Delaware Display Group LLC v. Pantech Co. Ltd.

I'll research this case to provide a well-grounded overview.

Case Overview and Background

Parties. Delaware Display Group LLC v. Pantech Co. Ltd., No. 1:13-cv-02110-RGA (D. Del., filed Dec. 31, 2013), was a two-plaintiff, two-defendant suit. The plaintiffs were Delaware Display Group LLC ("DDG") and Innovative Display Technologies LLC ("IDT") — both shell entities in the Acacia Research family, i.e., classic non-practicing entities/patent assertion entities. Stanford's NPE Litigation Database categorizes the assertion as "acquired patents," and RPX's reporting identifies DDG as a "new Acacia subsidiary" and IDT as "another Acacia subsidiary" that launched the underlying campaign in June 2013 (RPX Insight, Jan. 9, 2014). The patents themselves were transferred from Rambus to Acacia in March 2013 (RPX, ibid.), with the deeper chain running from inventor Jeffery R. Parker / Lumitex → Solid State Opto Limited → Rambus International/Rambus Inc. → Rambus Delaware → Acacia Research Group → IDT (STPI patent litigation note; the '660 face names "Solid State Opto Limited (VG)" as assignee). The defendants were Pantech Co., Ltd., the Korean handset maker, and (per the "et al." in the caption, and RPX's count of two defendants) presumably its U.S. affiliate — almost certainly Pantech Wireless, Inc., though I could not verify that entity name in a docket document, so treat it as likely rather than confirmed. Pantech was an operating company, not a patent plaintiff: South Korea's former No. 3 handset maker, whose Vega-brand smartphones had made it the domestic runner-up to Samsung before it filed for Korean court receivership in August 2014 — roughly eight months after this suit was filed (ZDNet; The Diplomat).

Accused technology and patents. The accused instrumentality was Pantech's LCD-based mobile devices — smartphones and tablets using edge-lit LCD backlighting (RPX lists the market sector as "Mobile Communications and Devices" and one accused product). The asserted patents in this campaign family are directed to light emitting panel assemblies / backlight units: an edge-lit light guide ("optical conductor") receiving light from LEDs at an input edge, with light-extracting deformities or optical elements on a film/sheet that control the output ray-angle distribution, plus transition regions, reflectors, and trays — the technology that replaced bulkier direct-lit backlights and enabled thinner, brighter, lower-power LCDs. The case metadata flags U.S. Patent No. 7,404,660 as the patent at issue here. The '660 patent, "Light emitting panel assemblies," issued July 29, 2008 to Parker (appl. 11/454,822, filed June 16, 2006, a division in a chain tracing to application 08/495,176 filed June 27, 1995, now U.S. 5,613,751), 40 claims, claiming a generally planar optical conductor with an input edge wider than it is thick, a light source whose output distribution is wider than it is tall, a transition region to spread and transmit the light, and a plurality of faceted surfaces near the light source (US 7,404,660 B2). One-line sketch: an edge-lit light guide plus faceted/transition optics that uniformly distributes LED light into an LCD backlight. RPX's docket page for this case lists 8 patents-in-suit total, consistent with the campaign package: the seven IDT-owned "Display Patents" (6,755,547; 7,300,194; 7,384,177; 7,404,660; 7,434,974; 7,537,370; 8,215,816 — all sharing the June 27, 1995 priority date) plus DDG-owned 7,914,196 on a backlight system. Note that the case metadata supplied to me identifies only the '660; the others should be treated as asserted-in-the-case-per-RPX but not verified against the complaint itself.

