Google LLC et al. v. Wildseed Mobile LLC

I'll research this case across PTAB records, docket sources, and legal press before drafting.

Now let me dig into the specific IPR outcome, the patent owner's identity, and the parallel litigation track.

Let me pin down the specific IPR outcomes, appeal numbers, and the district court's current posture.

Case Overview and Background

The parties. The petitioner in IPR2023-00244 is Google LLC — the operating company whose YouTube advertising and recommendation stack is accused of infringement; per the case metadata the petitioner group also includes YouTube, LLC, although the Board's caption and hearing transcript name only Google LLC as petitioner (a discrepancy worth flagging). Google's PTAB team is Haynes and Boone LLP (Andrew S. Ehmke, Calmann J. Clements, Plano, TX). The patent owner, Wildseed Mobile LLC, is a Texas limited-liability company that pleaded a place of business at 510 Austin Avenue, Waco, TX — the plaintiff-side Waco address used in its W.D. Tex. complaint. It is not an operating company in any current sense: Stanford's NPE Litigation Database classifies it as a non-practicing entity asserting "acquired patents," and the portfolio traces to Wildseed Ltd., a Seattle mobile-software startup acquired by AOL in 2005, whose patents were assigned to Varia Holdings LLC (Brooklyn, NY) and then distributed to monetization vehicles including Wildseed Mobile and Smart Skins LLC (RPX; Ars Technica 2012). Wildseed is represented by Kramer Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP (Sal Lim, Andrew G. Hamill, David L. Alberti) and Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC (Jason Fitzsimmons, Jennifer Chagnon, later Richard Bemben, Steven Pappas, Michael Specht).

The technology and patents at issue. The IPR challenges U.S. Patent No. 10,251,021, "Venue and Event Recommendations for a User of a Portable Media Player Device" — a computer-readable-medium claim that has a server infer a user's entertainment preferences from media stored on or accessed by the device (across textual, image, audio and video content types), combine that with the user's current location, and push a recommendation for a nearby venue or event. It is a direct continuation of the '960 patent and shares its specification. The '021 patent is one of five patents Wildseed asserted against Google and YouTube: the '414 patent (7,376,414 — targeted ads on a cellular device using information "taken … from a message sent … from another user," 2001 priority); the '960 patent (9,141,960 — server-side venue/event recommendation from inferred media preferences plus location); the '021 patent; the '040 patent (10,959,040 — same venue/event recommendation family); and the '169 patent (10,869,169 — generating and sending a "hot link" via SMS or IM). The accused conduct is YouTube's advertising — specifically location- and preference-targeted ad delivery, with reporting describing the patents as "targeting the way ads work on YouTube." Google simultaneously attacked all of the asserted patents at the Board: IPR2023-00244 ('021), -00245 ('040), -00246 ('960), and -00247 ('169), all filed November 30, 2022, with a consolidated oral hearing on February 29, 2024 before APJs Easthom, McMillin and Cygan. In the '021/'960 proceedings, Google's primary ground was obviousness over Ellis in view of Sasaki (per Wildseed's own hearing demonstratives); Wildseed's core non-obviousness argument was that the art did not teach "inferring" preferences.

Procedural posture and why the forum matters. The infringement case began as Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC, No. 6:21-cv-01245-ADA (W.D. Tex., Waco Division) — Judge Alan D. Albright's docket, then the highest-volume and fastest-moving patent venue in the country, and Wildseed leaned into that choice by pleading Google's Austin and San Antonio offices and a YouTube-as-agent theory. In August 2022 the parties stipulated to transfer, and the case was docketed in the Northern District of California as No. 22-cv-04928-WHO before Judge William H. Orrick III (San Francisco Division) — Google's home turf, and a district with an established § 101 dismissal practice. That forum shift decided the case's trajectory: on June 7, 2023, Judge Orrick granted Google's Rule 12(c) motion for partial judgment on the pleadings (Dkt. No. 110), holding the '960, '021 and '040 patents invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to the abstract idea of tailoring venue/event recommendations to a user's location and media preferences, treating '960 claim 1 as representative and dismissing Claims II, III and IV with prejudice. In other words, the '021 patent at issue in this IPR was knocked out on eligibility in district court before the Board's final written decision issued.

