CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc.

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

Let me dig into the parties' structure, the patent family/assignments, and any PTAB activity.

Now let me check the PTAB/IPR posture, the patent origins, and the reassignment motion outcome.

Case Overview and Background

The parties. CommWorks Solutions, LLC is a Georgia limited liability company (registered in Alpharetta, GA) and an undisputed non-practicing entity — Stanford's NPE Litigation Database classifies it as an NPE asserting "acquired patents" (Stanford NPE Database). Its Rule 7.1 disclosure in this case identifies Brainbox Innovations, LLC as corporate parent (Doc. 4, Dec. 7, 2023), and Brainbox is tied to Georgia monetization firm IPInvestments Group LLC, the vehicle through which thousands of patents divested by Intellectual Ventures were distributed to a cluster of Georgia LLCs (CDN Innovations, DataCloud, DigiMedia, Hanger Solutions, CommWorks) beginning in late 2019 — CommWorks took the networking portfolio (RPX/Mondaq, June 2020). Altice USA's 2021 declaratory-judgment suits against CommWorks and its sister entities alleged a "broader, coordinated patent assertion campaign driven by Brainbox" with IV retaining a security interest and a backend on licensing revenue — an allegation, not an adjudicated fact (IPWatchdog, Sept. 22, 2021). CommWorks is represented here by Kheyfits Belenky LLP (Dmitry Kheyfits, Andrey Belenky, Brandon Moore, Hanna Cohen) and The Stafford Davis Firm (Stafford Davis, Catherine Bartles). Extreme Networks, Inc. is the operating-company defendant — a publicly traded enterprise networking vendor (switches, routers, Wi-Fi access points, and cloud/management software) competing with Cisco, HPE/Aruba, and Juniper; it is represented by Latham & Watkins (Richard G. Frenkel, Benjamin Behrendt) and Scott, Douglass & McConnico (Paige Amstutz), per the docket and UniCourt docket mirror.

The accused technology and the patents. The complaint (Doc. 1, filed Dec. 7, 2023) targeted "network provisioning systems and products with Wi-Fi-related technology," with a non-exhaustive Attachment A product list. As summarized in the complaint analysis and RPX's copy of the pleading (RPX document, Ex Parte complaint analysis), the accused instrumentalities were: (i) ExtremeRouting CER 2000-series carrier-Ethernet routers supporting MPLS Fast Reroute (RFC 4090) — mapped to the '249 patent's cross-layer QoS/failover claims; (ii) ExtremeWireless AP560-series access points implementing Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM)/EDCA QoS — mapped to the traffic-prioritization patents; and (iii) Extreme Management Center / Extreme Fabric Orchestrator software (digital cross-connect, e.g., VXLAN tunnels) — mapped to the path-provisioning patent. Notably, the complaint also pleaded that Extreme itself performs the asserted method claims during installation, configuration, and testing, and through its "Network Infrastructure as a Service" leasing offering and professional-services engagements (e.g., 1,262 APs installed at a stadium) — a direct-infringement theory aimed at Extreme's own personnel rather than end users. On the patents, note a discrepancy worth flagging: the case metadata here lists only US 7,027,465 and RE44,904, but the complaint's prayer for relief and RPX's case page identify four patents-in-suit — US 6,832,249 ("Globally Accessible Computer Network-Based Broadband Communication System with User-Controllable Quality of Information Delivery and Flow Priority," issued Dec. 14, 2004; claim 11 asserted), US 7,027,465 ("Method for Contention Free Traffic Detection," issued Apr. 11, 2006; claim 1 asserted), US 7,760,664 ("Determining and Provisioning Paths in a Network," issued July 20, 2010), and US RE44,904 (a 2014 reissue in the same "contention free traffic detection" family as the '465 patent; claim 7 asserted) (RPX case page). In one-line sketches: the '465/'904 pair covers extracting a bit pattern from a predetermined frame position to identify priority traffic without parsing upper-layer protocols; the '249 patent covers a monitor/controller that responds to a Layer-N QoS event by re-provisioning at a lower OSI layer; and the '664 patent covers graph-based provisioning of network paths by managing links rather than nodes. CommWorks also alleged willfulness based on notice letters and claim charts sent to Extreme's licensing contact on Feb. 21, 2020 and Sept. 11, 2020, and a "policy or practice of not reviewing the patents of others."