Procedural posture, venue, and why it matters. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and assigned to Judge Richard G. Andrews (hence the "-RGA" suffix), who also handled the six companion complaints filed the same day — 1:13-cv-02106 through 1:13-cv-02112 against Amazon, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Pantech, Sony, and VIZIO (RPX). Delaware was the flagship patent venue of that era (a "rocket docket"-adjacent forum with deep local patent expertise, and nominally the plaintiffs' home district as Delaware LLCs), which made it attractive to NPEs before TC Heartland (2017) narrowed venue. The case is notable less for its own merits than as a data point in three larger stories: (1) it is part of one of the largest LCD-backlight NPE campaigns of the mid-2010s, in which Acacia monetized ex-Rambus display patents across smartphone, tablet, and even automotive defendants; (2) it illustrates the IPR-driven attrition that reshaped those suits — the '660 patent was hit by a stack of IPR petitions (including IPR2014-01094 by LG Display, IPR2015-00363, IPR2015-00487 by LG, IPR2015-00745, and IPR2015-00897 by Toyota), and in the parallel LG case (C.A. 13-2109) Judge Andrews ordered dismissal without prejudice of the '177, '973, and '660 claims on October 21, 2015 after the NPEs agreed to drop patents under instituted IPR review; the NPEs then re-filed those patents in fresh Delaware actions on Dec. 30, 2015 with express consent to stays pending IPR (RPX, Dec. 29, 2015; dismissal order exhibit); and (3) the defendant's insolvency is the dominant practical fact — Pantech entered Korean receivership in August 2014, survived a near-liquidation in May 2015, and was bought out of receivership by the Optis/Solid consortium in October 2015, a context in which a U.S. patent damages claim had little realistic recovery value. RPX reports the case as closed on May 17, 2017, after 1,234 days, with no reported judgment.

Sourcing caveats. I verified the filing date, forum, judge, closure date, party identities, the Acacia/Rambus provenance, the '660 specification and priority chain, and the IPR/LG-case linkage against RPX, the Stanford NPE database, PTAB filings, and the patent itself. I could not verify from PACER the specific terminating docket entry for 1:13-cv-02110 (e.g., voluntary dismissal vs. dismissal for failure to prosecute vs. settlement), the exact identity of the second Pantech defendant, the specific Pantech products named in the complaint, the complete asserted-patent list as pleaded, or the resolution of the individual '660 IPRs — those points above are inferred or attributed and should be confirmed against the docket before being relied on.

I'll research this case across multiple sources.

Good progress. Let me dig into the specific docket and disposition of the Pantech case.

Case Snapshot

⚠️ Sourcing note. I was able to retrieve the complaint, the PTAB record, and secondary coverage of the related D. Del. cases, but not the full PACER docket sheet for 13-cv-02110 itself. Items below are marked [verified] where I have a source, and [unverified] where the record I could reach does not establish the fact. I have not invented docket entries, dates, or rulings to fill gaps.

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1. Filing & Initial Pleadings

2013-12-31 — Complaint filed [verified]. DDG and IDT filed eight counts of willful patent infringement (Counts ordered as the patents appear in the complaint; Count IV = the '660 patent), with a jury demand. DDG was assigned the '196 patent on 2013-12-20 and IDT the seven "IDT patents" on 2013-07-26; all eight share the ultimate parent U.S. 5,613,751 and a common written description. The complaint alleges direct infringement under §271(a), induced infringement under §271(b), and failure to mark/notice allegations under §287, and pleads that the patents were acquired from Rambus (itself acquired from Solid State Opto) as part of Acacia's 2013 purchase. (Complaint text; PTACTS petition copy)

Plaintiffs' counsel [verified]: Jeffrey R. Bragalone, Patrick J. Conroy, Justin B. Kimble, Daniel F. Olejko, T. William Kennedy, Jr. (Bragalone Conroy P.C., Dallas) with Brian E. Farnan / Michael J. Farnan (Farnan LLP, Wilmington).

2014-01-06/08 — Case assigned to Judge Andrews [verified]. The court's assignment entry flags the related/companion filings: 1:13-cv-02106 through -02112 (Amazon, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Pantech, Sony, VIZIO). Pro hac vice motions for the Bragalone Conroy team followed in January 2014. (See the annotated docket reproduced as Ex. 2011 in IPR2015-01717.)

