Commworks Solutions Inc v. Adtran Inc

I'll research this case thoroughly before drafting the overview.

Let me dig into the docket outcome, the patent's provenance, and related PTAB/litigation activity.

Good progress. Now let me verify the outcome, the motion to dismiss grounds, and the plaintiff's corporate structure.

Case Overview & Background

Parties. Plaintiff CommWorks Solutions Inc. is a patent-assertion vehicle (NPE/PAE) that appears in the litigation record both as an "Inc." (this N.D. Ala. case) and as CommWorks Solutions, LLC in its many parallel suits; the Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies it as an NPE holding "acquired patents," and Unified Patents has described CommWorks Solutions, LLC as "an NPE and subsidiary of IP Investments Group LLC," while a Rule 7 disclosure in CommWorks v. Extreme Networks (W.D. Tex. No. 6:23-cv-00835) identified Brainbox Innovations, LLC as the LLC's corporate parent (Stanford NPE DB – '807; Unified Patents, Feb. 13, 2023; UniCourt docket 6:23-cv-00835). CommWorks is represented in this matter by Dmitry Kheyfits, Brandon G. Moore and Andrey Belenky (Kheyfits Belenky LLP, admitted pro hac vice) with local counsel Anna M. Carroll; Adtran is represented by Benn C. Wilson and Paul M. Sykes (Justia docket). Defendant ADTRAN, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADTN) is an operating company — a Huntsville, Alabama–headquartered manufacturer of broadband access and fiber networking equipment sold to carriers, cable MSOs, enterprises and service providers; it completed its combination with ADVA Optical Networking in 2023, making it one of the larger Western access-equipment vendors. This is a classic NPE-vs.-operating-company posture, unusual here only because the plaintiff sued on the defendant's home turf.

Accused technology. The complaint targets Adtran's Wi-Fi-enabled consumer/service-provider premises gear — specifically the SDG 834-5 service delivery gateway and the EVO6700AP Wi-Fi access point/gateway, plus "related access point products" — and maps infringement onto two standardized IEEE 802.11 features rather than proprietary Adtran implementations: Wi-Fi Protected Setup ("WPS") Push-Button Configuration, where a station is provisioned only if its button-press/Probe Request occurs within the 120-second "walk time" window after the access point's button press; and Wi-Fi Multimedia ("WMM") / QoS, where frames are classified by the QoS Control field's User Priority subfield into Access Categories and transmitted during a TXOP interval (Compl. ¶¶27–37, 42, 54–59; complaint analysis, 5:23-cv-01327; PatSnap case note). The complaint also pleads indirect and willful infringement, premised on a February 2, 2022 notice letter to Adtran and on an alleged corporate practice of instructing employees not to review others' patents (Compl. ¶28 and Counts).

Patents asserted. Six patents in two families (confirming the '807 patent flagged as unconfirmed in the prior summary): (i) the "Time Based Wireless Access Provisioning" family — U.S. 6,891,807 ('807, issued 5/10/2005; claim 17 pleaded), 7,177,285 ('285), 7,463,596 ('596) and 7,911,979 ('979), all naming inventors James A. Roskind and John D. Robinson and originally assigned to America Online, Inc., all claiming priority to application 10/341,847 filed January 13, 2003, and each directed to an access point that tracks a device's power-on or onset of transmission and provisions the device only if that event falls within an activatable time interval (see '807 on USPTO; '285 patent PDF showing AOL assignee); and (ii) the "Method for Contention Free Traffic Detection" family — U.S. 7,027,465 ('465) and its reissue RE44,904 (reissued 5/20/2014, claim 7 pleaded), directed to detecting a priority frame by extracting a bit pattern at a predetermined offset in a received frame, comparing it against a search pattern, transmitting the priority frame in a reserved period and adjusting that period's duration based on statistics (Compl. ¶¶23–25, 59). The pairing is telling: the four Roskind patents read on WPS, and the two "traffic detection" patents read on WMM.

