Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Vector Security, Inc.

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

Now let me dig into the parties, the patents' validity history, and IPR linkage.

Case Overview

The parties. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. is a Canadian corporation with a principal place of business at 560 Baker Street, Suite 1, Nelson, British Columbia — not a Pittsburgh or even a U.S. operating company. It is a classic patent assertion entity: Stanford's NPE Litigation Database classifies Cedar Lane as an "acquired patents" asserter, and Unified Patents describes it as "an NPE" that took assignments of patents originating with Intellectual Ventures/AVInnov. (A Shenzhen IP Protection Center risk alert further pegs Cedar Lane as Canadian-incorporated in 2019, founded by attorney Greg Benoit, holding ~193 U.S. patents — 191 acquired, only 22 active — with 325 district-court suits filed and a claimed rank as the most active patent plaintiff in the U.S. in 2021; that sourcing is a foreign government advisory relying on Lex Machina, not a court record, so treat the statistics as directional.) Cedar Lane was represented here by Isaac Rabicoff's Rabicoff Law LLC — a firm the same advisory ties to ~58 Cedar Lane suits — together with Napoli Shkolnik PLLC (William S. Berman, who was substituted out for David W. Debruin on March 24, 2023). See docket; Stanford NPE DB. Vector Security, Inc. is the opposite profile: a privately held, Pittsburgh-headquartered electronic security and smart-home/automation provider operating 50+ years with roughly 400,000 monitored homes and businesses across ~58 branch locations, a sister company of the Philadelphia Contributionship (both under TPC Holdings), with two Five Diamond central stations and a Vector Security Networks division serving multi-site commercial customers. Vector appeared through Lance E. Wyatt (per the docket) and answered with affirmative defenses and counterclaims on April 5, 2023; Patsnap lists Wyatt's firm as Fish & Richardson LLP, a detail I could not independently confirm from a primary source. See Vector company background.

The patents and the accused technology. Two patents from a single family are asserted, both titled "Host interface for imaging arrays": U.S. Patent No. 6,972,790 (issued Dec. 6, 2005; application filed Dec. 21, 2000; earliest priority Jan. 21, 2000; inventor Mark Suska) and U.S. Patent No. 8,537,242 (issued Sept. 17, 2013; divisional application filed Oct. 27, 2005). In one line each: the '790 claims an apparatus — an on-chip interface between a CMOS image sensor and a host processor that buffers pixel data in a memory (e.g., a FIFO), generates an interrupt or bus-request signal "in response to the quantity of data in the memory," and lets the processor drain the buffer at its own clock rate, eliminating glue logic; the '242 claims the corresponding method — receiving image data from an imaging array, storing it in a FIFO, updating a FIFO counter, comparing the count to a FIFO limit, and asserting an interrupt to trigger transfer. The accused instrumentality is not identifiable with any precision: the complaint pleads infringement against "Exemplary Defendant Products" defined only by reference to claim-chart exhibits (Exhibits 3 and 4), and the public filings I reviewed do not name specific products. Given the claimed subject matter and Vector's business, the theory necessarily targets camera/video-surveillance and imaging-capable security hardware deployed or sold by Vector (itself a dealer/integrator, not a sensor or chip manufacturer), and the complaint pleads direct infringement plus inducement through "product literature and website materials" instructing end users — a downstream-user theory typical of this campaign. That product identification is an inference from the patent subject matter, not a documented fact. Note also that both patents are past or near the end of term: Patsnap estimates the '790's expiry at Aug. 1, 2023 — five months after dismissal — and the '242, as a divisional sharing the 2000 priority chain, runs on essentially the same clock; Patsnap records no validity challenge ever mounted against the '790. See Patsnap case record; Lexology Feb. 2023 report.

Posture, venue, and why it matters. Cedar Lane filed on February 8, 2023 as Civil Action No. 2:23-cv-00205 in the Western District of Pennsylvania, served Vector on February 13, and the case was assigned to Magistrate Judge Cynthia Reed Eddy — the docket shows no Article III judge, and Judge Eddy's April 6, 2023 Rule 16.1 order still solicited the parties' "Willingness to Proceed before Magistrate Judge," so the precise jurisdictional basis for magistrate disposition is not clear from the public record. The case never reached the merits: after an unopposed extension to April 5, Vector answered and counterclaimed (both sides demanded a jury), and on April 10–11, 2023 the parties stipulated to dismissal — plaintiff's claims with prejudice, Vector's counterclaims without prejudice, each side bearing its own costs and fees — mooting the May 16 case-management conference. Total life: 62 days. Venue is the analytically interesting piece. Cedar Lane's '790/'242 campaign was overwhelmingly filed in W.D. Tex. before Judge Albright and in D. Del. (Patsnap counts 52 cases on the '790 alone, against targets running from Amazon, Qualcomm and Motorola to Hertz, Enterprise, Xerox and a long tail of camera and security-integrator defendants). Suing in W.D. Pa. rather than the plaintiff-friendly Western District of Texas is what a foreign N

