Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc.

Case Overview: Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc., No. 2:22-cv-02236-JPM-tmp (W.D. Tenn.)

Parties and technology. Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. is a patent-licensing/assertion company (classified as an NPE by RPX and Unified Patents in related matters) founded by inventor William Ho Chang; it describes itself as a pioneer in pervasive short-range wireless (Wi-Fi/Bluetooth) technologies and does not appear to sell products itself. Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc. is the U.S. sales-and-distribution arm of Brother Industries, Ltd. (Japan), the printer/electronics OEM; its U.S. affiliate Brother International Corporation also appeared in the related actions. Flexiworld accused Brother of infringing its wireless-printing patents through Brother's wireless printers, "including but not limited to new and refurbished versions of Brother's MFC, HL, RHL, DCP, DS, VC, PJ, and ADS series wireless printers," and through Brother's support and marketing of wireless-printing features such as Apple AirPrint, Mopria Print Service, Google Cloud Print, Brother iPrint&Scan, and Brother Web Connect (Complaint ¶ 39 and RPX Insight, TN W.D. case 2:22-cv-02236; Brother's Sept. 2, 2022 motion-to-dismiss memorandum, available via action-intell.com). The core patent here is U.S. Patent No. 9,036,181 — "Wireless Printing Device for Printing Digital Content Received Via Wireless Communication Compatible, at Least Partly, with IEEE 802.11 or Bluetooth," issued May 19, 2015 (priority dating to ~2001), naming Chang and Christina Ying Liu — which claims a printer that wirelessly receives and prints digital content from a mobile device over IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) or Bluetooth, i.e., "printing over air" without a wired connection. The initial complaint's report to the PTO also listed U.S. Patent Nos. 10,140,071 and 10,873,856, and Count I of the amended complaint specifically asserted claim 1 of the '181 patent, along with allegations of induced and willful infringement based on notice letters sent July 23, 2021 and October 29, 2021 (Unified Patents docket text; RPX complaint excerpts).

Procedural posture and venue. Filed April 15, 2022 in the Memphis Division of the Western District of Tennessee, before Judge Jon Phipps McCalla (referred to Chief Magistrate Judge Tu M. Pham), the case was one of four coordinated Flexiworld actions against Brother (2:22-cv-02236, -02237, -02250, -02251, all JPM-tmp), mirroring four parallel suits Flexiworld filed against Lexmark around the same time. Venue was the central battleground framing of the complaint: Flexiworld pleaded venue under 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) based on Brother's "million-square-foot distribution center" and customer-support operation at 7777 North Brother Boulevard, Bartlett, Tennessee — inside the Memphis division — where Brother allegedly offered for sale, sold, and supported the accused printers (Complaint ¶¶ 9–12). Brother's U.S. counsel (Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft) moved on September 2, 2022 to dismiss Flexiworld's Second Amended Complaints for failure to state claims of method-claim direct infringement, infringement dependent on third-party products (e.g., user operation of iPhones/Android devices with AirPrint/Mopria/Cloud Print), and contributory infringement. The case never reached claim construction or trial: the parties filed joint motions to dismiss with prejudice on March 10, 2023 (ECF No. 52 in this case), and Judge McCalla entered dismissal with prejudice across all four coordinated actions on March 13, 2023 under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), with each side bearing its own costs and fees (PatSnap/PACER recitation of the consent judgment; DocketAlarm case summary).

Why it matters. The case is a clean illustration of Flexiworld's serial NPE enforcement campaign against printer OEMs over an early-2000s wireless-printing patent family — the same '181 patent and siblings were asserted against Canon (W.D. Tex., Feb. 2021), Epson (C.D. Cal., 2021), Xerox (W.D.N.Y., 2023), and HP (S.D. Tex., 2024), among others. The coordinated four-case-per-defendant filing pattern (Brother and Lexmark), the reliance on user-facing features like AirPrint and Mopria, and the quick ~11-month (332-day) resolution by confidential consent judgment are all hallmarks of a licensing-driven campaign rather than a bet-the-company merits dispute. The settlement with prejudice resolved only these parties; it did not resolve the validity or enforceability of the '181 patent against other OEMs, and Flexiworld has continued asserting related patents against HP and others. One caveat: I could not verify from available sources whether any inter partes review was filed against the '181 patent specifically in connection with this case — the public record I found does not show an IPR linkage, so any such connection should be confirmed against PTAB records before relying on it.

Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc.