Procedural Posture, Venue, and Significance

Filed October 3, 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Huntsville/Northeastern Division (No. 5:23-cv-01327), assigned to Judge Liles C. Burke, jury demand by plaintiff. Adtran was served October 10, 2023, obtained an extension to answer (Doc. 13, granted Nov. 1, 2023), and on November 30, 2023 filed a Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 18) with a supporting brief and affidavit plus seven exhibits (Doc. 19) — the grounds are not visible in the public dockets I could retrieve, and I could not confirm whether it was a Rule 12(b)(6)/§ 101 challenge, a standing/ownership challenge, or both; the Rule 26(f) report (Doc. 16) and Judge Burke's Initial Order Governing All Further Proceedings (Doc. 17) were filed the same week (Justia docket; CourtListener docket). Third-party case trackers report the case then terminated in April 2024 by voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) — a notice dismissal available as of right because Adtran had moved to dismiss rather than answered — before claim construction or any merits ruling; I flag that the dismissal order itself is sourced only to a secondary litigation-analytics summary, not to a PACER entry I independently verified, and no license or settlement has been confirmed publicly. Venue choice mattered here: because CommWorks is a Texas-based entity, TC Heartland left essentially only the defendant's home district on the table, and Adtran's principal place of business in Huntsville satisfies § 1400(b)'s "regular and established place of business" prong — this is the antithesis of the W.D. Tex. forum fight CommWorks ran in the Extreme Networks case (where it moved to reassign to Judge Albright), and it denied Adtran an easy transfer/settlement-leverage play.

The case is notable on several axes. First, it is one front in a broad, multi-defendant campaign using the same six-patent set against router/AP/gateway and gateway-software defendants — Comcast (6:21-cv-00366-ADA), Charter, Consolidated Communications, Ubee Interactive, Frontier, NextLink, Extreme Networks, TRENDnet, and more recently chip-level and CPE targets in C.D. Cal. (e.g., 2:25-cv-02998, 8:24-cv-02250) — which means the patents are being asserted against compliance with standardized Wi-Fi features, a theory that puts every WPS/WMM-implementing vendor in scope. Second, the asserted patents' age is the central economic fact: the four Roskind patents claim a January 13, 2003 filing date, so their 20-year terms ran out on or about January 13, 2023 (subject to any patent term adjustment I did not verify on the face of the documents), meaning the October 2023 complaint could only reach back through the § 286 six-year window of roughly 2017–early 2023, with no injunctive relief available and a compressed damages period — consistent with related complaints' language about infringement "until its expiry." Third, there is a PTAB/PTAB-adjacent overhang: Unified Patents successfully invalidated CommWorks's unrelated mobile-network patent U.S. 8,923,846 in IPR2021-01297 (Final Written Decision, Feb. 13, 2023, all challenged claims unpatentable), and related claims of U.S. 7,769,374 were cancelled in reexamination; I found no IPR petition against the '807 family, so the dismissal mooted what would have been an obvious IPR/§ 101 defense path. Finally, the complaint itself front-loads Alice avoidance allegations ("the claims are not directed to an abstract idea"), signaling that patent-eligibility was the known vulnerability of these standard-feature claims; Adtran's motion to dismiss may well have pressed exactly that point, though that remains unverified.

Verification caveats: the docket entries above (Docs. 1–19) are drawn from Justia/CourtListener/UniCourt mirrors last refreshed in late 2023 and are reliable as to what was filed through November 30, 2023; the April 2024 dismissal, the "without prejudice"/Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) characterization, the specific asserted claim numbers, the notice-letter date, and the CommWorks/Brainbox/IP Investments Group/Unwired Broadband corporate chain are sourced to secondary trackers and derivative databases and should be re-verified against PACER and USPTO assignment records before being relied on. I found no court opinion, no claim construction order, and no PTAB proceeding on the patents-in-suit.