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

Cedar Lane Techs. Inc. v. Vector Security, Inc., No. 2:23-cv-00205 (W.D. Pa.) — Key Developments and Outcome

Bottom line up front: This was a 62-day "file-and-fold" case. Cedar Lane filed a two-patent complaint on 2023-02-08, Vector Security answered with affirmative defenses and counterclaims on 2023-04-05, and the parties stipulated to dismissal six days later — Cedar Lane's claims with prejudice, Vector's counterclaims without prejudice, each side bearing its own fees and costs (2023-04-10/11). The case never reached a Rule 16 conference, discovery, Markman, dispositive motions, or trial. There is no evidence of any PTAB proceeding on either asserted patent.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

Patents asserted. U.S. Patent No. 6,972,790 ("Host interface for imaging arrays," issued 2005-12-06, filed 2000-12-21) and U.S. Patent No. 8,537,242 (same title, issued 2013-09-17, filed 2005-10-27 as a divisional of the '790 application). The '790 claims an on-die interface/buffer (FIFO or addressable memory) that decouples a CMOS image sensor's fixed data rate from a host processor's bus, generating an interrupt or bus request based on the quantity of buffered data; the '242 claims the corresponding method (FIFO counter, FIFO limit comparison, interrupt with enable signal). The complaint asserted representative claims via claim-chart exhibits rather than identifying accused products in the body — the standard Rabicoff Law/Cedar Lane template used verbatim in dozens of its complaints. Sources: Justia docket; Patexia documents list; Patsnap case record; Lexology, February 2023 Retail Patent Litigation Report (link) (listing Rabicoff Law and Napoli Shkolnik as plaintiff's counsel and MJ Eddy as presiding).

Caveat on the counterclaims: The docket text (Dkt. 10) confirms a counterclaim was pleaded but the public docket abstracts I could retrieve do not reproduce its counts. Given the template, they almost certainly sought declaratory judgment of non-infringement and invalidity (and possibly unenforceability), but I could not verify the counts from a primary source. Treat the substance of the counterclaims as unconfirmed pending a PACER pull of Dkt. 10.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

None were filed. No Rule 12(b)(6) motion (despite the 2023-02-10 standing order), no § 1404(a) transfer motion (unsurprising — Vector Security is a Pennsylvania-based company, HQ in Warrendale, PA, squarely in the Western District), no stay pending IPR, no preliminary injunction, no motion to sever, and no summary judgment motion. The only contested-adjacent filings were the pro hac vice application and the dismissal stipulation.

3. Claim construction

None. No Markman scheduling order, no joint claim construction statement, no hearing, no opinion. The case was dismissed before the Rule 16 case management conference scheduled for 2023-05-16.

4. Discovery milestones

None of consequence. The Rule 16.1 order (Dkt. 12, entered 2023-04-06) set a Rule 26(f) meeting for on or before 2023-04-25, with Rule 26 report, proposed CMO, ADR stipulation, confidential position letters, and consent-to-magistrate forms due 2023-05-12. The dismissal on 2023-04-11 mooted all of it; the Rule 26(f) conference never occurred and no discovery requests were served. There was therefore no discovery-driven strategic event — no source-code production, no FRAND/damages discovery, no third-party subpoenas to camera OEMs (which in this campaign would have been the route to the upstream supplier whose indemnity Vector would have invoked).

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial date, no verdict, no JMOL/new-trial motion, and — importantly — no § 285 fee motion. The dismissal order affirmatively allocated fees: each party bears its own.

6. Final disposition (the operative event)

No appeal was taken (and none was possible on a stipulated dismissal of this kind without a reserved right). The case is closed and inactive; there is no present posture to monitor.

A terminology caution: several litigation databases (Patsnap, and by extension some secondary reports) characterize the termination basis as a "consent judgment." That is a vendor taxonomy, not the court's language. The order approved a stipulated dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii); no judgment was entered, and there was no Rule 68 offer of judgment or injunctive decree. If you cite the disposition, cite Dkt. 13/16, not "consent judgment."