Why it is notable. Four things stand out. First, the IPR/§ 101 pincer: Google ran a parallel PTAB campaign against the same patents and largely won in both fora, so the '021 patent's practical life ended through the combination of a Rule 12(c) eligibility ruling and an IPR. Second, the rare PTAB dissent — Fenwick's June 5, 2024 client alert flagged the paired Board decisions invalidating Wildseed patents as obvious, noting dissents appear in only about 1% of PTAB decisions. Third, the appellate tail: the Federal Circuit has already issued a nonprecedential opinion on April 30, 2026 in Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC, No. 24-1846, affirming the Board's obviousness determination (the opinion discusses the '414 patent's claim construction of "taken"/"determined" and rejects Wildseed's claim-differentiation and hindsight arguments), and a companion appeal, Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC, No. 24-2178, involves the '169 patent, where the Board found claims 1–14 and 16–22 unpatentable but not claim 15 (the SMS/IM hot-link limitation) — a claim-level split Google appealed. Fourth, in market context, this is a textbook "former Wildseed patent" monetization pattern: patents from a defunct 2000s mobile startup, routed through Varia Holdings, asserted years later against the largest advertising platform, with the PTAB and § 101 both serving as backstops.

Sourcing caveats. The claim-level disposition of the IPR2023-00244 final written decision is not verified from the FWD text; the unpatentability-as-obvious characterization rests on secondary reporting (Fenwick, Bloomberg Law wire) about the June 2024 paired decisions, and the IPR certificate date of August 19, 2024 comes from the case metadata. I was also unable to confirm from a primary source whether a separate IPR covers the '414 patent, or the current disposition of the remaining district court claims ('414 and '169) after the June 2023 § 101 order. The hearing-ground summary (Ellis/Sasaki) is drawn from patent-owner demonstratives rather than the petition itself.

I'll research both the PTAB proceeding and any parallel district court litigation.

Let me dig into the specific IPR2023-00244 record and the parallel district court case.

I'll research the counsel of record for the petitioners (Google/YouTube) in this IPR, plus any related district court litigation where the same counsel appeared.

Let me get the specific IPR2023-00244 docket filings (petition, mandatory notices, hearing transcript) to identify Petitioner's counsel of record.

Bottom line (read the party labels carefully first)

The metadata lists Google LLC and YouTube, LLC as "Plaintiff(s)" — but in this docket they are the Petitioners in an IPR, not plaintiffs. IPR2023-00244 is Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC, an inter partes review of U.S. Patent No. 10,251,021, in which Wildseed is the Patent Owner (the party asserting the patent). The true "plaintiff-side" infringement litigation was filed by Wildseed against Google/YouTube in district court. I've answered for both sides below, with the IPR petitioner-side counsel first (matching your "plaintiff" label), and the district-court plaintiff (Wildseed) counsel second for completeness.

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1. Counsel of record for Google LLC / YouTube, LLC (Petitioners — your listed "Plaintiffs") in IPR2023-00244

Verified from the consolidated oral hearing transcript for IPR2023-00244 and IPR2023-00246, held February 29, 2024 (Paper 33), which lists appearances as "On Behalf of the Petitioner, Google LLC":

Contact details as they appear on the hearing transcript: andy.ehmke.ipr@haynesboone.com / calmann.clements.ipr@haynesboone.com, (214) 651-5116.