I'll research this case thoroughly across dockets, PTAB records, and legal press.

Let me dig into the full docket, the dismissal, and any parallel PTAB proceedings.

Commworks Solutions Inc v. Adtran Inc, No. 5:23-cv-01327-LCB (N.D. Ala.) — Key Legal Developments

Bottom line: This was a short-lived 2023 NPE complaint against Adtran's home-district court that ended in a plaintiff's voluntary dismissal without prejudice roughly seven months after filing, before any answer, counterclaim, claim construction, discovery, or trial. The '807 patent was in fact asserted (resolving the "unconfirmed" note in the prior summary). No PTAB proceeding on the '807 patent was located, and no stay motion was ever filed.

Important caveat up front: My searches returned docket-level data only through late November 2023 from PACER/RECAP (dockets.justia.com shows "docket last retrieved on November 30, 2023," and the CourtListener docket page likewise stops at Doc. 19). The termination event and its date come from third-party litigation analytics (PatSnap Eureka) rather than a retrieved PACER docket entry or court order, so treat the exact dismissal date as reported, not verified.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings (2023-10-03 → 2023-11-30)

Patents actually asserted (six). The complaint pleaded six patents from the CommWorks/3Com wireless-networking family:

• U.S. Patent No. 6,891,807 — "Time Based Wireless Access Provisioning" (issued 2005-05-10) — asserted claim 17
• U.S. Patent No. 7,027,465 — "Method for Contention Free Traffic Detection" (issued 2006-04-11) — asserted claim 1
• U.S. Reissue Patent No. RE44,904 — related to the '465 patent — asserted claim 7
• U.S. Patent No. 7,177,285 and U.S. Patent No. 7,463,596 (WPS/provisioning family)
• U.S. Patent No. 7,911,979 (mesh/QoS family)

'807 inclusion — now confirmed. The '807 claim 17 mapping in the complaint targets Adtran's implementation of Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) Push-Button Configuration: the accused access point (e.g., SDG 834-5 Gateway, EVO6700AP Gateway and related Wi-Fi routers/APs) "(a) tracks operation of the wireless device" and "(b) provisions the wireless device if the operation occurs within an activatible time interval," which the complaint equates to the 120-second WPS "Walk Time." The complaint also accused Adtran's Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) QoS implementation under the '465/RE'904 patents. (Complaint analysis, Dkt. 1)

No answer and no counterclaims were ever filed in this case — Adtran's Rule 12 motion was its only responsive pleading (see ¶ 3 below, which matters for the Rule 41 analysis).

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2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• Motion to dismiss (Doc. 18, 2023-11-30) — never ruled upon. The grounds are not visible in the retrieved docket text; the brief was accompanied by an affidavit and six exhibits (Doc. 19), which in an NPE case of this type typically signals a patent-eligibility (§ 101) attack, a venue/party-naming challenge, or a pre-suit notice/licensing defense. I could not verify the actual Rule 12 grounds — flag this as an open question rather than assume § 101.
• No motion to transfer, no motion to stay pending IPR, no motion for summary judgment, no motion to sever, and no motion for Rule 11 or § 285 sanctions appear on the docket.
• No Markman/claim construction — the case ended before the joint claim construction and prehearing statement stage was reached. There is no claim construction order for the '807 patent from this court.

