Delaware Display Group LLC et al. v. Pantech Co., Ltd.

I'll research this case to give you a grounded overview.

Case Overview — Delaware Display Group LLC et al. v. Pantech Co., Ltd. et al., No. 1:13-cv-02110 (D. Del.)

The parties. Plaintiffs Delaware Display Group LLC ("DDG") and Innovative Display Technologies LLC ("IDT") are both patent-assertion entities in the Acacia Research family — RPX classifies them as Acacia subsidiaries, and the Stanford NPE Litigation Database codes both as "acquired patents" asserters. IDT opened this campaign in June 2013 with seven patents directed to light-emitting panel/backlight technology used in LCDs; DDG was created later that year and joined on December 31, 2013 as co-plaintiff, contributing an eighth patent (U.S. 7,914,196, a backlight-system patent). The asserted patents were previously held by Rambus and transferred to Acacia in March 2013 (RPX Insight, Jan. 9, 2014). Sole named inventor on the asserted Parker-family patents is Jeffery R. Parker. The defendant, Pantech Co., Ltd. (sued together with U.S. affiliate Pantech Wireless, Inc.), was a South Korean handset maker — the country's No. 3 smartphone producer after Samsung and LG, primarily a supplier of AT&T and Verizon handsets in the U.S. market. Pantech entered Seoul court receivership in August 2014 and was sold to an Optis/Solid consortium in 2015, an insolvency that largely explains the litigation's fate.

Accused technology and patents. The December 31, 2013 DDG/IDT filings were an industry-wide campaign: the same-day suits named Amazon, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Pantech, Sony and VIZIO, and the accused products were consumer devices incorporating LCD backlight/light-guide structures — smartphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, e-readers (RPX, Jan. 9, 2014). The core family, "Light Emitting Panel Assemblies," claims a backlight assembly with a light-emitting member, a separate transparent sheet or film overlaid with an air gap, and a pattern of deformities on that film that varies across the sheet to redirect emitted light through an LCD with low loss — i.e., the diffuser/light-redirecting film stack inside a typical LCD. The '547 patent (issued June 29, 2004, priority to June 27, 1995) is the flagship of that family; the sibling asserted patents ('194, '177, '660, '974, '370, '816) share the specification, and the '196 patent is a separate backlight-system/light-redirecting-film patent owned by DDG. Case-metadata here lists only the '547 patent at issue, but the complaint and the campaign record show eight patents asserted in this docket.

Posture, venue, and why it matters. Filed December 31, 2013 in the District of Delaware (C.D. Cal.-style complaints are absent; venue was expressly pleaded under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1391 and 1400(b) on Pantech's stream-of-commerce sales in Delaware). The docket was assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews (with a referred judge per RPX), and RPX records the case as closed May 17, 2017; I could not verify the specific dismissal entry from the sources retrieved, so the precise termination mechanism (likely a stipulated dismissal tied to Pantech's insolvency) should be confirmed on PACER. The case is notable for its IPR linkage: LG Display petitioned for inter partes review of the '547 patent on August 21, 2014 (IPR2014-01357), the Board instituted on all challenged claims on February 26, 2015 (Paper 11), and after the institution decision — which credited Pristash as rendering claims 1–3, 16 and 26 reasonably likely obvious — IDT filed a Request for Adverse Judgment on May 28, 2015. The Board entered judgment and a Final Written Decision on June 10, 2015, cancelling claims 1–4, 16 and 26 of the '547 patent under 37 C.F.R. § 42.73(b). In other words, the asserted patent was invalidated via adverse judgment while the Pantech case was pending, a striking example of the 2014–2015 patent-owner practice of abandoning claims rather than defending them on the merits. Parallel IPRs swept the portfolio (IPR2014-01359 on the '196 patent, IPR2014-01362 on the '177 patent, and IPR2015-00361 on the '547 patent filed by Mercedes-Benz), and the campaign ultimately reached automotive suppliers (IDT v. Ford and GM, D. Del. 1:14-cv-00849/00850). The broader significance is the combination of (a) an Acacia/Rambus-origin portfolio read onto ubiquitous LCD backlighting, making virtually every display-bearing device a target; (b) an early example of PTAB cancellation deflating a PAE campaign; and (c) a defendant whose 2014 Korean receivership and 2015 sale meant the case effectively ended for reasons unrelated to patent merits.

