves unopposed to extend the defendants' time to respond (e.g., 01404 D.I. 9, 10; 01405 D.I. 9). Plaintiff seeking extensions of its adversaries' deadlines is the classic signature of settlement/license negotiation rather than litigation.
  • 2023-02-24 — In 01403 (YI Technologies), Judge Andrews notes the answer was due 2023-02-21 and none was filed, ordering a status letter within three days.

I could not verify whether the 01402/Turing Video docket contains the same 2023-01-27 order and 2023-02-02 status report; given the identical filing date, identical counsel, and identical assignment, it almost certainly does, but I flag this as inference.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

Never reached. No scheduling order fixing a Markman hearing, no joint claim construction statement, no Markman order. All eleven cases in the wave were gone before the Rule 16 conference stage.

4. Discovery milestones

None. No Rule 26(f) conference, no protective order, no discovery disputes, no ESI or source-code production. Cedar Lane's business model in this campaign was to file, extract a license, and dismiss — the complaints themselves were designed to survive only long enough to prompt a call from defense counsel. Context: Patexia's 2025 Patent Litigation Intelligence Report ranks Cedar Lane the most active plaintiff in the dataset at 409 cases across 109 patents (Patexia) — a volume that is only economically rational if cases are not actually litigated.

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial date was set, no verdict, no JMOL/new-trial motion, and no fee motion — the dismissal notice expressly provides that "[e]ach party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees," foreclosing a § 285 fee fight (and thereby disposing of what would have been Cedar Lane's main exposure in an exceptional-case challenge).

6. Final disposition

  • 2023-10-13 — Cedar Lane files a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i), with prejudice, as to Turing Video, each party bearing its own costs and fees; case closed same day. Verbatim from the record:

"Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc., pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, hereby provides notice that it dismisses with prejudice all claims by Plaintiff against Defendant TURING VIDEO, INC. Each party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees."

(Patsnap, 1:22-cv-01402)

Fate of the rest of the wave (all closed, all by voluntary dismissal unless noted):

Case Defendant Closed Terms
1:22-cv-01411 Autel Robotics USA 2022-11-02 (7 days after filing) Dismissed, D.I. 6–7, signed by Judge Andrews
1:22-cv-01406 Vantage Robotics — Voluntarily dismissed; re-filed as 1:23-cv-00336
1:22-cv-01408 Skydio 2023-02-10 Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i), without prejudice ("Defendant ... has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment")

In the news

What the press has reported about this case, summarized with links to the source articles.

I'll search from several angles to locate actual press coverage of these cases.

Let me search additional angles including specific defendants and trade press.

Found an IPWatchdog roundup directly listing these filings. Let me dig for drone-industry and other coverage.

Press coverage of Cedar Lane Technologies v. Turing Video et al. (D. Del. 1:22-cv-01402–01414)

Bottom line: this batch of cases generated almost no dedicated press coverage. I searched the caption, the individual defendant names (Turing Video, YI Technologies, Watts Innovations, Video Network Security, Vantage Robotics, Skydio, Brinc Drones, Boston Dynamics, Autel Robotics, Adesso, Security Camera Warehouse), the patent numbers (8,537,242 and its parent 6,972,790 / 6,473,527), and verdict/settlement angles, and found no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, LawRoom, Ars Technica, The Verge, or Law360 article on these thirteen filings. The one piece of trade-press journalism that names the cases directly is IPWatchdog's "Patent Filings Roundup" of 2022‑11‑03, which listed the October 26, 2022 Delaware complaints in a docket table alongside Cedar Lane's same-week W.D. Tex. filings against Motorola Solutions, Ricoh, STMicroelectronics and Imperx. The roundup gave case numbers and defendants — Boston Dynamics (1:22‑cv‑01410), Skydio (‑01408), Vantage Robotics (‑01406), Teal Drones (‑01407), Turing Video (‑01402), YI Technologies (‑01403), Video Network Security (‑01405), Brinc Drones (‑01409), Autel Robotics USA (‑01411), Adesso (‑01413) — but treated them as filing-volume data points, not as a drone-industry story, and offered no damages figures, no claim analysis, and no defense or plaintiff comment.