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3. Termination: voluntary dismissal without prejudice (reported April 2024)

• Third-party docket analytics report the case terminated by voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i) after a 204-day life (Oct. 2023 – Apr. 2024), which computes to on or about 2024-04-24. (PatSnap Eureka case summary)
• The procedural posture is internally consistent with Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i): that unilateral dismissal right exists only before the opposing party serves either an answer or a motion for summary judgment. Because Adtran answered with a Rule 12(b) motion rather than an answer, CommWorks retained the right to dismiss its own case outright, without court approval and without prejudice. That is the single most strategically significant fact in this docket.
• Consequences: no merits ruling, no final judgment, no injunction, no damages, no res judicata or issue-preclusive effect on the '807 patent, and no estoppel or fee exposure for either side. CommWorks' claims on all six patents remain fully reassertable against Adtran and others.
• The evidence points to a confidential pre-answer resolution (license or standstill): the plaintiff had already invested in three pro hac vice admissions and a Rule 26(f) report, then exited within weeks of Adtran's dispositive motion. No settlement agreement, license, or dismissal order text is available on the public docket I retrieved — the licensing inference is a deduction, not a documented fact.

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4. Discovery milestones of strategic significance

None. The only discovery-adjacent event was the Rule 26(f) Report (Doc. 16, 2023-11-29). No scheduling order with discovery cutoffs, no ESI order, no protective order, no infringement/contentions service, and no expert disclosures appear on the docket before termination. Adtran's six exhibits to its dismissal brief (Doc. 19) are the only evidentiary record developed.

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5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial date, no pretrial order, no verdict, and no JMOL/new-trial/fee motion. The case never reached the dispositive-motion or trial stages.

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6. Final disposition and present posture

• Disposition: Voluntary dismissal without prejudice (Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i)), reported April 2024. The case is closed; there is no appeal (a without-prejudice voluntary dismissal is generally not appealable by the dismissing plaintiff), and no Federal Circuit activity exists for this case number.
• Present posture: Inactive as to Adtran. CommWorks can refile against Adtran on the same six patents (subject only to the four-year damages look-back in § 286), and its broader campaign against Wi-Fi/networking vendors has continued. The same six-patent package — with the '807 at Exhibit F (or B) — has been asserted in a steady stream of follow-on suits using the CommWorks Solutions, LLC entity name: e.g., CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. AVM Corp., No. 2:25-cv-00026 (E.D. Tex.); v. DrayTek Corp., No. 2:25-cv-00024 (E.D. Tex.); v. EarthLink, LLC, No. 2:25-cv-00716 (E.D. Tex.); v. Texas Instruments, No. 2:25-cv-00439 (E.D. Tex.); v. Microchip Technology, No. 7:26-cv-00043 (W.D. Tex.); v. u-blox Holding AG, No. 1:25-cv-02504 (E.D. Va., transferred intradistrict 2025-12-31); v. Digi International, No. 0:26-cv-03949 (D. Minn.); and earlier v. TRENDnet, No. 2:23-cv-08048 (C.D. Cal., dismissed with prejudice on joint request). Note the entity-name discrepancy: the N.D. Ala. 2023 plaintiff is styled "Commworks Solutions Inc," while the later suits use "CommWorks Solutions, LLC" (parent: Brainbox Innovations, LLC). I could not confirm whether these are the same entity, an affiliate, or a caption error — worth flagging for any chain-of-title analysis on the '807.

Do not confuse this case with a separate, longer Adtran matter. On 2026-05-29, Adtran announced a full settlement and dismissal with prejudice of a different NPE case — "initiated in 2020… asserting five patents… transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in 2021," in which Adtran filed counterclaims, including bad-faith patent assertion under Alabama statutory law, with payment to Adtran to resolve those counterclaims. (Adtran/Business Wire, 2026-05-29) That release does not name the plaintiff, and its chronology (2020 filing, 2021 transfer, five patents, counterclaims filed) is inconsistent with 5:23-cv-01327 (2023 filing, six patents, no counterclaims ever filed because no answer was served). I could not verify which NPE that 2026 settlement involved — do not attribute it to CommWorks on the current record. It is nonetheless relevant background on Adtran's litigation posture in its home district.