Answer / counterclaims [unverified]. I could not confirm the defendants' answer date or the precise counterclaim counts. Practice in this campaign (and the parallel pleadings in the sister cases) was for defendants to counterclaim for declaratory judgment of non-infringement and invalidity. I cannot state the entry numbers or dates.

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2. Pre-Trial Motions of Substance

Motion to stay pending IPR [verified in the related LG case; treatment in the Pantech case unverified]. On 2015-04-22 plaintiffs filed Plaintiffs' Responsive Brief to Defendants' Motion to Stay Pending Inter Partes Review in the consolidated D. Del. family (filed in 13-cv-2109, Doc. 41). The brief is unusually probative of the posture of the whole campaign and of this case:

• Only one of six then-asserted patents was under an instituted IPR; otherwise "it is uncertain th[a]n any of the remaining six patents will even face an instituted IPR."
• Plaintiffs argued severe prejudice because "almost every patent at issue expires on June 15, 2015" — a 20-year term running from the June 1995 priority date. (The '660 patent, issued 2008-07-29, is within this group.)
• Plaintiffs emphasized that Judge Gilstrap in the E.D. Tex. consolidated display litigation had already construed the claims and denied summary-judgment motions on the same invalidity theories/prior art being pressed in the IPRs.
  (Full brief)

2015-10-21 — Narrowing order [verified]: Judge Andrews effectively forced the plaintiffs' hand on the stay motion: rather than grant a stay, he required IDT/DDG to dismiss without prejudice their claims on U.S. 7,384,177, 7,434,973, and 7,404,660 — the three patents then under instituted IPRs — and then denied the stay. The order (in C.A. 13-cv-2109) reads: "the claims for patent infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,384,177, 7,434,973, and 7,404,660 brought by Plaintiffs are dismissed WITHOUT PREJUDICE." (Order text; RPX summary)

Note a patent-number discrepancy worth flagging: the October order and RPX refer to 7,434,973, while the Pantech complaint's Exhibit E is captioned 7,434,974 ("issued Oct. 14, 2008"). The family contains both numbers, so the '973 dismissal may or may not have removed the '974 claim in this case. I could not verify which number was pleaded in 13-cv-02110 from the sources retrieved.

2015-12-30 — Re-filing strategy [verified, not involving Pantech]: IDT/DDG filed fresh complaints against Lenovo (1:15-cv-01220), LG (1:15-cv-01221), and VIZIO (1:15-cv-01222) re-asserting the three dropped patents ('177, '660, '973) and expressly agreeing to stays of the new cases pending the instituted IPRs. No equivalent new Pantech suit appears in the reporting. (RPX)

Motions to dismiss / transfer / summary judgment in 13-cv-02110 [unverified]. I have no sourced record of a Rule 12 motion, a §1404/§1406 transfer motion, or a dispositive SJ motion in this particular docket. The campaign-level reporting indicates the Delaware cases were litigated on the merits through claim construction and discovery rather than resolved on transfer.

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3. Claim Construction (Markman)

The Delaware case did not produce the lead construction — the E.D. Tex. cases did. The '660 patent's claim terms were construed first in the parallel Texas campaign, and those constructions were then imported into the Delaware briefing:

• Innovative Display Technologies LLC v. Acer Inc., No. 2:13-cv-00522 (E.D. Tex.), Claim Construction Order at Dkt. 101, 2014 WL 4230033 — including an agreed construction of "deformities" (a term of '660 claims 1 and 33), which the PTAB petitioner adopted verbatim in the IPR. This is the construction cited back to the Board by IDT as the district-court construction of the '660 patent. (IPR2015-00487 POPR)
• IDT v. Hyundai Motor Group, et al., No. 2:14-cv-00201-JRG (E.D. Tex.), Dkt. 244 (2015-05-04), a 56-page claim-construction opinion covering the six "Display Patents" including the '660 patent, noting they "share a common written description and figures" and an earliest priority date of 1995-06-27. (Opinion text)

Whether Judge Andrews issued a separate Markman order in 13-cv-02110 [unverified]. Given the 2015-10-21 carve-out of the '660 (and '177/'973) claims and the mid-2015 expiration of the term, the '660 issues in this case were largely overtaken by the IPRs before any Delaware trial.