Coverage that does exist is campaign-level commentary on Cedar Lane as a serial filer, not on these defendants. IAM published "Examining the practice of Cedar Lane Technologies – America's top-filing NPE" on 2023‑03‑20, based on an interview with Cedar Lane president Greg Benoit, describing the Canadian company as the most prolific filer of 2022, noting its preference for W.D. Tex., and reporting a 96% settlement rate among its terminated cases. Seyfarth Shaw's "NPE Showcase" post on JD Supra is the most skeptical account, calling Cedar Lane "one of the more prolific NPEs," tracing its portfolio to Intellectual Ventures, recounting the 2020 sanctions imposed by N.D. Cal. Judge Vince Chhabria on Cedar Lane and attorney Isaac Rabicoff for "objectively frivolous" positions taken in bad faith, and concluding that the campaign "appears to be conventional patent-based nuisance litigation designed to generate a large quantity of modest settlements," with the observation that "none of their cases have reached the trial stage." Neither outlet discusses the drone

Sources

Plaintiff representatives

Counsel of record for the plaintiff(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

I'll research the counsel of record for Cedar Lane Technologies in these D. Del. cases.

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.

Scope caveat up front: PACER was not directly queryable in this session, and I hit my search-tool limit before I could pull the actual docket sheets for 1:22-cv-01402 through -01414. What follows is reconstructed from complaint signature blocks, CourtListener/Justia docket extracts, and secondary litigation reports covering the same plaintiff and the same filing wave. I flag verification status per attorney. These cases were short-lived (the lead case 1:22-cv-01402 ran 26 Oct 2022 → 13 Oct 2023, ~352 days, terminated by voluntary dismissal per Patsnap's litigation record), so the universe of appearances is small — typically the complaint, a Rule 7.1 disclosure, a related-cases letter to the Clerk, and the notice of voluntary dismissal.

1. David W. deBruin — Delaware counsel of record (local counsel)

  • Firm/location: Gawthrop Greenwood, PC, 3711 Kennett Pike, Suite 100, Wilmington, DE 19807 (302-777-5353; ddebruin@gawthrop.com). Note a possible firm change: a Law360 attorney profile lists deBruin under Napoli Shkolnik (Wilmington, DE) and ties that profile to a 17 Nov 2022 Cedar Lane filing (v. Openeye US). Since the complaints here were signed in late Oct 2022, confirm which firm appears on the D.I. 1 signature block versus the dismissal papers.
  • Role: The Delaware-barred signatory on Cedar Lane's filings — he is the "counsel for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc." named in the signature blocks and the filer of record in CM/ECF (D. Del. requires a member of the bar of the court; out-of-state counsel appear pro hac vice under D. Del. L.R. 83.5).
  • Experience note: Cedar Lane's regular Delaware patent counsel across its 2020–2023 D. Del. campaign — e.g., Cedar Lane v. LiveXLive Media, 1:20-cv-01370; v. GoPro, 1:21-cv-01319; v. Infinova, 1:21-cv-00648; v. Grandstream Networks, 1:22-cv-01072 (same '242/'790/'527 family as here); v. Best Lighting, 1:23-cv-00380 — routinely filing complaints, Rule 7.1 disclosures, related-case letters, and voluntary dismissals.
  • Verification: High for the Cedar Lane Delaware relationship generally; medium for the specific -01402…-01414 docket entries (Patsnap's case record for 1:22-cv-01402 independently lists "David W. deBruin" as plaintiff's counsel).

2. David R. Bennett — of counsel / pro hac vice (national patent counsel)

  • Firm/location: Direction IP Law, Chicago, IL (P.O. Box 14184, Chicago, IL 60614; dbennett@directionip.com; 312-291-1667).
  • Role: Outside patent counsel; would have appeared pro hac vice in Delaware. Lexology's Retail Patent Litigation Report identifies "Direction IP Law" among the plaintiff's counsel in Cedar Lane's Oct 2022 multi-district filing wave (alongside Gawthrop Greenwood and Rabicoff Law).
  • Experience note: Principal of a small Chicago IP boutique that is a serial filer for patent-assertion plaintiffs — Magnacross LLC v. Proxim Wireless, Veraseal LLC v. Walgreen, Mod Stack LLC v. Edgewater Networks, BSG Tech LLC v. Autozone.com, and more recently TurboCode LLC v. Ceragon Networks (N.D. Ill. 2025), where CourtListener lists him as LEAD ATTORNEY.
  • Verification: Medium. I could not confirm a Notice of Appearance or pro hac vice motion by Bennett on the -01402 docket. Treat as "likely, needs docket confirmation."

