Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc.

I'll research this case against public sources before drafting.

Case Overview: Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., No. 1:21-cv-00040-MN (D. Del.)

Parties. Hanger Solutions, LLC is a Georgia limited liability company and a classic non-practicing entity: it does not make or sell anything. Its Rule 7.1 disclosure in this case identified Brainbox Innovations, LLC as its corporate parent (D.I. 4, Jan. 14, 2021), and reporting ties Hanger to Atlanta-based patent monetization firm IPInvestments Group LLC, which acquired thousands of patent assets from Intellectual Ventures (IV) in a late-2019 divestiture wave. Hanger is one of a stable of sister entities from that deal — CDN Innovations, CommWorks Solutions, DataCloud Technologies, DigiMedia Tech — and it has also spun assets out to other asserters (Kioba Processing; 21st Century Garage). Defendant Extreme Networks, Inc. is the publicly traded networking OEM (San Jose, CA; Delaware-incorporated) that sells campus/data-center switches, wireless gear, and the ExtremeCloud network-management platform. Hanger was represented by Delaware counsel Stamoulis & Weinblatt LLC (Stamatios Stamoulis, Richard C. Weinblatt) with Texas-based patent counsel James F. McDonough III, Jonathan R. Miller, and Travis E. Lynch admitted pro hac vice (D.I. 6, granted Feb. 2, 2021); Extreme appeared through Jack B. Blumenfeld and Andrew M. Moshos, per the docket entries (firm attribution to Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell is from firm directories, not a docket field).

The accused technology and the patents. Per RPX's Feb. 12, 2021 campaign report (republished on Mondaq), the complaint targeted two distinct product lines: the ExtremeCloud network-management platform, accused under US 6,430,623 and US 6,772,227, and the Extreme SLX-series switches, accused under US 6,609,159. The patents split into two unrelated families, which is itself a hallmark of portfolio-wide IV divestiture assertion rather than a single-product dispute. The '623 and '227 patents share a specification family (three patents issued Sept. 2000–Aug. 2004) naming sole inventor Hasan S. Alkhatib, developed at his company IP Dynamics and assigned to IV in 2008: the '623 patent (titled "Domain name routing") is generally directed to reaching an entity inside a private network from outside it via an "intermediate entity," and the '227 patent to routing communications between different "address spaces" — i.e., pre-cloud NAT/tunneling and overlay-connectivity concepts from the late 1990s. The '159 patent comes from a wholly separate family (a family of one) originally issued to Fast Engines, a Boston-area web-acceleration startup founded by Semyon Dukach that built software to speed web-application performance for Fortune 500 customers and was sold to Adero in 2000; the patent reached IV around 2006. (Caveat: I verified the '623 title and the technical characterizations above through the RPX report and USPTO record; I was not able to independently confirm the issued titles of the '227 and '159 patents in this research pass, so those are described functionally rather than by verified title.)

Procedural posture and why it matters. Filed Jan. 14, 2021 in the District of Delaware — a single-division district sitting in Wilmington — the case was assigned to Judge Maryellen Noreika (D.I. docket entry Jan. 20, 2021), with a jury demand and seven exhibits to the complaint (D.I. 1). The only substantive docket activity was a stipulated extension of Extreme's response deadline from March 2021 to March 22, 2021, so-ordered on Feb. 4, 2021 (D.I. 7); there was no motion to dismiss, no answer, and no claim construction. Hanger filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on April 9, 2021, and the case closed April 12, 2021 — roughly 90 days from filing. Delaware was the natural venue (Extreme is a Delaware corporation, and D. Del. was the dominant patent plaintiffs' venue post-TC Heartland), but the dismissal fits a broader pattern: Hanger kept some D. Del. suits alive (e.g., Hanger v. Squarespace, filed May 2021 on the same three patents) while migrating other campaigns to the W.D. Tex. (e.g., Hanger v. Charter Communications, No. 6:22-cv-00070, filed Jan. 2022, and Hanger v. Cequel Communications, filed Mar. 2022, both asserting the same '623/'159/'227 trio). The case is therefore notable less for anything decided than as a data point on three trends: (1) the secondary market in IV's divested portfolio and IPInvestments Group's emergence as one of the largest recipients of IV assets; (2) short-lived placeholder/wave filings in D. Del. followed by dismissal or re-filing in plaintiff-friendly Texas venues; and (3) the assertion of 1990s-priority networking and web-acceleration patents against mainstream cloud-managed networking products, raising obvious § 101 and § 102/§ 103 exposure for the plaintiff — a vulnerability that plausibly explains the quick exit. One important non-finding: I did not locate any IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against the '623, '159, or '227 patents in this research pass, so the "IPR linkage" angle for this case is unconfirmed — the only PTAB materials surfaced were petitions using Alkhatib's work as prior art against third-party patents, not challenges to these patents. Likewise, the record does not disclose why Hanger dismissed (license, covenant not to sue, or re-filing strategy); that should be treated as unknown rather than inferred.

