Google LLC v. Secure Communication Technologies, LLC

Google LLC, a major technology operating company, initiated an inter partes review (IPR) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) against U.S. Patent 11334918, owned by Secure Communication Technologies, LLC (SCT). SCT is identified as a patent assertion entity (PAE) or Non-Practicing Entity (NPE), having acquired a portfolio of wireless communication patents and asserting them in litigation rather than practicing the technology. The challenged patent, U.S. Patent 11334918, titled "Wireless communication using service identifiers," generally relates to systems and methods for wireless communication through the use of wireless service identifiers. This IPR was filed in the context of a broader patent infringement campaign by SCT, which separately sued Google in the Western District of Texas (1:25-cv-01207) and Apple in the Eastern District of Texas for infringement of patents from the same family.

The underlying district court litigation against Google targets various Google devices, including Chromebooks, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, specifically citing Google features such as Nearby Share/Quick Share, Fast Pair, and Find Hub (formerly Find My) as the allegedly infringing technologies. This IPR (IPR2025-01181) was filed on July 2, 2025, and terminated on December 23, 2025, with a "Not Instituted - Merits" status. This procedural posture indicates that the PTAB, or more specifically the USPTO Director following policy changes in 2025, declined to initiate a trial, determining that Google did not meet the merits threshold for patentability challenges. The district court case against Google has been assigned to District Judge David A. Ezra.

This case is notable for several reasons, reflecting current trends in patent litigation and PTAB practice. It highlights the continued assertion of wireless communication patents by NPEs against large operating companies like Google, often involving widely used features on consumer electronics. Furthermore, the "Not Instituted - Merits" decision for this IPR is significant given the substantial changes at the PTAB in 2025, where the USPTO Director centralized institution decisions, including denials based on discretionary factors and on the merits, which has made it materially harder for petitioners to institute IPRs. Google filed a trio of petitions against SCT's patents, indicating a concerted effort to challenge the validity of these patents at the PTAB.

The provided case, IPR2025-01181, is an Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceeding before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), not a district court patent infringement litigation. Therefore, the "legal developments" will focus on the IPR process.

Here are the key legal developments and outcome for IPR2025-01181:

• Filing of IPR Petition (2025-07-02): Google LLC, as the petitioner, filed a petition for Inter Partes Review of U.S. Patent No. 11,334,918. The patent owner is Secure Communication Technologies, LLC. The petition challenged the patentability of claims of U.S. Patent No. 11,334,918.
• PTAB Decision to Not Institute (2025-12-23): The PTAB issued a decision declining to institute an Inter Partes Review of U.S. Patent No. 11,334,918. The petition was "Not Instituted - Merits," meaning the Board determined that Google LLC did not demonstrate a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail on at least one claim challenged in the petition.
• Outcome: The IPR proceeding terminated on 2025-12-23 with the PTAB's decision not to institute review on the merits. This means the claims of U.S. Patent No. 11,334,918 challenged by Google LLC in this IPR remain intact as originally issued by the USPTO, as they were not subjected to further review by the PTAB.

Parallel Litigation:
A search for district court litigation involving Secure Communication Technologies, LLC asserting U.S. Patent No. 11,334,918 against Google LLC did not yield specific results indicating an active or concluded infringement case that directly prompted this IPR at the time of this analysis. IPRs are often filed in response to patent infringement allegations, but the specific underlying district court case, if any, is not immediately apparent from publicly available information related to this IPR.

I'll research counsel for the petitioner (Google LLC) in IPR2025-01181, plus any related district court counsel.

I have petitioner-side service contacts. Let me confirm the full petitioner counsel of record from the petition's mandatory notices and related documents.

Let me confirm Google's district court counsel and any additional IPR team members.

Threshold note on party roles (important)

The task asks for "plaintiff's" counsel, but the case in the metadata — IPR2025-01181 — is an inter partes review, not a district court infringement action. In an IPR there is no "plaintiff"; the party aligning with the plaintiff side is the Petitioner, Google LLC. The previously generated "Defendant representatives" section in fact describes the Patent Owner (Secure Communication Technologies, LLC), which is the opposing side in this IPR. It also carries a contradiction with the case metadata worth flagging: the metadata lists "Defendant(s): Secure Communication Technologies, LLC," which inverts IPR practice (SCT is the Patent Owner/respondent, not a defendant) and conflicts with the parallel W.D. Tex. case where SCT is the plaintiff and Google the defendant.

So this section covers counsel of record for Petitioner Google LLC in IPR2025-01181, with a short cross-reference to Google's district court team.

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Petitioner's counsel of record — IPR2025-01181 (Google LLC)

Source of record: Petitioner's Power of Attorney, Paper 1, filed July 2, 2025 (Docket Alarm copy of the PTAB filing), which appoints these attorneys plus all practitioners associated with USPTO Customer Number 23628, and is signed on behalf of Google by an in-house counsel. Petitioner's service contacts listed in Patent Owner's Updated Mandatory Notices (Paper 9, Nov. 24, 2025) and the Board's record corroborate the same three email contacts.