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7. Parallel PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceedings on U.S. Patent No. 6,891,807

• No IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding on the '807 patent was located. Nor did Adtran file any PTAB petition in the roughly eight-week window between service (2023-10-10) and dismissal (reported April 2024) — which, given the 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of the complaint, would have been deadline-driven around 2024-10-10 had the case continued.
• Consequently, there was no PTAB-driven stay motion and no estoppel in this litigation. The '807 patent has never been through an AIA trial on the public record I could find.
• Status caveat: my PTAB-specific searches returned no '807 docket, but I was unable to run a direct PTAB Portal / USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board API query against Patent No. 6,891,807 before exhausting my search budget. Treat "no IPR exists" as strongly indicated by absence of evidence rather than independently confirmed. If this matters for a validity opinion, it should be re-checked at the USPTO PTAB Portal or the PTAB's patent-number search.

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8. What to watch / gaps in the record

1. Get the termination docket entry. A PACER pull of 5:23-cv-01327 after Doc. 19 would confirm (a) the exact date of the notice of voluntary dismissal, (b) whether it was filed under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) or a stipulation under (A)(ii), and (c) whether any dismissal order or settlement-related filing exists.
2. Get the text of Adtran's Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 18) and its brief and six exhibits (Doc. 19). These are the only substantive legal arguments ever made in this case, and they almost certainly preview the invalidity/venue defenses Adtran will raise if the '807 is reasserted against it.
3. Verify the 2020/2021 N.D. Ala. Adtran NPE case referenced in the 2026-05-29 press release — if it is CommWorks under a different caption, the Alabama bad-faith counterclaim theory becomes a material risk factor for any reassertion. Current evidence says it is not this case.
4. Confirm the plaintiff entity and chain of title on the '807 (Commworks Solutions Inc vs. CommWorks Solutions, LLC / Brainbox Innovations, LLC).

I'll verify the plaintiff-side roster and fill in firm/office/experience details.

Now let me verify the local counsel, the pro hac vice roster, and each attorney's background.

Let me confirm Anna Carroll's firm and role, and profile the Kheyfits Belenky team.

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record — CommWorks Solutions Inc. v. ADTRAN, Inc., No. 5:23-cv-01327-LCB (N.D. Ala.)

Bottom line: Four attorneys appeared for the plaintiff — a three-lawyer Kheyfits Belenky LLP team admitted pro hac vice (Kheyfits, Moore, Belenky) plus one N.D. Ala.–admitted local counsel, Anna M. Carroll of Heninger Garrison Davis, LLC. No in-house counsel, no co-counsel from other firms, and no additional appearances were docketed before the case was voluntarily dismissed. I found no sealed or under-seal attorney filings in this matter; the PHV motions and the complaint were public.

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Counsel table

All three PHV motions were filed October 10, 2023 and granted by text orders signed by Judge Liles C. Burke on October 11, 2023 — so the plaintiff's full litigation team was papered into the case within eight days of filing. (CourtListener docket; Justia docket)

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Attorney profiles and relevant experience

Dmitry Kheyfits — lead counsel (Kheyfits Belenky LLP, Austin/NY). Kheyfits is the driving force behind the whole CommWorks campaign: his signature and email (dkheyfits@kblit.com) appear first on CommWorks's claim-construction filings, and he is styled "Lead Counsel" on Kheyfits Belenky pleadings (Cal. Bar No. 321326). Relevant patent-litigation track record in the NPE space includes Complex Memory LLC v. Renesas Electronics (N.D. Cal. 5:18-cv-04103, as lead counsel), CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Comcast Cable Communications (W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00366-ADA, the lead case for the same six-patent family asserted here), CommWorks v. Zyxel, CommWorks v. TRENDnet, and CommWorks v. Linksys/Belkin (C.D. Cal. 2:23-cv-09229), plus earlier campaigns for KT Imaging USA and Mel NavIP. (CommWorks/Comcast Joint Claim Construction Statement, W.D. Tex. 6:21-cv-00366, Dkt. 14; Complex Memory v. Renesas complaint)