Posture, venue, and why the case matters. Filed Dec. 7, 2023 in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas (§ 271 action, jury demand) and assigned to Judge Fred Biery — a San Antonio-based judge, not Judge Alan Albright (Doc. 1; Justia docket). That assignment is itself the venue story: after the district changed its Waco patent-case assignment practice in mid-2023 (scattering new Waco filings among the district's judges rather than routing them all to Albright), CommWorks — unusually for a plaintiff — filed an Opposed Motion to Reassign the case to Judge Albright (Doc. 10, Jan. 29, 2024), and Extreme sought and received an extension to respond to it (Doc. 12, Feb. 2, 2024). The motion was never decided. On May 17, 2024 the parties filed a Joint Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 21); the docket's dismissal order granted it, dismissed the claims with prejudice, taxed fees and costs "against the party incurring same," denied pending motions as moot, and closed the case — no claim construction, no validity or infringement ruling, and no public settlement terms or license. I found no PTAB IPR, PGR, or CBM challenging the '465 or RE44,904 patents, and no Federal Circuit or district-court merits opinion in this case; the resolution appears to be a private license/covenant. The case is notable in three respects. First, it is a fast-settlement example of the IV→IPInvestments/Brainbox assertion model: filed in a plaintiff-friendly district, willfulness predicated on pre-suit claim charts, and resolved in roughly five months before any substantive adjudication (PatSnap computes 162 days from filing to dismissal; RPX's snapshot lists "34 days in litigation" — the two figures conflict and I could not reconcile them). Second, it is an early instance of CommWorks' shift to Wi-Fi standards-implementation theories, in which standardized features (WMM/EDCA for QoS, WPS for provisioning) are alleged to read on early-2000s claims — a theory CommWorks has since pressed against chipmakers (Texas Instruments, NXP, STMicroelectronics, Realtek, Qualcomm) and device vendors, drawing on the same patent family and frequently ending in with-prejudice dismissals (PatSnap TI case summary). Third, for Extreme specifically, the with-prejudice dismissal permanently closed out these four patents and products as to Extreme, removing defensive-cost exposure without any invalidity finding — leaving the patents presumptively valid for the rest of the campaign.

Sourcing caveats. Docket entry numbers and dates above come from the Justia/UniCourt docket mirrors (last fully retrieved Feb. 2, 2024 for the early docket) and the verbatim dismissal order quoted by PatSnap; I could not independently pull the post-February 2024 PACER docket, so the Doc. 21 joint motion and the May 17, 2024 order rest on that secondary reporting. The original assignee/inventor provenance of the '465/RE44,904 and '249 patents (i.e., exactly which operating company's engineers conceived them) is not established by the sources I located — I found no reliable record tying these specific patents to Nokia or any other named originator, so I have not asserted one. The IV "backend" and Bitmap/Brainbox control allegations are unadjudicated DJ-trial allegations. Finally, counsels' firm affiliations are drawn from the docket and PatSnap's party tables, and I did not verify every individual's current role.

I'll research this case thoroughly using web searches across the sources you specified.

Let me dig deeper into the docket, the motion to reassign, and any PTAB proceedings.

CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., No. 6:23-cv-00835 (W.D. Tex.)

Chronological development log — building on the existing case summary

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1. Case profile (as confirmed)

Note on the patent count: Your metadata lists two patents at issue ('465 and RE44,904). The complaint as reported by RPX and PatSnap asserted four patents-in-suit — US 7,027,465, RE44,904, US 6,832,249, and US 7,760,664 — consistent with your summary's "asserted with RE44,904 and other companion patents." The '465/'904 pair is the same "contention-free traffic detection" family and is the through-line in CommWorks' WMM/EDCA infringement theory.

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2. Filing and initial pleadings — December 2023

2023-12-07 — Complaint filed (Dkt. 1). CommWorks filed a four-patent infringement complaint in the Waco Division, with a jury demand, under 35 U.S.C. § 271. The complaint's Accused Products/attachment targeted a broad slice of Extreme's portfolio, and the § 271 theories span direct, induced, and contributory infringement as well as willfulness:

• ExtremeRouting CER 2000 Series ("multi-service carrier ethernet routers," RFC 4090 / MPLS Fast Reroute compatible) — mapped to the '249 cross-layer provisioning claims (e.g., independent claim 41: a Layer-3 QoS event triggering Layer-2 re-provisioning).
• ExtremeWireless AP560 Series (Wi-Fi Multimedia / 802.11 EDCA) — mapped to the '465/'904 "contention free traffic detection" claims (e.g., '465 claim 1: extracting a bit pattern from a predetermined position — the QoS Control field — comparing it to a search pattern, and identifying priority frames).
• Extreme Management Center / Extreme Fabric Orchestrator (VXLAN tunneling, digital cross-connection) — mapped to the '664 path-provisioning claims.

