Litigation

Ferid Allani v. Apple Inc.

active

6:24-cv-00304-ADA

Filed
2024-06-03

Patents at issue (1)

Defender signal. Patent 10943058 has had claims invalidated at PTAB. Those final written decisions are public record and a ready-made § 102 / § 103 ground in district court. See IPR estoppel for what carries over.

Plaintiffs (1)

Defendants (1)

Summary

Ferid Allani sued Apple Inc. in the Western District of Texas alleging infringement of the '058 patent. The case had progressed through service, discovery, a scheduling order, and claim-construction briefing, with no final judgment, settlement, or dismissal visible as of mid-2025.

Case overview & background

Plain-language overview of the case: parties, accused product, patents at issue, and why the suit matters.

Parties and technology. Plaintiff Ferid Allani is an individual Tunisian-French inventor and patent owner, not an operating company: per the complaint he founded the computer-parts firm Securinfo (1986–2013) and the telecom venture All Net France (1998), and he holds the asserted patents personally with no identified licensees (RPX complaint copy; Apple's IPR papers state "No embodiments were ever made utilizing the patented technology. And PO has not identified a single license"). Defendant Apple Inc. is the operating company accused of infringement through its iOS mobile devices — iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches — specifically the home-screen/app-icon/folder user interface that lets users navigate locally among stored "selection pages" (home screens, folders) and then tap app icons ("direct access icons") that launch web-connected apps or Safari. The accused functionality is confirmed indirectly: Allani's discovery campaign targeted former Apple UI engineer Scott Herz because Herz "worked on the iPhone user interface between 1999 and 2009," and Allani argued it matters to damages "that iPhones sold before the '877 patent issued work in a similar manner as those sold post-issuance" (In re Ferid Allani's Subpoena to Scott Herz, No. 5:25-mc-80370-VKD, N.D. Cal.). The same-day parallel suit against Google (6:24-cv-00305-ADA) makes the theory explicit, accusing Android home screens, folders, and app icons as the same claimed structure.

Patent and procedural posture. The patent at issue is U.S. Patent No. 10,943,058, "Method and Device for Accessing Information Sources and Services on the Web," issued March 9, 2021 and expired July 27, 2021 (roughly four months after grant) — a divisional of U.S. Patent No. 8,271,877 (issued Sept. 18, 2012; expired Apr. 18, 2024), which the original complaint also asserted and which Apple challenged in a parallel IPR. Technically, the '058 patent claims a mobile phone that beforehand locally stores a plurality of selection pages in a tree-menu structure; each page has "selection icons" for local navigation to other stored pages and "direct access icons" that, when selected, transmit a locally generated address to the network to reach a target website — reducing network round-trips by localizing preliminary search. Representative independent claim 24 covers the three-level page/icon device, with claims 25–27 covering the selection-page/direct-access-icon method. The case is in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas before Judge Alan D. Albright (No. 6:24-cv-00304-ADA, filed June 3, 2024; Apple served June 28, 2024; answer deadline extended to Sept. 5, 2024). Venue matters because Albright's Waco docket was the epicenter of U.S. patent litigation — a fast "rocket docket" historically favorable to plaintiffs — and because Apple, a Northern California company, is being tried in a forum far from its home base. The case has advanced through a Scheduling Order (Dkt. 18), claim-construction briefing (Dkts. 21, 23–26), a May 2, 2025 Markman hearing, and a May 6, 2025 claim-construction order (Dkt. 30) in which the Court largely adopted Apple's constructions — e.g., "web site" = "one or more web pages accessible through a web address," "direct access icon" = an icon that "causes a request to be sent directly to a web server hosting the website corresponding to the icon," and "said address being locally generated" = "created on the device." Discovery was active through 2025 (interrogatory/RFP responses exchanged; final infringement and invalidity contentions due July 24, 2025), and per the PTAB Director's September 2025 decision the district court's scheduled trial date was June 8, 2026. As of the available records, no verdict, judgment, or settlement is confirmed.

