Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Uhlmann Price Securities, LLC

I'll research the parties, the patent, and the docket before drafting.

Initial data is in hand. Now let me verify the docket, the patent's provenance, the patent's assignment history, and any PTAB proceedings.

I'll research this case and the asserted patent. Let me start with several parallel searches.

Now let me get the actual docket and check for PTAB proceedings on the '782 patent.

Bottom line

This was a short, single-patent, pre-answer case that never reached any contested milestone. Cedar Lane filed on 2025-12-17, Uhlmann Price never answered or moved, and Cedar Lane unilaterally dismissed with prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) on 2026-05-08 — a cost-neutral exit (each side bears its own fees). There is no motion to dismiss, transfer, or stay, no Markman, no discovery of note, no trial or post-trial practice, and no appeal. I found no PTAB IPR/PGR on the '782 patent.

Because this case is analytically thin in isolation, the substantive value is in (a) the precise mechanism of termination and what it signals, and (b) its place in Cedar Lane's large, coordinated '782 assertion campaign against broker-dealers, which is where the real strategic data sits.

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Snapshot

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Chronology

2025-12-17 — Filing and initial papers. Cedar Lane filed the complaint (Dkt. 1, 5 pp.) with a jury demand, attaching Exhibit 1 (the '782 patent, 17 pp.) and Exhibit 2 (a claim chart, 19 pp.), plus civil cover sheet; filing fee $405, receipt AILNDC-24490727. Same day: attorney appearance by Isaac Rabicoff (Dkt. 2) and a motion for disclosure of plaintiff's Rule 7.1 statement (Dkt. 3). Case assigned randomly to Judge Gottschall; standard Local Rule 73.1(b) magistrate-consent notice issued. Patent report mailed to the USPTO thereafter. (IP Verse docket; PacerMonitor public docket)

The complaint was Cedar Lane's standard form pleading in this campaign: Canadian corporation (Nelson, B.C.), assignee "of all right, title and interest" in the '782 patent; direct infringement under §271(a) plus testing/use by employees; induced infringement premised on the complaint-and-claim-charts providing "actual knowledge"; willfulness and §285 exceptional-case prayer. Claim 1 (method) requires associating a trading entity with an identifier, acquiring trade-history information for that identifier, receiving a liquidity-provider offer based on a profile indicating whether the entity's trades "would generate a profit," the offer being made only to that identifier, and processing the offer through an exchange with a bid/offer spread. The specification's framing is "toxic trader" risk and spread differentiation in anonymous electronic markets.

No answer, no counterclaims, no Rule 12 practice. The only defensive activity reflected in the public record is retention of Faegre Drinker. Unlike its companion case against AOS, Inc. in the same district — where the defendant answered and counterclaimed on 2025-12-23 (Dkt. 11) and stipulated out a week later — Uhlmann Price never joined issue.

No pre-trial motions of substance. Nothing in the record shows a Rule 12(b)(3)/(6) motion, a §1404(a) transfer motion, a §1406 venue challenge (the obvious defense in a Northern District of Illinois suit against a securities broker with no apparent Chicago nexus), or a stay pending PTAB review. Cedar Lane's dismissal notice affirmatively recites that the defendant had "not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment," and no dispositive motion appears on the docket.

No Markman, no discovery milestones, no trial, no post-trial motions. The case never received a scheduling order, did not reach a joint claim-construction statement, and generated no fact or expert discovery disputes. There is nothing to report on JMOL, new trial, or §285 fees.

2026-05-08 — Termination. Cedar Lane filed a unilateral notice of dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), with prejudice, and the case was closed. The termination text, as transcribed from the docket by the aggregator: "Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(i), Plaintiff hereby dismisses this action with prejudice. Defendant has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment. Each party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees." (Patsnap Eureka case record)

No appeal. A Rule 41(a)(1) dismissal with prejudice is a final, appealable judgment in the Seventh Circuit, but no notice of appeal was filed and none would be expected: the dismissal was invited by the plaintiff itself.

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Strategic reading of the outcome

The mechanism matters more than the result. Three things distinguish this termination from the typical Cedar Lane exit in the same campaign:

1. It was a unilateral Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice, not a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) stipulation. Nearly every other '782 case resolved by joint stipulation — Bank of America (E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-01225, dismissed with prejudice 2026-03-12 by stipulated order on Dkt. 17, with the court expressly denying remaining relief as moot); Hilltop Securities (N.D. Tex. 3:25-cv-00483, stipulated dismissal with prejudice

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc.