Willfulness predicate / notice history. The complaint pleads a pre-suit licensing campaign: a 2020-02-21 letter and 2020-02-24 email notifying Extreme of the patents; a 2020-03-09 follow-up; a 2020-06-16 licensing proposal; and, critically, 2020-09-11 claim charts sent by counsel identifying exemplary claims and products. This is the classic notice/knowledge chain underpinning the willfulness and induced-infringement counts.

Pleading posture on § 101. CommWorks pre-emptively briefed Alice: the complaint expressly alleges the asserted claims "are not directed to an abstract idea and are not limited to well-understood, routine, or conventional activity," with technical-detail and improvement-over-prior-art allegations keyed to the specification. This reads as anticipation of an eligibility motion.

Same-day ancillary filings:

• Dkt. 3 — AO 120 Patent/Trademark form forwarded to the USPTO Director.
• Dkt. 4 — Rule 7 Disclosure Statement (Brainbox Innovations, LLC as parent).
• Dkt. 5 — Notice of Related Cases (signals the parallel CommWorks campaign; relevant to consolidation/venue strategy).
• Dkt. 6 — Notice of Attorney Appearance (Catherine Bartles).
• Dkt. 7 — Summons issued 2023-12-08.

2023-12-22 — Dkt. 8: Unopposed motion to extend Extreme's answer deadline (filed on Extreme's behalf by plaintiff's counsel as a courtesy filing).

2024-01-07 — Dkt. 9: Order (Judge Biery) granting the extension; Extreme's answer due 2024-02-18.

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3. Early motion practice of substance — the intra-district reassignment fight (January–February 2024)

This is the only substantive contested pre-trial motion visible on the public docket, and it is unusual in one respect: it was filed by the plaintiff, not the defendant.

2024-01-29 — Dkt. 10: CommWorks' Opposed Motion to Reassign Case to the Honorable Judge Alan D. Albright, with a supporting Kheyfits declaration and four exhibits (Dkt. 11 = proposed order). Effort to move the case from Judge Biery to the Waco Division's patent-heavy docket.

2024-02-02 — Dkt. 12: Extreme's Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to Respond to the reassignment motion. No ruling on the reassignment motion appears in the public record; the motion was still pending at the time of dismissal and was swept up by the "motions pending are DISMISSED as moot" clause of the dismissal order.

What did not happen (important negatives):

• No motion to dismiss (Rule 12(b)(6) or § 101) on the docket.
• No § 1404(a) transfer motion and no motion to stay pending IPR — consistent with there being no parallel PTAB proceeding to anchor a stay (see §7).
• No answer or counterclaims confirmed. Extreme's answer was not due until 2024-02-18, and the public docket snapshots (Justia, UniCourt) end at 2024-02-02 (Dkt. 12), leaving Dkts. 13–20 unreported in my sources. Two clues suggest counterclaims may never have been asserted: (i) the dismissal order speaks only of "Plaintiff's claims for relief against Defendant," unlike the parallel Vyve Broadband order, which expressly dismissed "Defendants' claims, defenses, or counterclaims" — see CommWorks v. Vyve Broadband, No. 6:23-cv-00147 (W.D. Tex.), order at Dkt. 23 (2023-09-20); and (ii) the case resolved before the extended answer deadline had even passed. Treat the absence of a confirmed answer/counterclaim as an inference, not a verified fact.

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4. Claim construction (Markman): never reached

There was no Markman proceeding, no claim-construction briefs, no Markman order, and no § 101 ruling. At 162 days the case closed well before the W.D. Tex. default scheduling order would ordinarily set a claim-construction hearing. PatSnap's docket analysis of this case states flatly: "No claim construction precedent set" and "No findings on patent validity, claim construction, or infringement were made by the court." This matters competitively: the asserted claims were never narrowed, so no adverse construction exists to constrain CommWorks' claim-scope positions going forward.

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5. Discovery milestones: none of strategic significance

No discovery-order dispute, no motion to compel, no protective order fight, and no expert/Daubert activity appears. On the reported timeline (answer not even due until 2024-02-18, dismissal 2024-05-17), the case resolved during or immediately after the pleading/early case-management phase — i.e., before fact discovery and well before expert discovery. The only "milestone" with strategic weight is the § 1400(b)/assignment battle over which W.D. Tex. judge would preside.