Brandon G. Moore — counsel (Kheyfits Belenky LLP, Austin). Moore (bmoore@kblit.com) is Kheyfits's co-signer on CommWorks filings across the portfolio, including the Comcast joint claim construction statement and the TRENDnet/NextLink complaints, and appears alongside Kheyfits and Ryan E. Hatch on the C.D. Cal. Linksys/Belkin complaint. He is a repeat member of the CommWorks litigation team rather than a one-off local hire. (RPX litigation document — CommWorks v. NextLink complaint signature block; CommWorks v. Linksys docket)

Andrey Belenky — counsel (Kheyfits Belenky LLP, New York). Belenky (abelenky@kblit.com) is a registered U.S. patent practitioner (USPTO Reg. No. 59,194), which matters in a case whose infringement theory is a claim-chart exercise over standardized WPS/WMM features. He has appeared for the same plaintiff-side clients in CommWorks v. Comcast, KT Imaging USA v. Reolink Digital Technology (E.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-00876) and KT Imaging v. Panasonic, Computer Circuit Operations v. Broadcom (W.D. Tex.), and Mel NavIP LLC v. Toyota Motor North America (E.D. Tex.), and has litigated before the PTAB (e.g., patent-owner filings in Google LLC v. Personalized Media Communications, IPR2020-00721). (Docket Alarm — Computer Circuit Operations docket; UniCourt — KT Imaging v. Panasonic; UniCourt — Mel NavIP v. Toyota; PTAB Exhibit list, IPR2020-00721)

Anna M. Carroll — local counsel (Heninger Garrison Davis, LLC, Birmingham, Ala.). Carroll (acarroll@hgdlawfirm.com; Ala. Bar No. ASB3029Y40N) is the only attorney in this case admitted to the N.D. Ala. bar; she docketed the three PHV motions and is listed on the CourtListener/UniCourt party-attorney rosters as representing CommWorks. She is a University of Alabama Law (J.D. 2016) graduate, made partner at Heninger Garrison Davis effective January 2023, and is licensed in AL, NJ and TN. Important caveat on the "patent experience" line: her published profile is a plaintiffs'-side personal-injury / wrongful-death / mass-tort and product-liability practice, not a patent practice — which is consistent with her functioning here as local counsel on the pleadings and pro hac vice papering rather than as substantive patent counsel. I found no patent litigation in her reported background. (Best Lawyers profile; Super Lawyers firm profile; Birmingham Business Journal, Jan. 6, 2023 — promotion to partner)

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Observations relevant to adverse counsel and to any reassertion

• The plaintiff team is the same counsel as the rest of the CommWorks campaign, not case-specific hires — the identical Kheyfits/Moore combination signed the W.D. Tex. Comcast pleadings on these very patents. Expect the same claim charts and the same WPS/WMM mapping if the '807 is reasserted.
• Compare the defendant's side: per the prior sections, ADTRAN appeared through Benn C. Wilson and Paul M. Sykes (Dkts. 11, 15) — a home-district defense team. (I did not re-verify their firm affiliation on this pass; treat the firm as unconfirmed.)
• The dismissal is why the roster is short. Because CommWorks voluntarily dismissed under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) before any answer (reported April 2024), no additional plaintiff-side counsel ever entered — no trial counsel, no local discovery counsel, no in-house appearances. If the case is refiled, expect a fresh PHV round and a new local-counsel designation.
• Entity-name flag (carried forward): this docket names the plaintiff "Commworks Solutions Inc," whereas parallel campaign suits name "CommWorks Solutions, LLC," whose C.D. Cal. interested-parties disclosure identifies Brainbox Innovations, LLC, Invention Investment Fund I LLC, Invention Investment Fund II LLC, and Kheyfits Belenky LLP — i.e., the firm itself is disclosed as an interested party in the related cases, a fact worth noting if a standing/real-party-in-interest challenge is ever run against this plaintiff. (CommWorks v. Linksys docket, Dkt. 3)
• Other Kheyfits Belenky lawyers you may see in sibling CommWorks cases but who did NOT appear in N.D. Ala. — Hanna G. Cohen (Kheyfits Belenky, NY), Ryan E. Hatch (C.D. Cal. filings), Catherine Bartles, and Stafford Grigsby Helm Davis (Stafford Davis Firm PC), the latter two appearing in CommWorks v. Zyxel. Do not attribute their appearances to 5:23-cv-01327. (PatSnap Eureka — CommWorks v. Zyxel counsel table)