Bottom line: Exactly one attorney appeared for Cedar Lane in this case — Isaac Philip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago, Illinois). He was the sole signatory on the complaint and every plaintiff-side filing, and he is a member of the N.D. Ill. Trial Bar, so the firm served as both lead and local counsel. No co-counsel, no pro hac vice motion, and no in-house appearance ever hit the docket before the case closed. Nothing here was sealed; counsel is identifiable from the public docket.

Attorney table

Docket support

• ECF No. 1 (Dec. 17, 2025) — Complaint for Patent Infringement, jury demand, with Ex. 1 (US 8,577,782) and Ex. 2 (claim chart), signed/filed by Rabicoff. Judge Joan B. Gottschall assigned; Magistrate Judge Heather K. McShain designated.
• ECF No. 2 (Dec. 17, 2025) — "ATTORNEY Appearance for Plaintiff Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. by Isaac Philip Rabicoff."
• ECF No. 3 (Dec. 17, 2025) — Motion for disclosure of plaintiff's Rule 7.1 statement (Rabicoff).
• Notice of Voluntary Dismissal with prejudice filed May 8, 2026 under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i): "Plaintiff hereby dismisses this action with prejudice. Defendant has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment. Each party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees." Case terminated same day; no answer, no Rule 12 motion, no IPR.

Sources: PacerMonitor docket, No. 1:25-cv-15329; IPVerse docket summary; PatSnap Eureka case record; RPX Insight; Rabicoff Law firm bio; PTAB filing listing Rabicoff as lead counsel with the Ravenswood Ave. address (May 22, 2025), PTABX.

Points a careful reader should note

1. No second chair, and none needed. Rabicoff is admitted to the N.D. Ill. Trial Bar, which is why this case (unlike the earlier E.D. Tex. and S.D.N.Y. Cedar Lane filings, where he sought pro hac vice admission) required no separate local counsel. Kenneth A. Matuszewski (Reg. No. 74,791), Rabicoff's frequent backup counsel in PTAB matters, did not enter an appearance here.
2. No in-house counsel appeared. Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc. (a Canadian entity) never had an officer or in-house lawyer sign a filing; Rabicoff was its only voice in the case.
3. This is a different lineup than Cedar Lane's earlier campaigns. Cedar Lane's 2019–2023 waves were reportedly driven by David R. Bennett (Direction IP Law) and Howard Gitten (Lewis Brisbois); the 2025–26 securities-industry wave asserting the '782 patent — including this case and the near-simultaneous suits against Prosperum Securities (N.D. Ill. No. 1:25-cv-15327), Bank of America and HSBC (E.D. Tex.), Beech Hill, First Manhattan, Empire Asset, Percheron, Spartan, Maxim, Morgan Stanley and Raymond James (S.D.N.Y./W.D. Tex.) — is a Rabicoff Law operation. I'd flag the earlier-firm attribution as background knowledge rather than something confirmed in the sources pulled for this case.
4. Defense side (for context): Uhlmann Price was reportedly represented by Carrie Anne Beyer of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, but no answer or motion was filed before the Rule 41 dismissal, and I could not verify her appearance from a PACER entry directly — treat as reported, not confirmed. The parallel cases were defended by Fish & Richardson (Neil McNabnay, Louis Fogel, Lance Wyatt), which is likely why several of these settled/dismissed quickly.
5. Practical significance: because the dismissal was with prejudice and cost-neutral, there is no fee-shifting or Rule 11 tail to examine — the only counsel-of-record question in this case is whether Rabicoff faced any sanction or pro hac vice issue, and the docket shows none.

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

Let me verify the reported defense counsel against the docket and attorney records.

Let me check the CourtListener/PACER docket directly to confirm whether any defense appearance was ever filed.

Counsel of Record — Defendant Uhlmann Price Securities, LLC

Bottom line: The record for this case is unusually thin on the defense side. The case was dismissed with prejudice by Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice on 8 May 2026, roughly 142 days after filing (17 Dec. 2025), before any answer or dispositive motion. That procedural posture matters: no defense answer, motion, or substantive filing appears in the docket excerpts I could retrieve, so any defense counsel identification comes from aggregator data rather than a confirmed attorney-appearance entry.