No. 2:22-cv-02236-JPM-tmp (W.D. Tenn., Memphis Division) — Key Legal Developments and Outcome

Scope note: The case metadata flags U.S. Patent No. 9,036,181 as the patent at issue. The initial complaint's Report to the Commissioner (filed 2022-04-15) actually listed three patents — 9,036,181; 10,140,071; and 10,873,856 — all Flexiworld wireless-printing/output patents (Unified Patents docket text for 2:22-cv-02236). The four related actions (2:22-cv-02236, -02237, -02250, -02251) were coordinated before Judge Jon Phipps McCalla with Chief Magistrate Judge Tu M. Pham and were litigated and resolved in tandem. Several secondary sources (e.g., a PatSnap article) are AI-generated and unreliable on the patent numbers; where the primary docket record conflicts, I rely on the docket.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

• 2022-04-15 — Flexiworld filed the complaint against Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc., with jury demand, asserting patent infringement (cause listed as 15 U.S.C. § 1126 patent infringement on the docket) and naming patents 9,036,181; 10,140,071; and 10,873,856 (ECF No. 1 and Report to the Commissioner; Unified Patents docket text; docketalarm.com case page). Case assigned to Judge McCalla and Magistrate Judge Pham; Standard track under LR 16.2; ADR referral notice issued same day.
• April 2022 (dates per related dockets) — Flexiworld filed three more complaints: 2:22-cv-02237 (filed ~04/15), and 2:22-cv-02250 and 2:22-cv-02251 (filed 2022-04-21), asserting additional Flexiworld patents (e.g., 10,841,798; 10,768,871; 10,037,178; 11,096,056 in No. 02250 per its ECF No. 3). All four were coordinated as "Associated Cases" under -JPM-tmp.
• 2022-05-02/05-16 — Service on Brother entities effected; certificates/affidavits of service filed (Justia docket, No. 02250, ECF Nos. 11, 16).
• 2022-05-20 to 05-23 — Brother's counsel appeared: Mark Vorder-Bruegge, Jr. and Matthew M. Lubozynski (Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP, Memphis) (Justia docket, No. 02250, ECF Nos. 14, 16).
• 2022-05-21 / 2022-05-31 — Brother filed an unopposed extension of time to answer; granted by Judge McCalla on 05-31.
• 2022-06-14 — Joint Stipulation Regarding Amended Complaint filed and so ordered the same day (Judge McCalla) across all four cases (Justia docket, No. 02250, ECF Nos. 18–19).
• 2022-06-16 — Joint Planning Report and Proposed Schedule filed (ECF No. 20, all four cases).
• Summer 2022 — Flexiworld amended (First Amended Complaint), and later filed Second Amended Complaints (SACs); the SACs added Brother International Corporation as a defendant (RPX lists two defendants in the related actions; the September 2022 motion to dismiss and the March 2023 dismissal papers are captioned with Brother International Corporation as Defendant). Per trade press (action-intell.com), Brother moved against the initial complaints and Flexiworld responded by amending.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• 2022-09-02 — Brother International Corporation's Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim under Rule 12(b)(6), with memorandum, directed at the SACs in all four actions (action-intell.com PDF; counsel for Brother: Vorder-Bruegge and Lubozynski of Wyatt Tarrant; John T. Moehringer, Danielle V. Tully, Michael B. Powell, John T. Augelli of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, pro hac vice). Brother sought dismissal of: (i) method-claim direct infringement claims for certain patents; (ii) infringement claims dependent on third-party products (e.g., customer/end-user use of AirPrint, Mopria Print, Brother iPrint&Scan) for all asserted patents; and (iii) contributory infringement claims for certain patents. The memorandum also contested venue/pleading sufficiency grounds in detail (RPX litigation-document copy of the SAC pleading shows extensive venue allegations centered on Brother's Bartlett, Tennessee facility).
• Late 2022 — Flexiworld opposed; Brother (and Lexmark in parallel E.D. Ky. cases) filed reply briefs in support of dismissal (action-intell.com: "Flexiworld Fights Brother's and Lexmark's Motions to Dismiss"; "Brother and Lexmark File Briefs Arguing for Dismissal…"). No ruling on this motion appears in the record I could source — it was apparently still pending when the parties settled, and was mooted by dismissal.
• No motion to transfer, no motion to stay pending IPR, and no summary-judgment motion were identified in the available record.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

• No Markman proceedings or claim-construction order were reached. The case terminated about eleven months after filing, while the Rule 12(b)(6) motion was pending and before the typical Markman stage for this district's patent track. (No claim-construction order appears in any retrieved docket or court-opinion source.)