Sourcing caveats: party characterizations, filing dates, case closure, judge, and the Rambus→Acacia transfer come from RPX Insight and Stanford's NPE database; the IPR dates, institution reasoning (Pristash/Nishio/Kobayashi-Ohe grounds) and claim cancellations come from the PTAB papers via Docket Alarm; Pantech's corporate history comes from BusinessKorea and Korea Times. The exact accused Pantech model(s), the dismissal document, and the referred magistrate's identity are not verified in the sources retrieved, and the assertion that DDG/IDT are Acacia entities rests on RPX's characterization rather than a corporate filing I reviewed.

I'll research the docket and related proceedings to build the chronological development list.

Key Legal Developments & Outcome — Delaware Display Group LLC v. Pantech Co., Ltd., No. 1:13-cv-02110-RGA (D. Del.)

Important sourcing note up front. PACER itself is paywalled and I could not retrieve the 1:13-cv-02110 docket sheet directly. What follows separates (a) events I verified from a retrieved docket of a companion case filed the same day (1:13-cv-02109-RGA, the LG cases) plus campaign-wide reporting, from (b) events I verified from the PTAB record, and (c) items I could not verify and am explicitly flagging as gaps. I have not filled the gaps with assumed rulings.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

• 2013-12-31 — Complaint filed (D.I. 1). DDG and IDT filed a jury-demand complaint against Pantech Co., Ltd. and Pantech Wireless, Inc., in D. Del., assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews (RGA). The complaint was accompanied by eight exhibits (Exs. A–H), one per asserted patent — the standard structure used across the seven same-day complaints in this campaign (verified from the parallel docket, which carried the identical exhibit structure).
• 2013-12-31 — D.I. 3, Report to the Commissioner of Patents. This entry lists eight patents, not one: U.S. 6,755,547; 7,300,194; 7,384,177; 7,404,660; 7,434,974; 7,537,370; 7,914,196; and 8,215,816. This is a direct, docket-level confirmation of the contradiction already flagged in the case overview: the case-metadata field listing only the '547 patent understates the pleadings. The eight-patent list also matches the Stanford NPE database's patent-by-patent entries for this docket ('194, '974, '660, '196, '816 all cross-reference 1:13-cv-02110).
• 2014-01-02 — D.I. 5, Rule 7.1 disclosure statement. New corroboration for a fact the earlier section had to hedge: the plaintiffs' corporate disclosure identified Acacia Research Group LLC as corporate parent and Acacia Research Corporation as an affiliate. The prior section said the Acacia characterization "rests on RPX's characterization rather than a corporate filing I reviewed." That caveat can now be retired — the relationship was pleaded on the docket. (This entry is verified from the 1:13-cv-02109 docket, which is the same filing made under the campaign's common template; the same entry appears in each of 1:13-cv-02106 through -02112.)
• 2014-01-08 — Case assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews (RGA); the docket carried the related-case string tying together 1:13-cv-02106/-02107/-02108/-02109/-02110/-02111/-02112 and, later, 1:14-cv-00849/-00850.
• Plaintiffs' counsel. A pro hac vice motion filed across all seven case numbers (expressly including 1:13-cv-02110-RGA) identified Jeffrey R. Bragalone and colleagues of Bragalone Conroy as the plaintiffs' side, with Delaware-local counsel from Farnan LLP (Brian Farnan); the docket-entry annotator's exhibit in the related PTAB litigation names Bragalone, Patrick J. Conroy, Justin B. Kimble, Daniel F. Olejko and T. William Kennedy, Jr. This is campaign-wide verification, not a 02110-specific attorney appearance, but the case-number list in the motion makes it safe to say these attorneys were appearing in this docket.
• Answer / counterclaims — NOT VERIFIED. I could not retrieve any Pantech answer, Rule 12 motion, or counterclaim (non-infringement / invalidity) in the sources available. Such pleadings would exist if the case proceeded past service; the specific D.I. numbers and content should be pulled from PACER.
• Service — NOT VERIFIED for this docket. In the companion LG case, LG Display America and LG Electronics USA were served 2014-01-02. Whether Pantech Co., Ltd. (Korean parent) and Pantech Wireless, Inc. (U.S. sub) were each served, and whether the Korean parent was ever properly served, is unverified and would be the pivot for any personal-jurisdiction/stream-of-commerce motion.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• Motions to dismiss / transfer — NOT VERIFIED. No Rule 12(b)(2)/(3) or § 1404/1406 motion is confirmed. Note that the complaints expressly pleaded venue under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1391 and 1400(b) on stream-of-commerce sales in Delaware (per the campaign complaints), which is the kind of pleading a Pantech transfer or jurisdiction motion would have attacked.
• Stay pending IPR — NOT VERIFIED as to Pantech. The IPR activity in this window (below) was driven by LG entities and Mercedes-Benz, not Pantech. Whether Pantech moved to stay, or whether the court stayed/sua sponte managed the case in light of the '547 adverse judgment, is unverified.
• Summary judgment — NOT VERIFIED / almost certainly none reached. A case closed 1,234 days after filing with the asserted patent's claims cancelled and the defendant in Korean insolvency is very unlikely to have reached dispositive motions, but I cannot confirm a negative from the sources retrieved.
• Interlocutory appeal to the Federal Circuit — NOT VERIFIED. No § 1292(b) certification or mandamus is confirmed.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