Why the case is notable. This is a textbook expired-patent assertion with a hostile validity backdrop: the Paris Judicial Court invalidated the French priority patent (FR 2 803 929) for lack of novelty in January 2023 (case N° RG 20/01312), rejecting Allani's €60 million claim against Apple and Google (JUVE Patent, Feb. 1, 2023), and the EPO had refused the European application — so Allani's U.S. damages window is only the roughly four-and-a-half months between the '058's March 2021 issuance and July 2021 expiration, with pre-suit notice limited to a 2012 letter to Apple. Apple responded with two April 24, 2025 IPR petitions (IPR2025-00856 against the '877 patent; IPR2025-00857 against the '058 patent), arguing obviousness over 1990s HDML/Unwired Planet-era prior art (Rossmann U.S. 6,119,155; Himmel U.S. 6,037,934; King U.S. 6,353,839; Adar U.S. 6,493,702) and highlighting the French invalidity; the Acting Director denied Allani's discretionary-denial request and referred the petitions to the Board (Sept. 5, 2025), and the Board denied institution on the '877 IPR on Nov. 4, 2025 — the status of IPR2025-00857's institution decision was not confirmed in the sources available to me. The case is also emblematic of late-cycle NPE-style enforcement against smartphone UI conventions (every iOS/Android home screen is an icon-driven local navigation tree), and it has spawned satellite third-party discovery fights in the Northern District of California over depositions of former Apple engineers (Herz; and In re Imran Akhtar Chaudhri, No. 3:26-mc-80019-RS), underscoring the damages-proof challenges of asserting a short-lived, pre-issuance-era patent against a product line whose UI predates issuance.

Key legal developments & outcome

Major rulings, motions, claim construction, settlements, and the present posture or final disposition.

Key Legal Developments — Ferid Allani v. Apple Inc., No. 6:24-cv-00304-ADA (W.D. Tex., Waco Div., Judge Albright)

Below is a chronological account based on the docket record, the Court's orders, PTAB filings, and satellite proceedings. Items I could not verify from available sources are flagged as unconfirmed. The case was still active as of the last confirmed records (mid-2026), with no final judgment, settlement, or verdict confirmed.


1. Filing & initial pleadings

  • 2024-06-03 — Complaint filed (Dkt. 1). Ferid Allani sued Apple for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 10,943,058 (and, per the original complaint, its parent U.S. Patent No. 8,271,877), with jury demand; the AO 120 patent form (Dkt. 2) and civil cover sheet (Dkt. 3) were filed the same day. Case assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright.
  • 2024-06-20 — Summons issued (Dkt. 5).
  • 2024-06-28 — Apple served. Return of service filed 2024-07-12 (Dkt. 8; Dkt. 7 was filed in error).
  • 2024-07-12 — Answer deadline extended. Apple filed an unopposed request to change its deadline (Dkt. 6); the Court reset the answer date to 2024-09-05.
  • Apple's answer/counterclaims: The deadline passed on 2024-09-05, but I could not confirm the actual answer docket entry or any counterclaims in the sources available. No counterclaim-related activity (e.g., a counterclaim-based motion) appears in the later record, which suggests any answer was a straightforward denial, but this is unverified.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

  • No motion to dismiss, transfer, or stay pending IPR is confirmed. Notably, despite Apple's historical practice of seeking transfer out of Waco, the case remained before Judge Albright through claim construction and into 2025 discovery. No stay motion appears in the record even after the April 2025 IPR filings — consistent with the PTAB Director's later observation that there was "insufficient evidence that the district court is likely to stay its proceeding."
  • 2025-04-24 — IPR petitions filed (IPR2025-00856 against the '877; IPR2025-00857 against the '058). These are the only significant "motions of substance" in the parallel track; see § 6 below.
  • 2025-09-05 — PTAB Acting Director's decision on discretionary denial. Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart denied Allani's request for discretionary denial of institution (citing the parties' "meaningful investment" in the district court case — Markman order issued, written discovery exchanged, final contentions due 2025-07-24) and referred both petitions to the Board. The decision noted the district court's scheduled trial date of June 8, 2026 and a projected PTAB final-written-decision date of November 22, 2026.
  • No summary-judgment motion confirmed as of the available record.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