In-house counsel (signed the Power of Attorney):

• Patrick Weston — Senior Litigation Counsel, Google LLC — executed the POA dated July 1, 2025 on Google's behalf. He is not PTAB counsel of record but is the corporate signatory.

Non-attorney firm personnel appearing on the filing (not counsel): MacAulay Rush, Paralegal, Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C., who signed the certificate of service on the POA.

Aggregator confirmation: IPVerse's case page for IPR2025-01181 (and its companion IPR2025-01182) lists "Petitioner Counsel — McKeown, Scott et al," consistent with the POA.

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Cross-reference: Google's district court counsel (parallel litigation)

For completeness — and because counsel teams are usually coordinated across the IPR and the co-pending case — Google's district court team in the parallel action (SCT v. Google, W.D. Tex. No. 1:25-cv-01207, Judge David A. Ezra; later transferred/docketed in N.D. Cal. as 3:26-cv-07602) is not the Wolf Greenfield PTAB team. Per the CourtListener/W.D. Tex. docket and PACER Monitor:

• O'Melveny & Myers LLP (appearing pro hac vice on Google's behalf): Luann L. Simmons, Darin W. Snyder, Eric T. Ong, Mark Liang, Bill Trac, Li Guo, Nathaniel Legum, Frances Mackay. Pro hac vice motions were filed by Brian Christopher Banner and granted by Judge Ezra (orders on Dkts. 21–26).
• Brian Christopher Banner — appears as the Texas/lead local counsel filing the pro hac vice motions and the notice of appearance on Google's behalf (firm not conclusively confirmed from the sources I retrieved).
• Cason G. Cole — notice of appearance for Google (Nov. 19, 2025).
• Valerie Barker — notice of appearance for Google; PACER Monitor lists her with Slayden Grubert Beard PLLC.

Caveat: the district court entries are for Google as defendant; they are included only to show the full picture and should not be conflated with the PTAB team.

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Sourcing caveats

• The petitioner-side identifications are grounded in the Power of Attorney (Paper 1, July 2, 2025) and Patent Owner's Updated Mandatory Notices (Paper 9, Nov. 24, 2025), both of which list the same three Wolf Greenfield contacts.
• I could not retrieve the institution decision itself (the Board's Dec. 23, 2025 papers were docketed as "EXPUNGED"/sealed in the public timeline), so I cannot confirm from the decision's caption whether any counsel changed after filing. The docket also shows a Petitioner's Request for Refund (Paper 15, Feb. 12, 2026) and a Board notice of refund approval (Feb. 19, 2026) — consistent with a denied institution — but no substitution of counsel.
• Individual office locations within Wolf Greenfield beyond the firm's Boston HQ address on the POA are not confirmed; McKeown is publicly identified with the firm's Washington, DC office.
• I did not find any indication that Google retained separate local counsel for the IPR (no such entry appears in the POA or service list).

If the underlying question is genuinely about the district court plaintiff (Secure Communication Technologies), that is the Nelson Bumgardner Conroy PC / McKool Smith team already addressed in the prior "Defendant representatives" section — with the role-label mismatch noted above.

The counsel of record representing Secure Communication Technologies, LLC (the Patent Owner) in IPR2025-01181 could not be definitively identified from the provided search results. PTAB docket information or the specific "Decision Denying Institution" document, which would typically list counsel for both parties, was not directly accessible or detailed in the search snippets for this particular IPR.

However, Secure Communication Technologies, LLC has been involved in related patent infringement litigation asserting U.S. Patent No. 11,334,918 (the patent at issue in this IPR) and other patents from the same family. In a district court case, Secure Communication Technologies, LLC v. [Samsung Electronics Co., LTD.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%2C%20LTD.) et al. (E.D. Tex. Case No. 2:24-cv-00484), which involved some of the same patents, the following attorneys and firms represented Secure Communication Technologies, LLC:

• Charles Austin Ginnings

  • Role: Likely lead or significant counsel.
  • Firm: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy PC
  • Office Location: Not specified in snippets, but the firm has offices in Texas.
  • Note: Eric M. Albritton, who manages Secure Communication Technologies, LLC, was a former named partner with Nelson Bumgardner Albritton P.C. (now Nelson Bumgardner Conroy P.C.).

• Timothy E Grochocinski

  • Role: Likely counsel.
  • Firm: Nelson Bumgardner Conroy PC
  • Office Location: Not specified in snippets.

• Samuel Franklin Baxter

  • Role: Likely lead or significant counsel.
  • Firm: McKool Smith, P.C. - Marshall
  • Office Location: Marshall, Texas.
  • Note: McKool Smith is a prominent firm in patent litigation, particularly in the Eastern District of Texas.

• Jennifer Leigh Truelove

  • Role: Likely counsel.
  • Firm: McKool Smith, P.C. - Marshall
  • Office Location: Marshall, Texas.

While these attorneys represented Secure Communication Technologies, LLC in district court litigation concerning the same patent family, it is not confirmed that they were the specific counsel of record for the IPR2025-01181 proceeding before the PTAB. It is common, though not universally true, for patent owners to use the same or closely affiliated legal teams for both district court litigation and related PTAB challenges.