3. Isaac Rabicoff — of counsel (prior/parallel counsel; pro hac vice)

  • Firm/location: Rabicoff Law LLC, 4311 N. Ravenswood Ave., Suite 315, Chicago, IL 60613.
  • Role: Filed Cedar Lane's Texas complaints (e.g., Cedar Lane v. Hilton Worldwide, 6:21-cv-00237 W.D. Tex., later transferred to D. Del.; Cedar Lane v. Bank of New York Mellon). In W.D. Tex. he appeared pro hac vice with local counsel of record.
  • Experience note: High-volume patent-plaintiff attorney who filed many Cedar Lane complaints in 2020–2022, typically with Gawthrop Greenwood or Hill Kertscher & Wharton as local counsel.
  • Verification: Low for this case. Confirmed for Cedar Lane's Texas filings; not confirmed as an appearer in the Delaware -01402 series.

4. Raeann Warner — Delaware counsel (earlier Cedar Lane relationship)

  • Firm/location: Wilmington, Delaware (CourtListener lists 302-656-5445). Firm not verified in my sources — do not rely on a firm name without confirming.
  • Role: Listed on CourtListener as LEAD ATTORNEY for Cedar Lane in Cedar Lane v. Enplug, 1:20-cv-00634 (D. Del.).
  • Verification: Low for this case. She evidences Cedar Lane's earlier Delaware counsel arrangement; I found no appearance by her in the Oct 2022 wave.

In-house counsel

None identified. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian entity (Nelson, British Columbia — the complaints state 560 Baker Street, Suite 1) with no in-house litigation counsel appearing on the dockets I could see; all appearances are outside counsel.

Not litigation counsel — flag to avoid confusion

Patsnap's page for 1:22-cv-01402 lists McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd. in connection with the case. That is the '242 patent's prosecution firm, not litigation counsel of record. Do not attribute it to the litigation.

What to pull to close the gaps (5 minutes on PACER/RECAP)

  1. D.I. 1 (Complaint) signature block — names the Delaware signatory and any "Of Counsel" listing; this is the definitive answer for the Oct 2022 firm.
  2. Any Notice of Appearance (deBruin's firm at the time; cf. Cedar Lane v. Hilton, D.I. 17, where he filed a Notice of Appearance after transfer).
  3. Any Motion for Admission Pro Hac Vice — confirms Bennett and/or Rabicoff.
  4. Notice of Voluntary Dismissal — the last filing, usually signed by the same Delaware counsel; useful for cross-checking the firm if it changed mid-case.
  5. For the related Cedar Lane Delaware matters, RECAP dockets at courtlistener.com/recap for gov.uscourts.ded.* and the aggregated Clerk's related-case docket (1:99-mc-09999) are the fastest free route.

Bottom line: The one attorney I can state with confidence as counsel of record for Cedar Lane in this Delaware filing wave is David W. deBruin (D. Del. Bar No. 4846), then of Gawthrop Greenwood in Wilmington, with David R. Bennett of Direction IP Law (Chicago) as the likely pro hac vice patent counsel and Isaac Rabicoff as Cedar Lane's recurring out-of-state filer. Firm affiliation for deBruin as of the exact filing date, and any pro hac vice appearances by Bennett, should be confirmed against the docket before publication.

Defendant representatives

Counsel of record for the defendant(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

I'll research counsel of record across this case family. Let me start with parallel searches on the docket and party-specific representation.

Key data point: the docket shows 1:22-cv-01407 is Teal Drones and 01408 is Skydio — so the numbering isn't a clean defendant-order map. Let me pull the actual dockets and appearance filings.

Bottom line

I could not verify a single attorney of record for any defendant in this case family, and the evidence I did retrieve points to a substantive explanation rather than a research gap: these cases were resolved by plaintiff-initiated voluntary dismissal before any defendant entered an appearance. In every docket I was able to retrieve (01407 Teal Drones, 01408 Skydio, 01410 Boston Dynamics), the only filer of record is plaintiff's counsel, and the terminating document is a NOTICE of Voluntary Dismissal by Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. — which under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) requires no defendant signature and no defense appearance. Absent any D.I. entry captioned "NOTICE of Attorney Appearance ... on behalf of [defendant]," there is no counsel of record to report, and D. Del. practice (LR 83.5) does not permit representation without one.

I am stating this as a negative finding rather than filling the table with plausible-looking names. Naming counsel in a case where none appeared would be fabrication.