  • Briefing: Apple's opening brief (Dkt. 21), Allani's response (Dkt. 23), Apple's reply (Dkt. 24), Allani's sur-reply (Dkt. 25), and the Joint Claim Construction Statement (Dkt. 26).
  • 2025-05-01 / 2025-05-02: The Court provided preliminary constructions and held the Markman hearing.
  • 2025-05-06 — Claim Construction Order (Dkt. 30). The Court largely adopted Apple's constructions:
    • "web site" ('877 claims 12, 19; '058 claim 27) → "one or more web pages accessible through a web address" (Apple's position; Allani had proposed "a source of information or services accessible via a network using HTTP or another web protocol").
    • "direct access icon" ('058 claims 24–26) → "an icon that, when selected, causes a request to be sent directly to a web server hosting the website corresponding to the icon" (Apple's construction, adopted nearly verbatim).
    • "said address being locally generated" → "said address being generated on the device" (the parties' constructions converged here).
    • "specifically designed to" ('058 claims 24–27) → the Court rejected Apple's indefiniteness challenge and did not adopt Allani's "used to include" gloss.
    • The Court stated it would issue a more detailed explanatory order "in due course"; I could not confirm whether that detailed order was later docketed.
  • A copy of Dkt. 30 later surfaced as Exhibit 2007 in unrelated IPRs (IPR2025-00913/-00915, Intel v. Advanced Cluster Systems), confirming the order's content.

4. Discovery milestones with strategic significance

  • Scheduling Order (Dkt. 18) set the case on Albright's expedited track (exact date of entry not confirmed).
  • 2025-05-06: Apple served its First Set of RFPs (Nos. 1–33) on Allani.
  • 2025-06-05: Apple served responses to Allani's First Set of RFPs (Nos. 1–33) and First Set of Interrogatories (Nos. 1–17) — counsel of record included Steven J. Wingard, Anna E. Dwyer, Garland T. Stephens, John P. Brinkmann, and Melissa Hotze (Blue Peak Law Group / Scott Douglass & McConnico).
  • 2025-07-07: Allani served objections/responses to Apple's First Set of Interrogatories (Nos. 1–8) (signed by Lewis E. Hudnell III).
  • 2025-07-24: Final infringement and invalidity contentions due. Apple's invalidity contentions (filed in the IPR record) attacked Allani's preliminary infringement contentions as deficient, arguing they lacked claim-element specificity and did not distinguish literal infringement from the doctrine of equivalents.
  • Third-party discovery (strategic significance: damages proof): Allani subpoenaed former Apple UI engineer Scott Herz for deposition. Herz moved to quash on 2025-11-21 (In re Ferid Allani's Subpoena to Scott Herz, No. 5:25-mc-80370-VKD, N.D. Cal.), after the noticed 2025-11-18 deposition date; the court issued a decision in 2026 (Doc. 8) finding Herz's motion timely (the merits ruling on the subpoena is not confirmed in my sources). Allani's theory was that Herz's testimony would show "iPhones sold before the '877 patent issued work in a similar manner as those sold post-issuance" — relevant to the damages window for this short-lived, expired patent. A second satellite fight, In re Imran Akhtar Chaudhri, No. 3:26-mc-80019-RS (N.D. Cal.), followed the same pattern.

5. Trial, verdict, and post-trial

  • Scheduled trial date: 2026-06-08 (confirmed by the PTAB Director's September 2025 decision).
  • No trial events, verdict, JMOL, new-trial motion, or fee motion are confirmed as of 2026-08-27. The parties' own time-to-trial statistics, cited in the Director's decision, suggested trial could slip as late as April 2027, so it is plausible the June 2026 date was reset — but I found no docket confirmation of a continuance, trial, or post-trial disposition.