Identified attorney

Experience anchors for Beyer (well-sourced):

• Faegre Drinker represents Microsoft in the news-publisher copyright/tech litigation; Beyer appears pro hac vice in both The New York Times Co. v. Microsoft Corp., No. 1:23-cv-11195 (S.D.N.Y.) and the consolidated Daily News LP v. Microsoft Corp. MDL (S.D.N.Y.) — see e.g. N.D. Ill.-style appearance language in Dkt. 476 in the NYT action and Dkt. 1698 in 1:25-md-03143.
• Listed as counsel of record in Hafeman v. Google LLC, No. 24-1600 (Fed. Cir.) via CourtListener's party/attorney records (Faegre Drinker, Chicago).
• Law360's attorney profile lists her on Wildfang Co. v. Target Corp. (D. Or., Feb. 2020) — a trademark matter.
• Martindale/faegredrinker.com confirm Illinois bar since 2004, USPTO registration active since April 2007.

Sourcing and verification caveats — read these before relying on the above

1. The identification of Beyer comes from a single derived source. PatSnap Eureka's litigation record for 1:25-cv-15329 lists "Defendant counsel: Carrie Anne Beyer — Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP," and states attorney names "appear as recorded in the docket." I was not able to independently confirm a corresponding attorney-appearance entry on the N.D. Ill. docket in the materials I retrieved.
2. Other dockets cut the other way. PacerMonitor's public docket extract for this case (case ID 61892916) shows only plaintiff-side entries — Dkt. 1 (complaint), 2 (Rabicoff appearance), 3 (Rule 7.1 motion) — and IP Verse's party table lists Uhlmann Price Securities as "Represented By: —" (i.e., nothing). Neither is dispositive, since both pull partial dockets, but neither corroborates the Faegre Drinker identification.
3. No other defense attorneys surfaced. I found no second Faegre Drinker lawyer, no separate Chicago local-counsel firm, no pro hac vice motions, and no in-house/general counsel for Uhlmann Price Securities anywhere in the record. Uhlmann Price is a small Illinois broker-dealer (organized 1997; principals James Baer and Alan K. Konn), so it is plausible that it had no in-house patent counsel.
4. Nothing is sealed as far as the record shows; the gap is one of incomplete docket coverage, not sealing. The dismissal notice itself is public and recites that "Defendant has not yet answered the Complaint or moved for summary judgment," with each party bearing its own fees and costs — meaning Uhlmann Price recovered no fees despite (apparently) retaining outside counsel.

Context worth noting for the defense-side narrative

This suit was part of a coordinated Cedar Lane campaign asserting US 8,577,782 ("Trading with conditional offers for semi-anonymous participants") against a wave of broker-dealers and securities firms — e.g., Cedar Lane v. Beech Hill Securities (S.D.N.Y. 1:25-cv-07840), First Manhattan Securities (1:25-cv-09485), Empire Asset Management (1:25-cv-09526), Percheron (1:25-cv-09531), Spartan Capital Securities (1:25-cv-09535), Henley & Company (E.D.N.Y. 1:25-cv-06328), Bank of America (E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-01225), and later Maxim Group, Morgan Stanley, and Raymond James — all by Isaac Philip Rabicoff of Rabicoff Law LLC. The December 2025 Retail Patent Litigation Report (Lexology/LexBlog, 3 Mar. 2026) groups Uhlmann Price with these filings before Judge Gottschall. Several of these cases ended in early settlement/stipulated dismissal (e.g., Bank of America: joint motion to stay pending settlement on 2 Mar. 2026, dismissal with prejudice 11 Mar. 2026), which is consistent with this case's pre-answer Rule 41 dismissal.

I did not locate any PTAB proceeding on the '782 patent in the sources reviewed; that absence is not a confirmed negative.

Recommended next step to firm this up: pull the full N.D. Ill. docket (CM/ECF, case 1:25-cv-15329) and look for a docket entry in the March–May 2026 window along the lines of "ATTORNEY Appearance for Defendant Uhlmann Price Securities, LLC by ___" and any Rule 83.15/LCvR 83.5 notification of affiliates. If no such entry exists, the correct characterization is that no defense counsel formally appeared of record, and the Faegre Drinker/Beyer attribution reflects pre-appearance representation or aggregator inference only.