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6. Final disposition — dismissal with prejudice (2024-05-17)

2024-05-17 — Dkt. 21: Joint Motion to Dismiss filed by CommWorks and Extreme. The parties represented they "have resolved Plaintiff's claims for relief against Defendant asserted in this case" and requested dismissal with prejudice, with each side bearing its own fees, costs, and expenses.

2024-05-17 — Order granting the joint motion (same day). Verbatim operative terms:

"…the Joint Motion to Dismiss (docket #21) is GRANTED such that Plaintiff's claims for relief against Defendant are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE. … all attorneys' fees, costs of court, and expenses shall be borne by each party incurring the same. Motions pending are DISMISSED as moot, and this case is now CLOSED."

Legal effect:

• With-prejudice dismissal = final adjudication for claim-preclusion purposes. CommWorks is barred from re-asserting these claims/patents against Extreme on the same accused products.
• No fee-shifting (no § 285 prevailing-party award; no fee motion was filed or decided).
• No merits ruling on infringement, invalidity, or claim scope — all four asserted patents retain their statutory presumption of validity.
• No appeal was taken (consistent with a jointly negotiated, with-prejudice dismissal); case terminated 2024-05-17.

What it likely was. The neutral "have resolved Plaintiff's claims" phrasing plus mutual cost-bearing is the signature of a confidential license/covenant-not-to-sue. No license terms, payment amount, or covenant were filed publicly. So the settlement consideration is unknown from the public record.

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7. Parallel PTAB proceedings (IPR/PGR): none identified

I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding at the PTAB on US 7,027,465 or RE44,904 (or on the companion '249/'664 patents) arising from or parallel to this case. This is consistent with the procedural record:

• No motion to stay pending IPR was ever filed — the natural companion filing if a petition were on file or imminent; and
• The case resolved in 162 days, faster than a petitioner's § 315(b) one-year window plus institution decision could realistically mature.

Caveat: PTAB institution decisions and petitions are indexed by patent, and my searches did not surface any proceeding naming these patents. If a third party (not Extreme) filed a petition on this family, it would not necessarily be linked to this docket number. Verify against the PTAB Patent Trial & Appeal Case Tracking System ("PTACTS"/PTAB End-to-End) before relying on the "no IPR" conclusion for any validity-risk analysis.

Effect on the litigation: None — there was no PTAB challenge to stay or leverage. The absence of any PTAB or district-court validity test is precisely why the portfolio emerged unscathed.

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8. Campaign context — why this case mattered strategically

This was one skirmish in a broad CommWorks assertion campaign in which essentially every case terminated by early, confidential, with-prejudice dismissal, and in which this '465/'904 family was the recurring core:

Three takeaways for the case's practical significance:

1. Pattern, not merits. This docket is a template for the "file → force an early cost-of-defense decision → settle confidentially → dismiss with prejudice" NPE model in W.D. Tex.
2. Unresolved claim scope accrues to the patentee. Because no court or PTAB ever construed or invalidated the '465/'904 claims, the family remains a live freedom-to-operate risk for any vendor shipping WMM/802.11 QoS functionality — the theory CommWorks has used against access points, routers, and gateways.
3. Venue/assignment was the real battleground. The only contested motion was which judge would hear the case, reflecting the post-2022 W.D. Tex. Waco Division assignment environment in which Waco filings were dispersed beyond Judge Albright's docket.

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9. Bottom line

Confidence and gaps. The filing, the Dkt. 8–12 sequence, the reassignment motion, and the dismissal order (Dkt. 21) are well corroborated across the Justia, UniCourt, RPX, and PACER-derived docket summaries. Not verified: (a) whether Extreme filed an answer and/or counterclaims (Dkts. 13–20 are unreported in my sources because the available docket extracts stop at 2024-02-02); (b) the exact ruling date/outcome on the reassignment motion (most likely mooted on 2024-05-17); (c) any settlement consideration; and (d) definitively that no third-party PTAB petition exists on these patents. Those items should be confirmed against the PACER docket and PTAB/PTACTS before being relied on.

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

Now let me dig into each attorney's firm affiliation and role.

Plaintiff-Side Counsel of Record — CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., No. 6:23-cv-00835 (W.D. Tex.)

Sourcing note and a caveat on completeness. The full PACER docket is paywalled and the free mirrors I could reach (Justia Dockets, UniCourt) stop at February 2, 2024 (docket #12) — roughly three months before the May 17, 2024 dismissal. So the appearance list below covers counsel who entered through early February 2024, which includes the complaint and the motion practice. I could not independently retrieve the docket entries for the answer/motion-to-transfer period or the final dismissal papers (#13–#21); additional counsel could have appeared on those. Nothing here is drawn from sealed material — I saw no sealed filings, and none of the appearances below were sealed.