4. Discovery milestones

• The only scheduling-stage milestone confirmed in the public record is the Joint Planning Report and Proposed Schedule (2022-06-16), which set the LR 16.2 track. No substantive discovery opinions, protective-order disputes, or expert-stage milestones appear in the retrieved sources — the case settled before those events matured. Venue-related factual development (purchases, order confirmations, tracking, product photos from Brother's Bartlett facility) was pleaded in the SAC with exhibits, but no discovery rulings are documented.

5. Trial events

• No trial occurred and there was no verdict. Consequently, there were no post-trial motions (JMOL, new trial, fees) and no appeal.

6. Final disposition — settlement, dismissal, judgment

• 2023-03-10 — The parties filed a Joint Motion to Dismiss With Prejudice in all four actions (2:22-cv-02236 ECF No. 52; 2:22-cv-02237 ECF No. 54; 2:22-cv-02250 ECF No. 51; 2:22-cv-02251 ECF No. 51) (action-intell.com PDF). The motion recited that Flexiworld and Brother "have settled their claims for relief asserted in the above-captioned actions," and requested dismissal with prejudice of all pending claims and counterclaims, "with each party … to bear its own costs and fees."
• 2023-03-13 — Judge McCalla entered the Order of Dismissal in each action, dismissing all claims with prejudice pursuant to the parties' Stipulation of Dismissal and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), and entered judgment by the court (action-intell.com PDF of the Order; PatSnap reproduces the order text from the 02237 docket; docketalarm.com confirms termination 2023-03-13). All four coordinated actions were closed the same day.
• No appeal followed; the termination basis is settlement/consent dismissal, with no disclosed monetary or licensing terms in the public record.

7. Parallel PTAB IPR/PGR proceedings

• None identified in the sourced record. I found no PTAB IPR or PGR petitions involving the '181 patent (or the other asserted patents) tied to this litigation, and no IPR stay motion was filed in the district court. Flexiworld's wireless-output portfolio has been challenged in IPRs in other, separate litigations, but I could not verify any Brother-related or '181-specific PTAB proceeding from the sources retrieved, and I would not assert one exists without a PACER/PTAB check.
• Practice note on the '181 patent: USPTO/aggregator data shows U.S. 9,036,181 (granted 2015-05-18/19; priority date 2001-01-18) with an expiration date of 2022-01-17 — i.e., potentially expired before suit was filed, which would have limited any recovery to pre-expiration damages within the six-year lookback. That expiration data comes from a database aggregator (Unified Patents), not a court determination, and should be verified against the file history before relying on it.

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Bottom line

This was a short, settlement-driven NPE enforcement action: filed 2022-04-15, coordinated with three sibling cases, amended to add Brother International Corporation, litigated primarily through Brother's Rule 12(b)(6) motion (filed 2022-09-02) attacking method-claim direct infringement, third-party-dependent infringement, and contributory infringement theories — then resolved ~11 months after filing. On 2023-03-10 the parties jointly moved to dismiss with prejudice (each side bearing its own costs/fees), and Judge McCalla entered dismissal with prejudice and judgment on 2023-03-13, ending all four actions without a Markman ruling, trial, or appeal.

Key caveats: I could not access PACER directly; docket-entry details for No. 02236 itself (as opposed to the related No. 02250) were limited to the initial-docket text and secondary aggregators. The existence and content of Brother's counterclaims (referenced in the joint motion) and the disposition of the September 2022 motion to dismiss are not detailed in the public sources I retrieved — the motion appears to have been mooted by settlement rather than decided.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.

Based on the PACER-derived dockets (via UniCourt, Justia, DocketAlarm, and RPX/Unified Patents mirrors), the case-terminating filings on the public record, and firm/bar records, Flexiworld was represented by a two-firm team: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C. (patent litigation lead, admitted pro hac vice) and Watson Burns, PLLC (Memphis local counsel).