I'll research this case thoroughly, starting with the docket and the patents.

Now let me check the dismissal docket entries, the broader Hanger campaign, and any PTAB proceedings on the three patents.

Let me pull the full docket via CourtListener and look at Hanger's other suits asserting these same patents.

Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., No. 1:21-cv-00040-MN (D. Del.)

Bottom line: This was a short-lived NPE strike suit — 88 days from complaint to closure — that never got past the pleading stage. There was no answer, no counterclaim, no motion to dismiss, no transfer or stay motion, no Markman, no discovery, no trial, and no appeal. The entire substantive record consists of a seven-exhibit complaint, pro hac vice admissions, an extension of the response deadline, and a voluntary dismissal.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

2021-01-14 — Complaint (D.I. 1). Hanger Solutions, LLC filed a jury-demand complaint against Extreme Networks, Inc. in D. Del. asserting three patents: US 6,430,623 B1, US 6,609,159 B1, and US 6,772,227 B2. Accompanying filings that day: the § 21 patent report (D.I. 3), a Rule 7.1 disclosure naming Brainbox Innovations, LLC as corporate parent (D.I. 4), and summonses (D.I. 5). The complaint carried seven exhibits (A–G) — consistent with claim charts and assignment/prosecution records rather than any substantive briefing.

Patent/technology picture (per the Feb. 2021 Mondaq/RPX-style campaign analysis): the '623 and '227 patents are family members (sole named inventor Hasan S. Alkhatib, developed at IP Dynamics, assigned to Intellectual Ventures in 2008) and were asserted against Extreme's Extreme Cloud network-management platform. The '159 patent (originating with Fast Engines, inventor Semyon Dukach, also acquired by IV) was asserted against Extreme's SLX-series switches. Hanger is a Georgia entity associated with Atlanta monetization firm IPInvestments Group LLC, which acquired thousands of IV assets in late 2019.

2021-01-20 — Assignment to Judge Maryellen Noreika.

2021-01-29 / 2021-02-02 — Pro hac vice (D.I. 6). Motion for admission of James F. McDonough, III, Jonathan R. Miller, and Travis E. Lynch, granted 2021-02-02. Delaware counsel for Hanger: Stamatios Stamoulis and Richard C. Weinblatt (Stamoulis & Weinblatt LLC). Defense Delaware counsel: Jack B. Blumenfeld and Andrew M. Moshos (Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell).

2021-02-04 — Extension (D.I. 7). Stipulated extension of Extreme's answer/motion deadline to 2021-03-22, so-ordered by Judge Noreika the same day.

No answer or counterclaim was ever filed. The docket shows no responsive pleading, no Rule 12 motion, and no invalidity or non-infringement counterclaim before the case closed.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

None. No motion to dismiss, no § 1404(a) transfer motion, no motion to stay pending IPR, no motion to sever, no SJ motion. The case ended before the 2021-03-22 response deadline had any consequence.