Substance of the deal: Both dismissals are one-sided in a way that matters. Cedar Lane's claims are gone with prejudice — Vector has a durable, claim-preclusive end to this assertion of the '790 and '242 patents against it, but no judicial holding of invalidity and no license recorded. Vector's counterclaims were dropped without prejudice, so Vector preserved its invalidity/non-infringement theories (and can re-assert them in any future dispute or a DJ action), while giving up the chance to convert the invalidity defense into a judgment. Whether any payment changed hands is not disclosed anywhere in the public record; on this record there is no evidence of a paid license, and the "each party bears its own costs and fees" language means no fee-shifting. Typical of Cedar Lane resolutions, the likely economics are a modest confidential payment or a no-payment walk-away in exchange for a covenant not to sue — but I cannot source that, and you should not state it as fact.

7. Parallel PTAB proceedings

**No IPR, PGR,

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

Counsel of Record for Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc. — No. 2:23-cv-00205 (W.D. Pa.)

Procedural posture that frames the answer

The case ran only 62 days (complaint filed 2/8/2023; dismissal 4/11/2023), so the plaintiff-side appearance history is short and entirely docket-visible. The full docket (Dkts. 1–17) shows two attorneys appearing for Cedar Lane and no in-house counsel, no sealed filings, and no intervenors. Sources: Justia docket; Patexia document list.

1. David Walter deBruin — counsel of record at dismissal (effectively lead/final counsel)

• Role: Substituted in as counsel of record for Cedar Lane on 3/24/2023 (Dkt. 9, Notice of Substitution of Attorney Appearance) and remained the sole plaintiff-side attorney through dismissal — he filed the Stipulation of Dismissal (Dkt. 13, 4/10/2023) that the Court approved (Dkt. 16, 4/11/2023).
• Firm / office: Napoli Shkolnik LLC, 919 North Market Street, Suite 1801, Wilmington, Delaware (DE Bar No. 4846; ddebruin@napolilaw.com). Confirmed in filings from contemporaneous Cedar Lane matters, e.g. D. Del. filing, Apr. 5, 2023.
• Patent experience: A dedicated patent litigator, not a mass-tort generalist — Law360's attorney page lists him on Cedar Lane's Delaware patent suits (e.g., Cedar Lane Techs. v. Openeye US Inc., D. Del., Nov. 2022) as well as BE Labs, Inc. v. Belkin International (Law360 profile). He was the filing/lead attorney for Cedar Lane in other cases on the same '790/'242 family, including Cedar Lane v. Video Network Security LLC (D. Del.) and Cedar Lane v. Leica (W.D. Tex. 2:22-cv-06226). He now appears as of counsel (David L. De Bruin) with a practice concentrated on patent litigation and Federal Circuit/PTAB work (NatLawReview bio).
• Caveat: No pro hac vice motion for him appears on this docket; he entered by Notice of Substitution, so the docket does not disclose the basis of his W.D. Pa. admission.

2. William Steven ("W. Steven") Berman — original counsel of record (filing counsel), terminated

• Role: The attorney who appeared for Cedar Lane at case opening — he is the filer on the service return (Dkt. 6, 2/13/2023) and on the Unopposed Motion to Extend Time to Answer (Dkt. 7, 3/3/2023, granted at Dkt. 8). Terminated by the Notice of Substitution, Dkt. 9 (3/24/2023), which states expressly "Attorney William Steven Berman terminated."
• Firm / office: Napoli Shkolnik PLLC, 1 Greentree Centre, Suite 201, 10,000 Lincoln Drive East, Marlton, New Jersey (NJ Bar No. 011971986; also Pennsylvania-licensed) (Avvo profile; NJ court pro hac vice orders).
• Experience note: A mass-tort/product-liability litigator (Accutane, Fosamax, PPI, pelvic mesh MDLs) who has served as the local/filing counsel of record in Napoli Shkolnik's New Jersey–Pennsylvania–New York filings; no patent-specific track record is documented for him — consistent with his role here as short-lived filing counsel before the patent-side attorney took over.

3. Reported but not of record: Isaac P. Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law LLC)

• The Lexology February 2023 Retail Patent Litigation Report (the source of the existing case summary) lists plaintiff's counsel as "Rabicoff Law; Napoli Shkolnik." Lexology.
• However, no notice of appearance, pro hac vice motion, or other filing by Mr. Rabicoff appears anywhere on this docket. He is Cedar Lane's regular patent counsel nationally — Rabicoff Law LLC (Chicago, IL; earlier Alexandria, VA), typically appearing pro hac vice alongside local counsel — and appears in dozens of Cedar Lane suits, e.g., the 2025–2026 S.D.N.Y./E.D. Tex. wave (example docket), and previously on the 2019 Cedar Lane v. Acer W.D. Tex. case. The Lexology entry most likely reflects the caption/"Appearance of Counsel" attachment to the complaint (Dkt. 1, Att. #2) rather than a docketed appearance. Treat him as complaint-caption counsel only, not counsel of record, for this case.