• NOT VERIFIED — likely never reached. Neither a Markman order, hearing transcript, nor a joint claim construction statement is confirmed for this docket. Judge Andrews' related-case string and the campaign's allocation of resources to the LG/VIZIO/Sony dockets make it plausible that coordinated construction was being litigated elsewhere, but I found no order in this case and will not assert one.

4. Discovery milestones

• NOT VERIFIED. No scheduling order, ESI order, discovery-dispute ruling, or expert-disclosure milestone is confirmed. Given the August 2014 Korean receivership and the June 2015 cancellation of the '547 claims, discovery in this docket was, if it happened at all, short-lived. This is a genuine evidentiary gap, not a finding.

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

• None. No trial date is confirmed, and no verdict, JMOL, new-trial, or fee motion is confirmed. The case was closed 2017-05-17 (RPX), well before any trial window in a normal D. Del. patent schedule. A fee motion under § 285 would require a "prevailing party," which is why the closure mechanism matters (see § 7).

6. Parallel PTAB proceedings on the asserted patents (this is the substantive heart of the case)

• 2014-08-21 — IPR2014-01357 filed (LG Display, on '547). Directed at the flagship patent.
• 2015-02-26 — Institution on all challenged claims (Paper 11). The Board credited Pristash and reasoned that claims 1–3, 16 and 26 were reasonably likely obvious.
• 2015-05-28 — IDT files a Request for Adverse Judgment in IPR2014-01357 rather than defending the claims on the merits.
• 2015-06-10 — Final Written Decision / judgment cancelling claims 1–4, 16 and 26 of the '547 patent under 37 C.F.R. § 42.73(b). This is the decisive substantive event: the only patent the case metadata attributes to this docket was eliminated by the patent owner's own abandonment of the claims while this case was pending.
• Portfolio-wide IPR satellites (asserted in / relevant to this docket's patents): IPR2014-01359 ('196), IPR2014-01362 ('177), and IPR2015-00361 (Mercedes-Benz, on '547).
• Additional LG-entity IPRs in 2015 — partially verified. Docket Alarm shows LG-affiliated petitioners filing further IPRs against DDG-owned patents — IPR2015-01717 on U.S. 7,404,660 (with the LG Delaware docket sheet submitted as a Patent Owner exhibit, annotated to highlight attorneys), and IPR2015-00506 / IPR2015-00728 (the patent number in the retrieved exhibit OCRs imperfectly as "7,656,?95," so I flag the number as uncertain). These filings were accompanied by the Delaware campaign docket sheets, confirming that the defendants used the district-court record to attack the portfolio.
• Effect on this litigation. Two independent forces converged: (i) cancellation of the '547 claims (and the IPR cloud over the '194, '177, '660, '974 family), and (ii) the defendant's insolvency. Either alone would have gutted the case; together they explain the four-year docket with no merits ruling.

7. Final disposition and present posture

• 2017-05-17 — Case closed (RPX Insight records closure on this date for 1:13-cv-02110; Judge Andrews; 1,234 days in litigation).
• Mechanism — NOT VERIFIED. I could not retrieve the closing docket entry. The two candidate mechanisms, both consistent with the timeline but neither confirmed, are (a) a stipulated dismissal following Pantech's August 2014 Seoul court receivership and its 2015 sale to the Optis/Solid consortium, which made the Korean defendant practically judgment-proof and likely prompted a stay or settlement-and-dismissal; or (b) dismissal on the plaintiffs' motion after the '547 claims were cancelled. The prior section's inference of "likely a stipulated dismissal tied to Pantech's insolvency" remains an inference. The specific D.I. and any dismissal-with-or-without-prejudice term should be pulled from PACER. A Korean insolvency of this era would ordinarily also raise Chapter 15 recognition/comity-stay questions in the U.S. action — I found no Chapter 15 pleading and will not assert one.
• Present posture: terminated; no appeal from this docket is confirmed. The Federal Circuit activity in this campaign flowed from the other dockets (e.g., the LG/VIZIO/Sony lines and the PTAB appeals), not from 02110.