Caveats / not verified:

• I confirmed these two from the hearing transcript and an exhibit email, not from the underlying Petition's mandatory notices or a Power of Attorney in IPR2023-00244 itself. The Petition (filed Nov. 30, 2022) may have named additional back-up counsel (e.g., other Haynes Boone attorneys or a LEAP practitioner) who did not appear at the hearing. I could not pull the IPR2023-00244 mandatory notice in this session, so treat the list as "counsel appearing/appearing of record by the hearing," not necessarily the complete original roster.
• No filing in this IPR appeared to be sealed; counsel is on the open record.
• I found no evidence of Google in-house counsel formally appearing in the IPR.

Related appellate counsel (different IPR — flagging so you don't conflate them): In the Federal Circuit appeal of the sibling case, Wildseed Mobile, LLC v. Google LLC, No. 2024-1846 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2026) (appeal from IPR2023-00248, on the '414 patent), Google was represented by Tara Lauren Kurtis (Perkins Coie LLP, Chicago, IL) as arguing counsel, with Dan L. Bagatell (Hanover, NH) and Jonathan Irvin Tietz (Washington, DC). That is appellate counsel for the '414 appeal, not counsel of record in IPR2023-00244.

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2. Counsel for the actual district-court plaintiff, Wildseed Mobile LLC (opposing side in the IPR)

If by "plaintiff(s)" you meant the patent-asserting plaintiff in the parallel infringement suits, that is Wildseed Mobile LLC, and its counsel in the IPRs (as Patent Owner) were:

• Sal Lim — lead counsel, Kramer Day / Kramer Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP, Burlingame, CA (Reg. No. 45,706)
• David Alberti — back-up counsel, same firm, Burlingame, CA (Reg. No. 43,465); argued the Fed. Cir. appeal in No. 24-1846
• Andrew G. Hamill — Kramer Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP, Burlingame, CA
• Michael D. Specht, Jason A. Fitzsimmons, Richard M. Bemben — back-up counsel, Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC, Washington, DC (Specht, Reg. No. 54,463; Fitzsimmons, Reg. No. 65,367; Bemben, Reg. No. 68,658)
• Jennifer Chagnon (Sterne Kessler) and Zachariah Higgins, Michele R. Woodruff Lyons, Robert F. Kramer, Richard Crudo, Steven Pappas appear on related Wildseed filings/appeals.

In the district court suits, Wildseed's team also included local counsel:

• Deron R. Dacus — local TX counsel, The Dacus Firm, Tyler, TX (W.D. Tex. case)
• Robert F. Kramer, M. Elizabeth Day, Marc Belloli, Russell Tonkovich, Robert Y. Xie, Zachariah A. Higgins — Kramer Day / Kramer Alberti, California

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Parallel district-court proceedings (context)

• Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., No. 3:22-cv-04928 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 29, 2022) — asserts the '021 patent (plus 10,869,169 / 10,959,040 / 7,376,414 / 9,141,960) against Google and YouTube.
• Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC et al., No. 6:21-cv-01245 (W.D. Tex., filed Dec. 1, 2021, Judge Alan Albright) — earlier-filed suit on the same family; Google/YouTube's appearing counsel there were Paige Arnette Amstutz (local, Austin) and, initially, Barry K. Shelton (withdrawn Jan. 3, 2022).

Not verified: I was unable to confirm Google/YouTube's full defense roster in the N.D. Cal. case (3:22-cv-04928) in this session — I did not obtain that docket sheet, so I won't name attorneys there. If you need the defendant-side district counsel, that requires pulling the N.D. Cal. docket via PACER.

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Key sources

• Oral Hearing Transcript, Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile LLC, IPR2023-00244 & IPR2023-00246 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 29, 2024) (Paper 33) — counsel appearances.
• Petitioner's authorization email (Exs. 3001/3002 in IPR2023-00248) bearing Ehmke's Haynes Boone signature block, Plano, TX.
• Wildseed Mobile, LLC v. Google LLC, No. 2024-1846 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2026) (nonprecedential) — appellate counsel and merits discussion.
• Patent Owner Mandatory Notices (IPR2023-00245) and Wildseed PHV declarations — Patent Owner counsel identification.
• Stanford NPE Litigation Database, patent 10,251,021 / case 3:22-cv-04928 — district-court case data.
• UniCourt docket summary, No. 6:21-cv-01245 (W.D. Tex.) — local/defense counsel appearances.