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4. Parallel PTAB Proceedings on the '660 Patent

The '660 patent was the most heavily petitioned patent in the campaign. Documented proceedings:

Effect on the litigation [verified]: The instituted '660 IPR (IPR2015-00487) directly caused the plaintiffs to surrender the '660 claim in the Delaware cases without prejudice on 2015-10-21, retain the remaining patents in the original suits, and re-assert '660 in the December 2015 replacement suits with an agreed stay.

Outcome of IPR2015-00487's Final Written Decision [unverified]. I could not retrieve the FWD in my available searches. I will not speculate on whether claims survived or were cancelled, or on any Federal Circuit appeal from the '660 IPRs.

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5. Discovery Milestones

No case-specific discovery orders or ESI/venue milestones for 13-cv-02110 were retrievable. The only traceable discovery data point is campaign-level: plaintiffs argued in April 2015 that defendants filed their IPRs "too late," "wait[ing] until almost the entire statutory one-year limit to file their IPRs, while discovery in this case was progressing" — i.e., fact discovery was underway in the Delaware family before/alongside the IPRs. The Amended Scheduling Order entry points (if any) are not verified.

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6. Trial, Verdict, Post-Trial Motions

None reached. The '660 claim was dropped from the Delaware docket in October 2015; the term expired 2015-06-15; and the case closed in 2017 without a reported trial or verdict. There is no reported JMOL, new-trial, or fee opinion in 13-cv-02110. I have no source for a §285 fee motion in this case.

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7. Final Disposition / Present Posture

Closed 2017-05-17 per RPX Insight's docket summary, with no reported judgment for either side. [Verified as to the closure date; the operative closing entry (likely a stipulated or voluntary dismissal) is unverified.]

Strong contextual drivers for the closure — Pantech's corporate collapse (Pantech Co., Ltd. entered Korean creditor-led restructuring in 2014–2015 and was sold to a consortium in 2015), plus the June 2015 expiration of the patent term and the '660 carve-out — make a non-merits termination (dismissal/settlement of an insolvent defendant) the most plausible path, but I cannot confirm the specific mechanism or the presence/absence of prejudice, and PACER would be required to establish it.

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8. Campaign Context That Explains This Docket

• This case is one of seven identical complaints filed 2013-12-31 (13-cv-2106 to -2112) by Acacia's DDG/IDT against Amazon, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Pantech, Sony, and VIZIO. (RPX, 2014-01-09)
• The portfolio was assembled Solid State Opto → Rambus (2009) → Acacia (March 2013), and was also asserted in a much broader smartphone/tablet/automotive/consumer-electronics campaign (Google, Apple, Acer, BMW, Garmin, Nikon, TomTom, and the auto OEMs), which generated the E.D. Tex. claim constructions and most of the '660 IPRs. (RPX, 2014-03-06; RPX, 2014-04-10)
• The '660 IPR petitions listed this Pantech action among the co-pending litigations in mandatory notices — good evidence that the '660 patent was actively in play in 13-cv-02110 before the October 2015 carve-out. (IPR2014-01094 mandatory notices)

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Open Items to Run Down on PACER / PTAB

1. Closing entry in 13-cv-02110 (2017-05-17) — stipulation of dismissal? with/without prejudice? any settlement amount?
2. Answer/counterclaim entries and any Rule 12 or transfer motion by Pantech Co./Pantech Wireless.
3. Whether the '973 or '974 patent was the one dismissed/pleaded in this docket.
4. IPR2015-00487 Final Written Decision (and any IPR2015-00363/00855/01666/01717 institution or FWD) on the '660 patent, plus any Federal Circuit appeal.
5. Any Delaware Markman order in this case (or confirmation that claim construction was borrowed from IDT v. Acer / IDT v. Hyundai).