6. Parallel PTAB IPRs and their effect

  • 2025-04-24: Apple filed IPR2025-00856 ('877 patent) and IPR2025-00857 ('058 patent), asserting obviousness over 1990s HDML-era art — Rossmann (U.S. 6,119,155), Himmel (U.S. 6,037,934), King (U.S. 6,353,839), Adar (U.S. 6,493,702), and Boyle — and highlighting the January 2023 Paris Judicial Court invalidation of the French counterpart (FR 2 803 929) and the patents' post-expiration assertion.
  • 2025-09-05: Acting Director Stewart denied Allani's discretionary-denial request and referred both petitions to the Board for institution decisions on the merits.
  • 2025-11-04: IPR2025-00856 ('877) — institution DENIED. The Board declined to institute review of the parent patent (per the prior case summary; the decision itself was not located in this search round).
  • IPR2025-00857 ('058) — institution decision unconfirmed. The PTAB panel (Judges Murphy, Lee, and Smith) had been assigned, Allani's preliminary response argued (inter alia) that Rossmann's HDML "decks" are server-driven on-demand caches rather than "beforehand locally stored" selection pages and that there was no motivation to combine, and the projected final written decision date was 2026-11-22. I could not confirm whether the Board instituted or denied. Given the '877 IPR was denied institution, a parallel denial in the '058 IPR would be unsurprising, but that is inference, not a sourced fact.
  • Effect on the litigation: The IPRs did not trigger a stay; the district court case continued through Markman and discovery in parallel. The '877 IPR's denial (2025-11-04) removed one validity threat, but the '058 IPR remained pending through the scheduled trial window. The French invalidity ruling remained Apple's chief validity narrative in both the IPR and district-court invalidity contentions.

7. Final disposition / present posture

  • None confirmed. As of the available record (last retrieved entries mid-2026), the case shows no settlement, dismissal, judgment, or appeal. The metadata still reflects an active case. The scheduled 2026-06-08 trial date has passed with no confirmed outcome, so the realistic possibilities are (a) trial occurred and the verdict/order has not surfaced in my sources, (b) the trial was reset (consistent with the parties' conflicting time-to-trial statistics suggesting dates into 2027), or (c) the case was resolved quietly — none of which I can verify.

Key caveats

  • Unconfirmed items: Apple's answer/counterclaims (post-2024-09-05), the promised detailed Markman opinion, the IPR2025-00857 institution decision, and everything after the scheduled 2026-06-08 trial date.
  • Dating note: The earlier case summary said the Board denied institution on the '877 IPR on "Nov. 4, 2025"; my searches did not surface that decision directly, so it is repeated here as previously sourced. The Director's discretionary-denial decision (2025-09-05) is independently confirmed by the USPTO document.
  • Parallel case: The same-day suit against Google (6:24-cv-00305-ADA, same judge) remains a separate proceeding; its disposition was not part of this task.

In the news

What the press has reported about this case, summarized with links to the source articles.

Press & Analysis Coverage of Allani v. Apple

Published press coverage of the U.S. case itself is remarkably thin. I found no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, Ars Technica, The Verge, or EFF article specifically about Ferid Allani v. Apple Inc., No. 6:24-cv-00304-ADA — a notable silence given the case has been active in Judge Albright's Waco court since June 2024 and survived Apple's IPR challenge to the parent '877 patent (institution denied Nov. 4, 2025, per GreyB's IPverse PTAB tracker). The only substantive coverage of the U.S. litigation I located is an analyst piece by RPX Corp (a patent-risk intelligence firm that tracks NPE campaigns), published in its "Data Byte" series on Judge Albright's Q3 2024 docket. RPX reported that Allani sued Alphabet (Google) and Apple in Waco in June 2024, that the Apple suit was randomly assigned to Judge Albright while the Google suit went to District Judge Leon Schydlower, and that Allani then moved to reassign the Google case to Albright and relate it to the Apple case on the theory that they share "issues of claim construction, validity, and/or infringement" — a move Google opposed, pointing to "the lack of overlap in accused products and witnesses." RPX noted Judge Schydlower denied that motion on August 30, 2024, finding Allani's motion invoked the May 30, 2024 Waco case-assignment order but did not actually seek "consolidation" as that order covers.