What the retrieved dockets actually show

Case Defendant Docket record retrieved Defense appearances
1:22-cv-01402 Turing Video, Inc. Closed 10/13/2023 (352 days) — voluntary dismissal per Patsnap litigation index None found; 352-day pendency makes an appearance likely but unverified — highest-priority PACER pull
1:22-cv-01406 Vantage Robotics, LLC Filed 10/26/2022 None found
1:22-cv-01407 Teal Drones, Inc. (not Skydio) D.I. 6 unopposed EOT to respond (12/22/2022, filed by deBruin); D.I. 9 Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (1/25/2023); D.I. 10 SO ORDERED dismissing (1/25/2023, Judge Andrews) None. Only plaintiff's counsel appears in the docket text
1:22-cv-01408 Skydio, Inc. D.I. 6 oral order directing status letter (1/27/2023); D.I. 9 Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (2/9/2023); D.I. 10 SO ORDERED (2/10/2023) None
1:22-cv-01410 Boston Dynamics, Inc. D.I. 1–5 only (complaint, magistrate referral forms, patent report, Rule 7.1, summons); docket last retrieved 10/26/2022 None — docket snapshot predates any responsive filing
1:22-cv-01414 Security Camera Warehouse, Inc. Filed 10/26/2022 None found
Remaining defendants (YI Technologies, Watts Innovations, Video Network Security, Brinc Drones, Autel Robotics, Adesso) — Not individually retrievable within search limits Unverified

The 01407 and 01408 sequences are instructive: plaintiff sought an extension of the responsive deadline, then dismissed weeks later. That signature pattern (EOT → Rule 41(a)(1) dismissal, no answer, no IPR) is the Cedar Lane settlement template documented by Seyfarth's NPE Showcase and is why defense counsel rarely surface on these dockets at all.

Plaintiff side (for record completeness)

  • David W. deBruin — sole filer of record across the D. Del. family (complaints, EOTs, dismissals). Verified in docket text as counsel for Cedar Lane Technologies Inc.; firm affiliation not confirmed in the sources I retrieved, so I am not attributing one. Note this is a different roster from Cedar Lane's W.D. Tex. campaign, which was driven by Isaac Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law LLC) and produced the 2020 N.D. Cal. sanctions order discussed in the existing summary.

Contradictions with the case metadata — flagging explicitly

  1. Defendant-to-case-number mapping is wrong. 1:22-cv-01407 is Teal Drones, Inc., and 1:22-cv-01408 is Skydio, Inc. The caption's implicit defendant ordering does not hold, and Teal Drones is a defendant not listed in the metadata's defendant list.
  2. The range 01402–01414 is not 13 contiguous Cedar Lane cases. 1:22-cv-01405 appears on IPWatchdog's filing roundup as AstraZeneca v. Taro Pharmaceuticals, and D. Del. numbers are assigned sequentially across all civil filings. 1:22-cv-01409 is confirmed Cedar Lane. The family must be established by docket-by-docket confirmation, not by numeric range.
  3. Patent count per case. The 01410 docket's D.I. 3 patent report lists both 6,972,790 and 8,537,242, consistent with the prior section's note. 6,472,527 also appears in the Turing Video case per IPWatchdog and Patsnap. The metadata's single-patent framing is incomplete.

How to close this out (nothing here can be faked)

  1. Pull the full PACER docket sheets for 01402, 01406, 01411–01414 — I only reached partial third-party mirrors (Justia, Patexia, Patsnap), which truncate around the dismissal entry. Turing Video is the one case with a realistic chance of a defense appearance given 352 days of pendency.
  2. Run a D. Del. CM/ECF "Attorney" report or a PACER Case Locator search on each corporate name to catch appearances in the companion suits (1:23-cv-00336 Vantage Robotics, 1:23-cv-00337 Video Network Security, 1:22-cv-01505 Openeye), where the same defendants were re-sued and counsel may be capturable.
  3. If the goal is licensing/settlement diligence rather than litigation posture, the operative question is Cedar Lane's counsel and the dismissal terms, not defendant-side appearances — the sealed settlement agreements in those follow-on cases would be the real target.

If you can authorize pulling the four missing dockets, I can populate the per-attorney table you asked for with firm, office, and experience notes for whoever actually appears.

Record id: 8537242-1-22-cv-01402-through-1-22-cv-01414 · edit in Admin