Sourcing caveat: this roster is drawn from the Justia/CourtListener/UniCourt docket mirrors, which stop at Doc. 19 (November 30, 2023), plus firm/bar profiles for background. I could not pull the live PACER docket or the PHV applications themselves (which would show the attorneys' bar numbers and firm addresses as filed). The four names above are consistently reported across three independent docket mirrors and are corroborated by the same counsel's filings in parallel CommWorks suits; the background/experience lines for Carroll come from her firm's own published profiles and should be treated as firm-supplied.

I'll research defense counsel of record, starting with the docket and then firm affiliations.

Benn Wilson is Bradley Arant (Birmingham). Let me pin down Paul Sykes and check for any additional defense appearances.

Now let me verify additional appearances, Bradley's Adtran representation history, and in-house counsel.

Counsel of Record for Defendant ADTRAN, Inc. — No. 5:23-cv-01327-LCB (N.D. Ala.)

Correction to the prior sections: The earlier overview flagged that Wilson's and Sykes's firm "could not confirm[ed] from the retrieved sources." That gap is now closed — both are partners at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, Birmingham, Alabama, and both are on Adtran's core patent-litigation team.

Defense counsel appearing on the docket

That is the entire defense appearance list. No third Bradley attorney, no separate local-counsel firm, no in-house/ADTRAN legal-department attorney, and no Delaware/Texas-style PHV "local counsel" pair appears in the docket text through the last public refresh (Justia docket; UniCourt docket; CourtListener docket). Bradley has both Birmingham and Huntsville offices, so no outside local-counsel arrangement was necessary in the defendant's home district.

Attorney profiles

Benn C. Wilson — lead counsel.
Partner, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP (Birmingham). Practice focuses on complex IP litigation — patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret — plus Section 337 investigations at the ITC. Admitted in Alabama (2016), D.C. (2013), and Georgia (2009); registered before the USPTO; admitted to the Federal Circuit and N.D. Ala.; former law clerk to Judge R. Lanier Anderson III (11th Cir.) and Chief Judge Ashley Royal (M.D. Ga.); M.S./B.S. chemical engineering, Georgia Tech (Bradley profile; World Services Group bio).

Relevant ADTRAN-specific experience: Wilson is essentially Adtran's retained patent-defense counsel. His firm bio's representative-matters list includes "Represented telecommunications equipment provider in several patent infringement suits in the Eastern District of Texas, Western District of Texas, the District of Delaware, and the Northern District of Alabama" — i.e., this case category. He is documented as Adtran's counsel in the long-running TQ Delta LLC v. ADTRAN, Inc., No. 1:14-cv-00954-RGA (D. Del.) litigation, where he filed multiple declarations supporting Adtran's summary-judgment invalidity and non-infringement motions (see, e.g., D.I. 726, 738–741, 750, 954, 978), and he entered an appearance for petitioner ADTRAN in the resulting Federal Circuit proceeding In re ADTRAN, Inc., No. 21-115 (Fed. Cir.), filed 2021-02-11 (Fed. Cir. docket via Justia). He is also Adtran's defense counsel in the more recent Vision Sphere Labs LLC v. Adtran Inc, N.D. Tex. No. 3:25-cv-…, transferred to N.D. Ala. as 5:26-cv-00728, where he was admitted pro hac vice in January 2026 (PACER Monitor) — confirming he remains Adtran's go-to N.D. Ala. IP litigator post-dating this case.