The only other directly relevant press item is JUVE Patent's Feb. 1, 2023 report on the predecessor French litigation — the same patent family, same defendant (Apple, plus Google), and the campaign that Apple's IPR papers later used as ammunition. JUVE reported that the Judicial Court of Paris declared Allani's French patent FR 2 803 929 invalid for lack of novelty (case N° RG 20/01312) and dismissed his claims for provisional damages of "up to €30 million each" from Apple and Google — a combined €60 million exposure — and noted the EPO had refused the European application while the USPTO granted U.S. Patent No. 8,271,877 (the '058's parent) in September 2012. JUVE's reporter, Amy Sandys, added an analyst-layer observation beyond the court record: that it is "relatively unusual for French proceedings to cancel a patent based on a lack of novelty over the prior art, especially when the court bases the decision on third-party documents," since French courts tend to invalidate on lack of inventive step in electronics/digital cases. JUVE also covered the counsel lineup (Dentons for Apple, Allen & Overy for Google, De Marcellus & Disser for Allani) and Allani's then-pending parallel French suit against Microsoft.

Where the reporting goes beyond the court record, it is mostly framing rather than fact: RPX treats the Allani suits as a data point in its thesis that Waco's May 30, 2024 random-assignment order (Chief Judge Alia Moses) has deterred NPE filings and forced plaintiffs to litigate intra-district reassignment disputes — characterizing Allani as an inventor-plaintiff whose attempt to consolidate both cases before Albright was rebuffed. Neither outlet reports any damages figure sought in the U.S. case, any settlement terms, or any market-impact numbers, and no outlet has covered the claim-construction order, the PTAB institution denials, or the satellite subpoena fights over former Apple engineer Scott Herz. In short: press coverage of this litigation is limited to (1) one RPX venue-analysis item touching the Apple suit directly and (2) JUVE Patent's French-campaign coverage; mainstream U.S. legal and tech press have not covered the case as of the latest searches.

Sources

Plaintiff representatives

Counsel of record for the plaintiff(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record — Ferid Allani v. Apple Inc., No. 6:24-cv-00304-ADA (W.D. Tex., Waco Div.)

Based on the case docket (Justia/PACER mirror), the complaint and subsequent filings in the district court, and the PTAB power-of-attorney records in the parallel IPR (IPR2025-00856), the plaintiff's counsel of record is a two-attorney team from Hudnell Law Group P.C.

1. Lewis E. Hudnell, III — Lead Counsel

  • Role: Lead counsel for plaintiff Ferid Allani. He signed the original Complaint (Dkt. 1, filed June 3, 2024), the summons-return filings (Dkts. 4, 7, 8), the plaintiff's claim-construction briefs, discovery responses, and other substantive filings (e.g., Notice of Agreed Extension, June 25, 2025, signed by Hudnell on behalf of Allani). He is also designated lead counsel for Allani as patent owner in the parallel IPR2025-00856 (PTAB power of attorney dated May 15, 2025).
  • Firm/office: Hudnell Law Group P.C., 800 W. El Camino Real, Suite 180, Mountain View, CA 94040 (T: 650-564-3698; lewis@hudnelllaw.com).
  • Experience: Longtime IP/patent-litigation specialist; named to the Northern California Super Lawyers list for 10+ consecutive years (2015–2026); AV Preeminent-rated; USPTO-registered (Reg. No. 51,185); Cornell B.S., Penn Law J.D. (L'98). Notable matters include Opticurrent, LLC v. Power Integrations (N.D. Cal. — won jury verdict of infringement), MEC Resources, LLC v. Apple Inc. (N.D. Cal./PTAB — favorable settlement against Apple), VoIP-Pal.com v. Amazon (W.D. Tex.), and successful PTAB defense in Google v. VoIP-Pal and Samsung v. Kannuu. His firm's website also touts an active plaintiff-side licensing/NPE practice, consistent with this case.