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What changed relative to the earlier sections

1. Correction/strengthening: The Acacia affiliation is now docket-verified (Rule 7.1 statement naming Acacia Research Group LLC and Acacia Research Corporation), not merely RPX's characterization.
2. Contradiction with metadata re-confirmed at docket level: D.I. 3 lists eight patents (6,755,547; 7,300,194; 7,384,177; 7,404,660; 7,434,974; 7,537,370; 7,914,196; 8,215,816) — the "patent 6755547" metadata field is incomplete.
3. New: 2015 LG-entity IPRs beyond the four already listed (IPR2015-01717 on '660, plus IPR2015-00506/00728), and the fact that the defendants incorporated the Delaware docket sheets as PTAB exhibits.

Open items requiring PACER (I will not speculate on these)

• Answer/counterclaim D.I. numbers and any Rule 12(b)(2)/(3) or transfer motion.
• Any motion to stay pending IPR and its disposition.
• Whether any Markman/scheduling order issued.
• The 2017-05-17 closing D.I. and its exact disposition language (dismissal with/without prejudice, stipulation, or otherwise).
• Identity of the "+1" referred judge shown in RPX (likely a magistrate on the consent/referral track).
• Whether IPR2015-00361 (Mercedes-Benz, '547) was terminated or denied in light of the 2015-06-10 adverse judgment.

I'll research the plaintiff-side counsel of record for this case.

Let me dig into docket sheets and related opinions for attorney appearances.

Found promising leads. Let me verify the specific appearances in the Pantech docket.

Counsel of Record — Plaintiffs DDG & IDT, Delaware Display Group LLC et al. v. Pantech Co., Ltd. et al., No. 1:13-cv-02110-RGA (D. Del.)

The plaintiffs' side in this docket was staffed the same way as the rest of the December 31, 2013 Acacia/IDT Delaware campaign (the identical team appears on the parallel LG, Sony and VIZIO dockets, C.A. Nos. 13-2109, -2111, -2112, and on the parties' joint filings covering all four cases): a Dallas patent boutique as lead/out-of-state counsel, plus a Wilmington firm as Delaware local counsel. All five out-of-state attorneys were admitted pro hac vice, and Brian Farnan filed their admission motion in this docket on January 2, 2014 (D.I. 6, "MOTION for Pro Hac Vice Appearance of Attorney Jeffrey R. Bragalone, Patrick J. Conroy, Justin B. Kimble, Daniel F. Olejko, and T. William Kennedy, Jr. — filed by Delaware Display Group LLC, Innovative Display Technologies LLC").

Lead / out-of-state counsel — Bragalone Conroy P.C., Dallas, Texas

Local counsel — Farnan LLP, Wilmington, Delaware

Related non-record counsel noted in the litigation record

• Eric Lucas — identified in Judge Andrews's post-trial/attorney-work-product ruling of February 23, 2016 as having acted "initially as counsel for Acacia and later as counsel for IDT and DDG." This appears to be in-house/portfolio counsel for the Acacia side rather than a firm attorney of record in this docket; I could not confirm his employer or bar status from the sources retrieved, so treat the "in-house" characterization as provisional. (Source: Morris James hosted opinion PDF, Delaware Display Group LLC v. Lenovo Group Ltd. / related Delaware campaign, Feb. 23, 2016.)

Sourcing caveats and open items

• Docket-level confirmation. The attorney list above is reconstructed from (a) the D.I. 6 pro hac vice motion text quoted in the parties' own PTAB Exhibit 2004 (a copy of the 1:13-cv-02109 LG docket covering the related cases), (b) the April 22, 2015 Plaintiffs' Responsive Brief (bearing the C.A. Nos. 13-2109 through 13-2112 captions), and (c) Justia's docket page for the companion VIZIO case (1:13-cv-02112), which lists Bragalone and Conroy as plaintiffs' representatives. I could not retrieve a clean, case-specific docket sheet showing each attorney's signature/termination date for 1:13-cv-02110 itself, so exact appearance and withdrawal dates per attorney are unverified.
• Possible additional counsel. Because these eight December 2013 dockets were staffed from one team, additional Bragalone Conroy or Farnan personnel may appear on the 02110 docket in later entries (e.g., after the 2015 stay briefing) that I did not retrieve. A PACER pull of the 02110 docket (or the docket sheet attached to PTAB Exhibit 2004) would settle this definitively.
• Defendant's counsel. Not requested and not researched here; if needed, Pantech's Delaware/out-of-state defense team should be pulled separately.
• Firm-name caveat. Bragalone Conroy P.C. (bcpc-law.com) has since been reconstituted/renamed in the Texas patent-bar (Bragalone Olejko Saad and successor firms), so current firm affiliations for these names may differ from the 2013–2017 record.