Bottom line

Sourcing gaps to flag: (i) I could not retrieve the complaint PDF (Dkt. 1) or its "Appearance of Counsel" attachment, so the signature block on the complaint itself is unverified; (ii) the docket snapshots available via Justia/UniCourt/Patexia were last pulled in spring 2023 — but because the case closed 4/11/2023 and Dkt. 17 (4/12/2023) is the final entry, the appearance list is almost certainly complete; (iii) no sealed or ex parte appearance exists per the docket.

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

Docket confirmed. Now let me verify the counsel details, firm, and whether other attorneys appeared.

Let me look for the actual Answer filing signature block and any PACER Monitor attorney listing, plus check local counsel requirements.

Counsel of Record for Defendant Vector Security, Inc.

Case: Cedar Lane Technologies, Inc. v. Vector Security, Inc., No. 2:23-cv-00205 (W.D. Pa.) (Magistrate Judge Cynthia Reed Eddy) — filed Feb. 8, 2023; dismissed with prejudice per stipulation, Apr. 11, 2023 (62 days).

Bottom line

Only one attorney ever appeared on the docket for Vector Security: Lance E. Wyatt, Jr. of Fish & Richardson P.C. (Dallas, TX), admitted pro hac vice on the final day of the case. No local W.D. Pa. counsel, no in-house counsel, and no other firm appeared of record. The case closed so quickly that the defendant's appearance is essentially a single-attorney, single-filing record.

Counsel table

Supporting detail and caveats

• Docket citations (verified): Dkt. 10 — "ANSWER to #1 Complaint, AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSES, COUNTERCLAIM against CEDAR LANE TECHNOLOGIES INC. by VECTOR SECURITY, INC. (Wyatt, Lance)" (4/5/2023); Dkt. 11 — corporate disclosure (4/5/2023); Dkt. 14 — "First MOTION for attorney Lance Wyatt to Appear Pro Hac Vice" (4/10/2023, fee paid); Dkt. 15 — order granting PHV (4/11/2023); Dkt. 16 — order approving stipulation of dismissal (4/11/2023); Dkt. 17 — AO-120 notification to the PTO (4/12/2023). Sources: Justia docket; Patexia document list; UniCourt.
• No separate local counsel appears of record. Justia's "Represented By" field lists only Lance E. Wyatt, Jr. for Vector Security. Because the pro hac vice motion was not filed until April 10, 2023 — five days after Wyatt filed the Answer and counterclaim — it is likely the answer was filed subject to a curative PHV motion, but the docket does not disclose whether a W.D. Pa.-barred sponsoring/co-counsel attorney was named in the PHV papers. I could not verify the contents of Dkt. 14 (4 pages) or whether the Answer's signature block named additional Fish & Richardson attorneys; the docket attributes all filings to Wyatt alone. Treat any additional-attorney claim as unsourced.
• No in-house counsel appeared. Vector Security (headquartered in the Pittsburgh area, which is why W.D. Pa. venue was convenient for plaintiff) never entered an in-house appearance; Dkt. 11's disclosure statement identifies no parent/affiliate.
• Nothing appears sealed. The filing record is short and public, but note the case was one of many in Cedar Lane's NPE campaign — plaintiff's counsel of record was David W. Debruin (Napoli Shkolnik PLLC), substituting for William S. Berman (Dkt. 9), with Isaac Rabicoff (Rabicoff Law) identified in the Lexology report as campaign counsel.
• Termination posture: The parties stipulated to dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) — claims against Vector Security dismissed with prejudice, Vector Security's counterclaims dismissed without prejudice, each side bearing its own fees and costs (Dkt. 13, approved at Dkt. 16). That structure is consistent with a paid license/settlement rather than an adjudicated merits win; there is no claim-construction order, no Markman briefing, and no PTAB proceeding on the '790 or '242 patents arising from this case.

Practical read

For a follow-on or comparison analysis, the key point is that Vector Security's defense was run out of Fish & Richardson's Dallas office by a single registered patent attorney with prior Cedar Lane exposure (the VIDEOR matter), and the case resolved in 62 days on a with-prejudice dismissal of plaintiff's claims — an early-exit template rather than a litigated outcome. If you need the actual identity of any sponsoring local attorney or co-signers on the Answer, that requires pulling Dkt. 10 and Dkt. 14 from PACER/RECAP; I could not retrieve those PDFs.