If you want, I can try to pull the IPR2023-00244 Petition and updated mandatory notices to confirm whether any additional back-up counsel of record were named beyond Ehmke and Clements.

I'll research the counsel of record for Wildseed Mobile LLC (the patent owner/defendant in this IPR).

Now let me verify the specific IPR2023-00244 docket entries (power of attorney, mandatory notices) and the parallel district court counsel.

Let me try to find IPR2023-00244-specific docket filings (power of attorney/notices) and verify the Sterne Kessler team.

Counsel of Record — Defendant / Patent Owner: Wildseed Mobile LLC

Framing note (important). In IPR2023-00244 the caption is Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile, LLC, so the "defendant" side is Wildseed Mobile, LLC as Patent Owner (Google LLC is the petitioner, i.e., the plaintiff-side party). Wildseed's counsel in the IPR are identified below. Because the task references "this patent infringement case," I also include (Section 2) the counsel in the underlying district court action, where the roles are reversed — Google/YouTube are the defendants — since that is likely relevant.

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1. Wildseed Mobile LLC's counsel of record — PTAB, IPR2023-00244

The primary source is the Record of Oral Hearing held February 29, 2024 in the consolidated IPR2023-00244 (U.S. Pat. 10,251,021) and IPR2023-00246 (U.S. Pat. 9,141,960) — docketed March 20, 2024 as Paper 33 in IPR2023-00246 and reproduced at Docket Alarm. Panel: APJs Easthom, McMillin, Cygan.

Appearances for Patent Owner Wildseed Mobile, LLC:

Firm-name note / caution: Wildseed's outside firm has been reported under several names across this litigation — Feinberg Day Kramer Alberti Lim Tonkovich & Belloli LLP (2021–2022 filings), Kramer Day Alberti Lim Tonkovich & Belloli LLP (2022–2023), Kramer Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP (2024 IPR filings), and now Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP (Federal Circuit caption, Apr. 30, 2026, Foster City, CA). These appear to be successive names/reorganizations of the same shop rather than different firms; treat the entity name as time-dependent.

Not found / caveats:

• I was unable to retrieve the IPR2023-00244-specific papers (Patent Owner Power of Attorney under 37 C.F.R. § 42.10(b), Mandatory Notices, or PHV orders) within the search budget available. The counsel list above is grounded in the consolidated oral-hearing record and in PHV declarations filed in the sibling IPR2023-00245 that expressly reference concurrent PHV applications in -00244 and -00246. It is possible that additional Kramer Alberti or Sterne Kessler attorneys (e.g., Robert F. Kramer, Russell Tonkovich, Zachariah A. Higgins, Michele R. Woodruff Lyons, or Sterne Kessler's Richard M. Bemben, Richard Crudo, Steven Pappas, Michael D. Specht) appeared on the power of attorney or substantive papers in -00244 even though they did not appear at the hearing — they are documented on the related Wildseed/Google IPR appeals (see Section 3). Verify against PTAB P-TACTS / Docket Alarm for IPR2023-00244.
• No in-house counsel for Wildseed was identified in any record I located. Wildseed is a patent-holding entity; if it has internal legal staff participating, they are not reflected in the public filings found.

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2. Related context — the underlying district court action (roles reversed)

Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC, et al., No. 3:22-cv-04928-WHO (N.D. Cal.) (transferred from W.D. Tex. by stipulation, Aug. 2022); see Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC, 676 F. Supp. 3d 766 (N.D. Cal. June 7, 2023) (Orrick, J.) (partial judgment on the pleadings under § 101 dismissing claims as to the '960, '021 and '040 patents).