Bottom line: plaintiffs' lead counsel was Jeffrey R. Bragalone of Bragalone Conroy P.C. (Dallas), working with Patrick J. Conroy, Justin B. Kimble, Daniel F. Olejko and T. William Kennedy, Jr.; Brian E. and Michael J. Farnan of Farnan LLP (Wilmington) served as Delaware local counsel.

I'll research the defense-side counsel of record for this docket.

That surfaced plaintiff's counsel. Now let me find the defense side.

Defendant-side counsel of record — 1:13-cv-02110 (Pantech)

Bottom line: I could not verify any defendant-side attorney from the sources reachable in this session. I am not going to name counsel for Pantech based on inference, because a wrong name here is worse than a gap. Below is (a) what I did confirm, (b) the specific leads that should yield the answer, and (c) an explicit statement of what remains unverified.

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1. What the search actually returned

The retrievals produced the plaintiff side only, plus a sibling case's docket:

No PACER docket sheet, no Law360/Reuters counsel note, and no firm-website attorney bio for a Pantech appearance came back.

2. What I can say with confidence about the shape of the defense

• The docket has two defendants (Pantech Co., Ltd. and Pantech Wireless, Inc.), so expect at least one Delaware local-counsel entry plus out-of-state lead counsel admitted pro hac vice — the standard D. Del. structure used by plaintiffs here and pervasive in this campaign.
• The case was live long enough for real defense activity: the plaintiffs' April 22, 2015 responsive brief responds to a defendants' motion to stay pending inter partes review, meaning defense counsel had entered appearances and were litigating by spring 2015.
• Given Pantech's August 2014 Seoul receivership, appearances may be thin or counsel may have withdrawn mid-case; a stipulated dismissal tied to the insolvency (per the earlier summary) would explain why the docket closes in 2017 with little merits activity. Whether withdrawal motions appear on the docket is unverified.

3. Where the names are, specifically (recommended verification path)

These are the documents almost certain to contain the defense signature blocks:

1. PACER docket for 1:13-cv-02110-RGA, entries for Notices of Appearance / Pro Hac Vice motions (early-to-mid 2014) and the Defendants' Motion to Stay Pending Inter Partes Review (~April 2015) — the motion's signature block is the single best source.
2. The same document set now on PTAB: the plaintiffs' responsive brief I retrieved is an exhibit from a PTAB proceeding; the defendants' opening stay motion is the companion document and will carry defense counsel's names and firms.
3. IPR2014-01357 (LG Display v. IDT, '547 patent) and IPR2015-00361 (Mercedes-Benz) mandatory notices — these identify petitioners' counsel (LG Display / Mercedes), not Pantech's, but they are useful for mapping the same portfolio's defense-side talent pool. Do not conflate them with Pantech counsel.
4. Firm-website and Law360 "Delaware Display Group v. Pantech" coverage from 2014 — none surfaced in this session's retrievals.

4. Explicit flags

• Do not treat any attorney named above as Pantech's counsel. Bragalone Conroy and the Farnans are plaintiffs' counsel, verified from the April 22, 2015 signature block.
• The Joseph J. Farnan, Jr. entry is from docket 1:13-cv-02109 (LG Electronics), a related case — I flag it only because it is the sole defense-side-suggestive name that appeared anywhere in the results.
• Counsel for Pantech Co., Ltd. and Pantech Wireless, Inc. in 1:13-cv-02110 remains unverified. I did not locate an entry of appearance, and I will not reconstruct one from memory.
• Metadata contradiction (repeat flag): the case metadata lists only U.S. 6,755,547, while the docket record and Stanford/RPX data show 8 patents-in-suit in 1:13-cv-02110 (including the '196 patent contributed by DDG) and 2 defendants. The earlier summary already noted this; it bears repeating because it affects how you read any docket-based counsel list.

If you can pull the PACER docket sheet or the April 2015 stay motion, I can convert that into the attorney-by-attorney table you asked for (name, role, firm/office, experience note) in one pass.