2. Stanley H. Thompson, Jr. — Co-Counsel (Special Counsel to Hudnell Law Group)

  • Role: Co-counsel for plaintiff; appears alongside Hudnell on the plaintiff's signature blocks in district-court filings (e.g., the June 25, 2025 Agreed Extension notice: "Lewis E. Hudnell, III / Stanley H. Thompson, Jr. / HUDNELL LAW GROUP P.C. — ATTORNEYS FOR PLAINTIFF FERID ALLANI"). He is designated back-up counsel for Allani in IPR2025-00856 (Reg. No. 45,160).
  • Firm/office: In the district-court filings he is listed under Hudnell Law Group P.C. (Mountain View, CA; stan@hudnelllaw.com). In the PTAB power of attorney he is identified as "Special counsel to Hudnell Law Group P.C." at his own firm, Thompson Technology Law, 655 N. Central Ave., 17th Floor, Glendale, CA 91203 (stan@thompsontechlaw.com).
  • Experience: USPTO-registered patent litigator with an IP/technology practice in the Los Angeles/Glendale area; his PTAB designation confirms his role in defending Allani's patents against Apple's inter partes review challenge.

Additional notes

  • Jessica Burr (jessica@hudnelllaw.com) appears in the cc-line of discovery correspondence between counsel (e.g., Apple's July 1, 2025 document-production email) and is a Hudnell Law Group colleague, but I found no signature block or docket entry confirming her as counsel of record in this case — she should not be listed as an appearing attorney without PACER verification.
  • Local counsel: The docket records I accessed do not show any separately designated Texas local counsel for Allani; both appearing attorneys are California-based. Out-of-state counsel before Judge Albright's court would ordinarily require pro hac vice admission (W.D. Tex. Local Rule AT-1), but I could not confirm the specific pro hac vice docket entries from the public mirror, which cuts off around July 2024. If the case proceeds to the June 8, 2026 trial date, any pro hac vice/local-counsel designations will be reflected on PACER.
  • Apple's counsel (for context, not requested): Blue Peak Law Group (Anna E. Dwyer, Garland T. Stephens, John P. Brinkmann, Melissa Hotze) and Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP (Steven J. Wingard, Robert Pierce Earle, Stephen Burbank) — confirmed from the same filings.

Source grounding: Dkt. 1 (Complaint, filed by "Hudnell, Lewis"); Dkts. 4, 7–8 (summons filings by Hudnell); June 25, 2025 Notice of Agreed Extension (signed by Hudnell and Thompson as "Attorneys for Plaintiff"); PTAB power of attorney in IPR2025-00856 (Hudnell = lead, Thompson = back-up, both representing Allani); Hudnell Law Group website and Super Lawyers profile for background. No verdict, judgment, or settlement appears in the available records as of this analysis.

Defendant representatives

Counsel of record for the defendant(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

Counsel of Record for Defendant Apple Inc. — Ferid Allani v. Apple Inc., No. 6:24-cv-00304-ADA (W.D. Tex., Waco Div., Judge Albright)

Apple is represented by a two-firm team: Blue Peak Law Group, LLP (Houston) as lead outside counsel and Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP (Austin) as local/Texas counsel. This is confirmed by Apple's signed filings in the case (Apple's June 5, 2025 RFP responses; the June 25, 2025 Notice of Agreed Extension; the July 7, 2025 Notice of Service of Subpoena to HMD Global), all of which carry both firms' signature blocks as "Counsel for Defendant Apple Inc.," and by the Justia docket listing (retrieved July 12, 2024), which reflects Wingard, Burbank, and Earle as Apple's attorneys of record at the outset (Dkt. 6 was filed by Wingard on July 12, 2024).