1. Timothy E. Grochocinski — Lead Patent Litigation Counsel (pro hac vice)

• Firm: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C. (formerly Nelson Bumgardner Albritton PC); office at the time: 15020 S. Ravinia Ave., Suite 29, Orland Park, IL 60462 (firm also has a Fort Worth, TX office).
• Role: Lead out-of-state patent counsel for Flexiworld; admitted pro hac vice in the W.D. Tenn. actions. In 2:22-cv-02236, he filed the motion for leave to appear pro hac vice (ECF No. 12, granted May 9, 2022), and he signed the joint planning report/status report (ECF No. 20, June 16, 2022) in the coordinated cases (2:22-cv-02236/37/50/51).
• Experience: Principal/senior partner at Nelson Bumgardner Conroy; Flexiworld's repeat lead litigator in its nationwide patent-enforcement campaign, including suits against Amazon, Canon, Epson, Sony, Indeed, Kyocera, and Roku-related IPRs. He filed the patent-owner powers of attorney in IPR2023-00845 (Flexiworld as patent owner) and has been Flexiworld's docketed counsel in the W.D. Tex., E.D. Tex., and C.D. Cal. actions.

2. Charles Austin Ginnings — Patent Litigation Counsel (pro hac vice)

• Firm: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C. (same firm as Grochocinski; NY-bar admission, admitted pro hac vice in Tennessee).
• Role: Co-counsel for Flexiworld. His pro hac vice motion was granted in the coordinated Tennessee cases (e.g., in 2:22-cv-02251, ECF No. 8, granted April 22, 2022), and he filed the joint stipulation regarding the amended complaint (ECF No. 18, June 14, 2022) across the coordinated cases. He also signed the March 10, 2023 joint motion to dismiss with prejudice (ECF No. 52 in 2:22-cv-02236).
• Experience: Patent litigator at Nelson Bumgardner Conroy who continues to represent Flexiworld in later enforcement actions (e.g., Flexiworld v. TCL Electronics Holdings, E.D. Tex., notice of appearance April 2026); also named in Flexiworld's IPR powers of attorney.

3. William E. Routt III — Local Counsel

• Firm: Watson Burns, PLLC, 253 Adams Avenue, Memphis, TN 38103 (Tennessee Bar No. 28577; licensed in TN since 2010).
• Role: Tennessee local counsel. He signed and filed the original complaint, civil cover sheet, corporate disclosure, and AO-120 patent report in 2:22-cv-02236 (ECF No. 1, filed April 15, 2022), and the affidavits/certificates of service on Brother. He is listed as Flexiworld's attorney on the docket and signed the March 2023 dismissal motion.
• Experience: Complex commercial litigator (business torts, contracts, securities/FINRA, class actions); previously at Baker Donelson and Quinn Emanuel (L.A.); now a senior litigation attorney at Bass, Berry & Sims (Memphis). Not primarily a patent litigator — he served as Tennessee local counsel.

4. Frank L. Watson III and William F. Burns — Local Counsel (firm principals)

• Firm: Watson Burns, PLLC, Memphis, TN (253 Adams Ave.; later 5865 Ridgeway Center Pkwy).
• Role: Though the docketed attorney of record on most early filings was Routt, the March 10, 2023 joint motion to dismiss with prejudice (ECF No. 52) is signed on Flexiworld's behalf by Frank Watson (TN Bar No. 15073), William F. Burns (TN Bar No. 17908), and William E. Routt (TN Bar No. 28577) of Watson Burns, together with Charles Austin Ginnings (pro hac vice) and Timothy Grochocinski. Watson and Burns therefore appeared as local counsel for Flexiworld at least through the dismissal.
• Experience: Watson is a Memphis business-litigation partner (Tulane Law 1991, Super Lawyers 2016–2025); Burns is his partner. Neither is a career patent litigator; both served as Tennessee local counsel for Flexiworld's coordinated W.D. Tenn. cases.

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Case-outcome context (for reference)

The four coordinated actions (2:22-cv-02236, 02237, 02250, 02251) were resolved by a joint motion to dismiss filed March 10, 2023 (ECF No. 52 in 2:22-cv-02236) and a court order/consent judgment entered March 13, 2023 (ECF No. 53), dismissing all claims with prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), with each party bearing its own costs. The asserted patent in 2:22-cv-02236 was U.S. Patent No. 9,036,181 (the related cases asserted additional Flexiworld wireless-printing/output patents).

Caveats

• I did not access PACER directly; the identifications above are corroborated by PACER-mirror dockets (UniCourt, Justia, DocketAlarm, Unified Patents), the publicly posted complaint and joint dismissal filings (action-intell.com copies of the actual W.D. Tenn. filings), PTAB power-of-attorney records, and firm/bar profiles. No sealed filings were implicated.
• If you need the precise pro hac vice docket numbers for Ginnings within 2:22-cv-02236 itself (rather than the coordinated sister cases), that entry should be verified against the live PACER docket; the public mirrors show the parallel PHV motions in the sister cases (e.g., 2:22-cv-02251, ECF Nos. 8–9, granted April 22, 2022).