• For plaintiff Wildseed: Feinberg Day Kramer Alberti Lim Tonkovich & Belloli LLP (Burlingame, CA) — Robert F. Kramer, M. Elizabeth Day, David Alberti, Sal Lim, Russell S. Tonkovich, Marc Belloli, Zachariah A. Higgins, Andrew G. Hamill, Robert Y. Xie; Larry Gordon McDonough; Jerry D. Tice II; Deron R. Dacus (The Dacus Firm, PC, Tyler, TX — local counsel for the W.D. Tex. phase); James P. Barabas (Allen Overy LLP, New York) (per the vLex/opinion counsel listing for 676 F. Supp. 3d 766).
• For defendants Google LLC and YouTube LLC: Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP (San Francisco) — Anjali Srinivasan, David Jason Silbert, Kristen Elizabeth Lovin, Morgan Elizabeth Sharma, Paven Malhotra, Catherine Porto, Eric B. Hanson, William Sellers Hicks; Scott, Douglass & McConnico LLP (Austin, TX) — Paige Arnette Amstutz. Keker is Google's long-standing patent trial counsel (e.g., Oracle v. Google, Singular Computing v. Google).

If the requester's intended "defendants" are Google and YouTube (i.e., the district court case), the Keker Van Nest team above is the answer.

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3. Counsel on the resulting Federal Circuit appeals (post-IPR, for completeness)

• Wildseed Mobile, LLC v. Google LLC, No. 24-1846 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 30, 2026) (appeal from IPR2023-00248) — for Wildseed (appellant): David Alberti (argued), Sal Lim, Michele R. Woodruff Lyons, Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP, Foster City, CA; Richard M. Bemben, Richard Crudo, Jason A. Fitzsimmons, Steven Pappas, Michael D. Specht, Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox PLLC. For Google (appellee): Tara Lauren Kurtis, Perkins Coie LLP, Chicago; Dan L. Bagatell (Hanover, NH); Jonathan Irvin Tietz (Washington, DC).
• Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile, LLC, No. 24-2178 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 13, 2026) (appeal from IPR2023-00247) — for Wildseed (appellee): Zachariah Higgins (argued), David Alberti, Robert Kramer, Sal Lim, Michele R. Woodruff Lyons, Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP; Richard M. Bemben, Richard Crudo, Jason A. Fitzsimmons, Steven Pappas, Michael D. Specht, Sterne Kessler. For Google (appellant): Dan L. Bagatell (argued), Nathan K. Kelley, Jonathan Irvin Tietz, Perkins Coie; Tara Lauren Kurtis, Chicago.

Note the substitution of appellate counsel: Perkins Coie (Bagatell, Kurtis, Kelley, Tietz) handled Google's Federal Circuit appeals, whereas Haynes and Boone LLP (Andrew S. Ehmke and Calmann J. Clements, Plano, TX) were Google's PTAB counsel of record in the -00244/-00246 hearing.

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4. Flags / discrepancies

• Metadata vs. record re: petitioner identity. The case metadata lists plaintiffs as Google LLC and YouTube, LLC. In the IPR hearing appearances (IPR2023-00244/-00246), the petitioner is identified on the record only as Google LLC (Haynes and Boone). YouTube, LLC is a defendant in the parallel N.D. Cal. action. I could not verify whether YouTube is a named petitioner in IPR2023-00244; treat the YouTube inclusion as unconfirmed for the IPR itself.
• Case-termination date vs. subsequent proceedings. The metadata lists termination on 2024-08-19 (IPR certificate), but the related Wildseed/Google IPRs produced Federal Circuit decisions in Feb. and Apr. 2026 — i.e., appellate activity continued after the certificate, which is consistent but worth noting for any "finality" framing.

If you need claim-by-claim counsel attribution (e.g., which attorney signed the Patent Owner Response or the Motion to Amend in -00244), that requires pulling the specific papers from PTAB P-TACTS/Docket Alarm, which I could not access here; I'd rather flag that gap than guess at filer names.