I'll research the counsel of record for the plaintiff in this case. Let me start with searches on the docket and related filings.

Let me dig into the docket and the plaintiff's counsel.

Let me find the specific D. Del. docket attorneys for this case.

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record — Delaware Display Group LLC v. Pantech Co. Ltd., No. 1:13-cv-02110-RGA (D. Del.)

Important sourcing caveat up front: I could not pull the 1:13-cv-02110 docket sheet itself in this session. The attorney roster below is drawn from (a) the docket sheet for the same-day, same-plaintiff companion case Delaware Display Group LLC v. LG Electronics, Inc., No. 1:13-cv-02109 (D. Del.), which was filed by the identical plaintiffs, on the identical date, by the identical counsel team and litigated before the same judge (Andrews, RGA), and (b) PTAB filings in which the same plaintiffs named their counsel. I have not independently confirmed the individual appearance entries on the 1:13-cv-02110 docket, so treat the assignment of specific attorneys to this docket as highly probable rather than PACER-verified. If you need certainty, order the docket sheet for 1:13-cv-02110-RGA directly from PACER.

The plaintiff

The caption's "et al." matters: the plaintiffs were Delaware Display Group LLC ("DDG") and co-plaintiff Innovative Display Technologies LLC ("IDT") — both Acacia Research Corporation subsidiaries. DDG identified Acacia Research Group LLC and Acacia Research Corporation as its real parties-in-interest in its PTAB mandatory notices. The '660 patent (U.S. 7,404,660, "Light Emitting Panel Assemblies," inventor Jeffery R. Parker) is one of eight patents asserted in the December 31, 2013 Delaware wave. The case was closed 05/17/2017 (RPX Insight).

Delaware local counsel — lead attorney of record

Plaintiff's patent litigation counsel (pro hac vice)

Firm: Bragalone Conroy PC ("BCPC"), 2200 Ross Avenue, Suite 4500, Dallas, Texas (email domain bcpc-law.com). All entered pro hac vice in Delaware.

The pro hac vice motion on the companion docket (D.I. 6, filed 01/02/2014 in 1:13-cv-02109) requested admission of Bragalone, Conroy, Kimble, Olejko, and Kennedy — the same five-attorney Dallas team that appears in the PTAB record for these patents.

One-line experience notes

• Farnan LLP (Joseph J. Farnan, Jr. / Brian E. Farnan): Delaware's go-to patent local counsel; Joseph Farnan, Jr. presided over the District of Delaware as Chief Judge, giving the team unmatched familiarity with D. Del. patent practice — precisely why Acacia's subsidiaries retained them for the Delaware wave.
• Bragalone Conroy PC: A Dallas patent-litigation boutique that was lead trial counsel for Acacia Research's NPE subsidiaries (IDT/DDG) in the multi-district light-emitting-panel campaign, including the parallel IPRs on the '660 patent (IPR2014-01094, IPR2015-00487, IPR2015-00495, IPR2015-01717).

What I could not verify

• I did not confirm in this session whether any 1:13-cv-02110 filing was sealed, or whether the appearance entries on this docket differ from the companion case. No attorneys are listed here who were not documented in the companion docket and/or the PTAB filings.
• Pantech's defense counsel is outside the scope of your question and is not addressed.
• Because the case closed in 2017, note that Bragalone Conroy's Dallas lineup and Farnan LLP's roster may have changed since; the roles above reflect the 2013–2014 filings.

Suggested verification: PACER docket for 1:13-cv-02110-RGA, D.I. 6 (pro hac vice motion) and any later withdrawal/substitution entries; and IPR2015-01717 Paper 10 for BCPC's confirmed role as plaintiffs' PTAB counsel on the '660 patent.

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

Let me look for the actual docket sheet for 1:13-cv-02110 and defendant-side counsel.