Based on the available sources (docket entries via Unicourt/Justia, RPX, PatSnap, and the parties' joint filing hosted by Actionable Intelligence), here is what the record shows about defendant's counsel of record in Flexiworld Technologies, Inc. v. Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc., No. 2:22-cv-02236-JPM-tmp (W.D. Tenn.). I note one material caveat up front: the case's docket role labels and a third-party party/counsel table conflict in part with an OCR snippet of the joint dismissal motion, so I flag that discrepancy at the end rather than paper over it.

Counsel of record for the defendant

1. Mark Vorder-Bruegge, Jr.

• Role: Counsel of record for the defendant (appeared May 20, 2022, Dkt. 14 in 2:22-cv-02236 per Unicourt's docket copy); Tennessee Bar No. 6389. Effectively local/lead TN counsel for Brother.
• Firm/office: Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP, 6070 Poplar Ave., Suite 300, Memphis, TN 38119.
• Experience note: A Memphis-based Wyatt Tarrant partner who signed the March 10, 2023 joint motion to dismiss; no distinctive patent-trial record surfaced in the sources reviewed, so I cannot responsibly characterize his patent litigation résumé beyond this engagement.

2. Matthew Mahoney Lubozynski

• Role: Counsel of record for the defendant (appeared May 23, 2022, Dkt. 16 in 2:22-cv-02236 per Unicourt's docket copy); TN Bar No. 033163; partner at Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs.
• Firm/office: Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP, 6070 Poplar Ave., Suite 300, Memphis, TN 38119.
• Experience note: IP-focused litigator (TBA Intellectual Property and Litigation Sections); admitted in GA (2004), TN (2014), and before the Federal Circuit; recent W.D. Tenn. patent docket work includes appearing for Neuropro Spinal Jaxx v. Medtronic PLC et al., No. 2:25-cv-02893, and he has handled other IP matters in that district (e.g., Pargh v. America's Test Kitchen, a trademark case).

Both attorneys' appearances were entered in May 2022 on behalf of "Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc." — the defendant named in the original complaint. By operation of the June 14, 2022 stipulation/order (Dkt. 18–19) and the First Amended Complaint (June 21, 2022), Brother International Corporation was substituted as the sole defendant. The Brother filings that followed (e.g., the September 2022 memorandum in support of Brother's motion to dismiss, hosted by Actionable Intelligence) were filed on Brother's behalf, and I found no docket entry showing different or additional counsel entering for Brother International Corporation. No in-house Brother attorney appears in the docket sources I reviewed.

Important caveats

1. Conflicting signature-block data. An OCR snippet of the March 10, 2023 joint motion to dismiss with prejudice (Actionable Intelligence copy) appears to list Vorder-Bruegge (Wyatt Tarrant) alongside four Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft attorneys admitted pro hac vice — John T. Moehringer, Danielle V. Tully, Michael B. Powell, and John T. Augelli — under the heading "Counsel for Plaintiff Flexiworld Technologies, Inc.," with "Counsel for Defendant Brother International Corporation" immediately following. That snippet is inconsistent with (a) the docket notices of appearance (which say Vorder-Bruegge and Lubozynski appeared for the defendant) and (b) Unicourt's and PatSnap's attorney-role tables (both label Vorder-Bruegge and Lubozynski/Wyatt Tarrant as defendant counsel). Because I could not access a clean copy of the PDF to verify the true signature-block layout, I recommend confirming the final counsel-of-record list against PACER (Dkt. 14 and 16, plus any later substitution) before relying on it.

2. Entity substitution. The caption in your case metadata names Brother Industries (U.S.A.), Inc., but the operative pleadings after June 2022 ran against Brother International Corporation. If the defendant you care about is the post-amendment entity, the same Wyatt Tarrant attorneys appear to have continued for Brother, but the docket text I have does not expressly re-enter appearances on behalf of Brother International Corporation.

3. Settlement/termination. The case was dismissed with prejudice on March 13, 2023 (joint motion filed March 10, 2023), each party bearing its own costs and fees, per the case-termination entry.

Bottom line: the best-sourced answer is that Mark Vorder-Bruegge, Jr. and Matthew Mahoney Lubozynski of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs (Memphis) were the defendant's counsel of record, with no separate out-of-state or in-house counsel identified in the sources reviewed — but the joint-motion signature-block OCR anomaly means a quick PACER check of Dkts. 14, 16, and any counsel-substitution entries is warranted before treating that list as conclusive.