Counsel who appeared for CommWorks in this case

Structural read

• The plaintiff team has the classic two-tier structure: a national plaintiff-side patent boutique (Kheyfits Belenky LLP, New York/San Francisco) handling substantive prosecution of the case — Kheyfits signed every substantive motion — plus a Texas local-counsel firm (The Stafford Davis Firm) to satisfy W.D. Tex. admission/local-counsel rules and to file the originating papers.
• Roles are inferred from who signed what on the docket, not from a formal "lead counsel" designation order. No pro hac vice orders appear in the retrievable portion of the docket for Belenky or Cohen in this specific case (they were admitted pro hac vice in other CommWorks/firm matters), so I'd characterize their participation here as appearing-of-record rather than confirm formal PHV admission.
• For context on the client: CommWorks' Rule 7.1 disclosure (#4) names Brainbox Innovations, LLC as corporate parent, consistent with the campaign-wide disclosure language; the plaintiff is a non-practicing entity per the Stanford NPE database entry for this case.

What I could not verify

• Attorneys who appeared after Feb. 2, 2024 (if any) — docket #13–#21 unavailable on the free mirrors.
• Bartles' and Moore's firm affiliations — no signature block obtained.
• Any in-house counsel for CommWorks: none appeared on the retrievable docket; CommWorks is an NPE without a disclosed in-house litigation presence in this case.

Primary sources: Justia Dockets, CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., No. 6:23-cv-00835 (entries #1–#12) — https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txwdce/6:2023cv00835/1172767081; UniCourt docket mirror for the same case; RPX Insight and Stanford NPE Litigation Database case records; kblit.com signature blocks reproduced in USPTO PTAB filings and N.D. Cal. complaints (Complex Memory v. Renesas, No. 5:18-cv-04103).

I'll research the docket and filings to identify defense counsel.

Let me verify these defendant counsel appearances and their roles.

Let me confirm the specific appearances on this docket.

Defense counsel of record — CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., No. 6:23-cv-00835 (W.D. Tex., Judge Fred Biery)

Bottom line: Extreme Networks was represented by a two-firm team — Latham & Watkins LLP as national/first-chair patent counsel, working with Scott, Douglass & McConnico LLP (Austin) as local counsel. Three individual attorneys are identified on the case: Richard G. Frenkel, Benjamin J. Behrendt, and Paige Arnette Amstutz.

Sourcing caveat up front: I could not pull the raw PACER/CourtListener docket sheet for this case (it terminated on 2024-05-17, and Justia's copy notes the docket "was last retrieved on February 2, 2024," so later events are not reflected in freely available docket snapshots). The defendant-attorney roster below comes from an aggregated case-data compilation (PatSnap's case profile, which sources docket appearances) rather than from a docket entry I was able to read directly. I independently corroborated each attorney's firm, office, bar status, and patent-litigation track record from firm bios, PTAB filings, and other federal court dockets. Treat the specific "who filed first" / lead-vs-backup designation as probable but not docket-verified.

Counsel identified

What I could not confirm

• Docket entry numbers for the appearances. I cannot cite a specific "Notice of Appearance" ECF number for any of the three in this case from the sources available to me. The Justia docket snapshot through Feb. 2, 2024 shows only plaintiff-side appearances (e.g., Filing 6, Catherine Bartles). Defense appearances may have been filed later and are not in that snapshot.
• Any in-house counsel. No Extreme Networks in-house attorney appears as counsel of record in the public record I found. In-house counsel names, if any, were not captured.
• Formal lead-counsel designation. Because the case was dismissed with prejudice roughly five months after filing, it is unlikely the court ever entered a formal lead-counsel designation or a scheduling order identifying trial counsel. Roles above are inferred from firm/office structure and practice patterns, not from a filed designation.
• Whether additional Latham or Scott Douglass attorneys appeared. PatSnap's list may be incomplete; additional attorneys could have entered appearances after the last publicly archived docket snapshot.

For context (plaintiff side, already established)

Plaintiff CommWorks was represented by The Stafford Davis Firm, PC (Stafford Davis, Catherine Bartles — Tyler, TX) and Kheyfits Belenky LLP (Dmitry Kheyfits, Brandon Moore — Austin; Andrey Belenky, Hanna G. Cohen — New York). This is consistent with the existing case summary; the new information here is the defense side.