Lead outside counsel — Blue Peak Law Group, LLP (3139 Holcombe Blvd., PMB 8160, Houston, TX 77025)

Attorney Role Note
Anna E. Dwyer Lead counsel (appearing pro hac vice in W.D. Tex.) Veteran IP litigator and Blue Peak partner; the firm's de facto lead in this case — her name heads Apple's signature block on multiple filings (e.g., June 25, 2025 extension notice; July 7, 2025 subpoena notice, where she is expressly listed "pro hac vice").
Garland T. Stephens Lead counsel Blue Peak partner who signed the July 7, 2025 subpoena notice for Apple; co-heads the trial team.
John P. Brinkmann Lead counsel Blue Peak partner on Apple's signature blocks throughout the 2025 discovery phase.
Melissa Hotze Lead counsel (appearing pro hac vice in W.D. Tex.) Blue Peak partner; listed "pro hac vice" in the July 7, 2025 filing; handles discovery and trial work for Apple.

Support staff, not counsel of record: Hannah Kim (Blue Peak, production paralegal/associate, hannah@bluepeak.law) appears only on email chains, not on filings.

Local / Texas counsel — Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP (303 Colorado St., Suite 2400, Austin, TX 78701)

Attorney Role Note
Steven J. Wingard Lead local counsel Partner at the long-established Austin litigation firm; filed Apple's first substantive paper (Dkt. 6, July 12, 2024, extending Apple's answer deadline) and signed Apple's June 5, 2025 RFP responses; the earliest-appearing Apple attorney of record on the Justia docket.
Robert Pierce Earle Local counsel Scott Douglass partner on every Apple signature block; Texas-licensed local counsel for the Waco forum.
Stephen Burbank Local counsel Scott Douglass attorney on Apple's signature blocks; also listed on the Justia docket as an attorney of record.

Support staff, not counsel of record: Jordan Kadjar and Sammie Frazier (Scott Douglass, jkadjar@scottdoug.com / sfrazier@scottdoug.com) appear only on production email chains.

In-house counsel

None confirmed. No Apple in-house attorney (e.g., from Apple's IP litigation group in Cupertino) appears on any filing I located. Apple routinely keeps in-house counsel off the W.D. Tex. signature blocks in Albright cases, and nothing in the available docket excerpts suggests an exception here. (If the docket's attorney-participation page lists an Apple house lawyer, it was not visible in the PACER/Justia excerpts available to me.)

Verification notes and limitations

  • Sources: Justia docket for 6:24-cv-00304 (Dkts. 1–8, retrieved July 12, 2024); Apple's signed June–July 2025 filings reproduced in the PTAB exhibit collections linked from the PTACTS/PTAB record (IPR2025-00856/00857-related exhibits, including the May 6, 2025 claim-construction order at Dkt. 30); RPX commentary on the case's assignment to Judge Albright. I did not access PACER directly, so the court's formal "lead counsel" designation on the docket sheet (if any) could not be independently verified — the lead/local split above reflects the signature blocks and filing patterns.
  • Parallel IPR counsel: Apple's PTAB petitions (IPR2025-00856 and IPR2025-00857) were filed under a separate representation arrangement; the IPR record (Exhibits 1035–1042 etc.) reproduces the district-court filings but does not indicate that the same Blue Peak/Scott Douglass team handles the IPRs. If you need the IPR counsel list, that is a separate production (the district-court counsel of record is what the task asked for).
  • Plaintiff's counsel (for cross-reference): Lewis E. Hudnell III and Stanley H. Thompson Jr. (Hudnell Law Group P.C., Mountain View, CA) represent Allani; they appear on the same filings but are not Apple's counsel.

Bottom line: If you need a caption-ready service list for Apple, it is: Anna E. Dwyer, Garland T. Stephens, John P. Brinkmann, Melissa Hotze (Blue Peak Law Group LLP, Houston) and Steven J. Wingard, Robert Pierce Earle, Stephen Burbank (Scott Douglass & McConnico LLP, Austin).