Paul M. Sykes — co-counsel of record.
Partner, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP (Birmingham); member of both the Intellectual Property & Competitive Practices and Litigation practice groups. Registered patent attorney and former computer engineer (B.S.E.E., Auburn, 1992; J.D. magna cum laude, UNC, 1998); admitted Alabama 1998; admitted N.D. Ala., E.D. Tex., E.D. Wis., 11th Circuit. Former president of the Alabama State Bar IP Section; repeatedly named Best Lawyers "Lawyer of the Year" for Litigation–Patent in Birmingham (2024, 2026); listed in Chambers USA for IP (2025) (Bradley profile; Best Lawyers).

Most important fact for this case: Sykes was ADTRAN's in-house General Counsel. He spent more than 19 years at Bradley, left in January 2018 to serve as General Counsel of ADTRAN, Inc., and returned to Bradley's Birmingham office as an IP partner in March 2019 (General Counsel News; Birmingham Business Journal, Mar. 12, 2019). Two observations follow, offered as analysis rather than findings: (1) it explains why a single outside firm handled the entire defense without in-house counsel entering an appearance; and (2) his 2018–2019 tenure as Adtran GC predates the February 2, 2022 CommWorks notice letter pleaded in the complaint, so he is not, on the public record, a fact witness on the willfulness/notice theory — but the overlap question is worth a conflicts/witness screen in any reassertion against Adtran. Bradley's Chambers USA listing describes him as "a notable litigation lawyer with expertise in complex patent litigation… fintech and telecommunications technology" (Chambers USA).

A third Bradley name paired with Adtran — not in this case. A PTAB petition document lists Bradley (Birmingham) as counsel on an Adtran-related matter as "Paul Sykes, Benn Wilson, Jake Gipson" (PTAB petition materials). Jake Gipson did not appear on this docket, so he should not be listed among counsel of record here; I flag him only as a possible additional team member if the case had proceeded.

Plaintiff's side (for completeness, already covered in prior sections)

Listed only to avoid duplication of the defense roster: Dmitry Kheyfits, Brandon G. Moore, and Andrey Belenky (Kheyfits Belenky LLP, PHV) with Anna Maurine Carroll as local counsel (Docs. 4–6).

Caveats and verification limits

1. Docket cutoff. Every public mirror I could reach (Justia, CourtListener/RECAP, UniCourt) stops at Doc. 19, November 30, 2023. Because the case was reportedly dismissed without prejudice in April 2024, any post-November-2023 appearance, substitution, or withdrawal is not visible. Confirm on PACER whether any attorney withdrew or whether a notice of dismissal was signed by the same two lawyers.
2. No in-house appearance. I found no ADTRAN legal-department attorney on the docket. That is consistent with Bradley handling the matter, but it is an absence-of-evidence finding, and I did not identify any named ADTRAN in-house IP counsel.
3. Office attribution. Firm/office data (Birmingham, One Federal Place) comes from Bradley's own and directory profiles; the docket entries themselves do not state office location. Bradley also maintains a Huntsville office (Adtran's headquarters city), and I could not confirm from the filings whether Wilson or Sykes worked the matter out of Huntsville rather than Birmingham.
4. Prior-section cross-check. Nothing here contradicts the earlier sections; it fills the one open item (defense firm identity) and refines roles: Wilson = lead/first-appearing, Sykes = co-counsel. The earlier sections' caveat that the motion-to-dismiss grounds are unverified still stands — the brief (Doc. 19) was filed by Wilson but its contents are not in the retrieved text.
5. Unrelated 2026 Adtran settlement. As the prior section cautioned, the 2026-05-29 Adtran press release about a settled NPE case with bad-faith counterclaims is not attributable to CommWorks or to this docket on the current record, and no counsel names from that matter should be carried over here.