3. Claim construction

No Markman. No scheduling order, no joint claim construction statement, no Gupta / Rodriguez compression, and no claim construction hearing or order was ever entered. Judge Noreika's Form scheduling order (which in D. Del. typically issues with a Rule 16 date) does not appear on the retrievable docket.

4. Discovery

No discovery milestone of consequence. No Rule 26(f) report, no initial disclosures, no protective order, no ESI order, no discovery disputes, and no motions to compel are reflected. Because D. Del. practice generally postpones the Rule 26(f) conference until after the Rule 16 scheduling conference, the dismissal preceded essentially all discovery.

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial setting, no pretrial order, no verdict, no JMOL/Rule 59/Rule 54(d) fees motions.

6. Final disposition

• 2021-04-09 — Notice of voluntary dismissal filed by Hanger.
• 2021-04-12 — Case closed / dismissed (the date reflected in the court's case metadata and in the docket termination).

Because the dismissal came before Extreme served an answer or a motion for summary judgment, it was presumptively a self-executing dismissal without prejudice as of right under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i) — i.e., no court order or leave was required, and Hanger retained the ability to refile. Caveat: I was unable to retrieve the text of the dismissal filing itself (the free docket aggregators I could reach, Justia and UniCourt, were last refreshed 2021-02-04 and 2021-03-15 respectively), so I cannot confirm whether the notice recited Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) expressly, whether it was styled with or without prejudice, or whether any settlement/license terms were referenced. No public settlement disclosure by Extreme appears in its subsequent 10-Q/10-K risk-factor language, which continued to describe the case as pending "at the preliminary stage" without a reserve — consistent with a non-monetary or walk-away dismissal rather than a paid settlement.

7. Parallel PTAB proceedings

I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding on the '623, '159, or '227 patents. There is no stay motion or PTAB-related scheduling relief on the docket, and no institution decision referencing this litigation surfaced in searches of PTAB materials. The absence is unsurprising: the case died in under three months, well before any petitioner would have needed to file (the § 315(b) one-year bar from service would not have run until roughly early 2022). Treat this as a negative finding based on the searches I could complete rather than a definitive PTAB docket clearance — I was not able to run a full PTAB Patent Trial & Appeal Case Tracking System party/patent query before exhausting my research steps.

8. Strategic significance and what happened next

• Campaign continuity, not patent abandonment. Hanger re-asserted the same three patents against Squarespace, Inc. in D. Del. on 2021-05-27 (No. 1:21-cv-00774, before Judge Leonard P. Stark) — about six weeks after dismissing Extreme. The Squarespace docket also references a related case, 1:21-cv-00164-LPS, and includes competing § 6.1 "related cases" letters from both sides (D.I. 6, 7 in the Squarespace action). That pattern — dismiss-and-refile with the same portfolio against a different target — is the classic NPE sequencing move when a defendant signals a strong invalidity or § 101 posture or when a quick low-value license is extracted.
• Extreme was being multi-fronted by the same IV-divestiture cluster. Extreme's SEC filings disclose that DataCloud Technologies, LLC (a sibling IPInvestments-affiliated entity, also an IV divestiture recipient) sued Extreme in D. Del. on 2020-06-05 over four patents and amended to add four more — meaning the Hanger suit was one of several coordinated NPE actions against Extreme arising from the 2019 IV portfolio sale.
• Extreme's public characterization (Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 2020-12-31): the complaint "alleges infringement of three U.S. patents," and "Extreme cannot estimate at this time the possible loss or range of loss."

9. Sources and confidence

If you need to harden this record, the two items worth pulling from PACER are (a) the April 2021 dismissal entry (to confirm Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) and with/without-prejudice status, and whether any covenant not to sue was referenced), and (b) a PTAB case-search on each of the three patent numbers to convert the negative IPR finding from "not located" to "confirmed none."

I'll research the counsel of record for Hanger Solutions in this D. Del. case.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Hanger Solutions, LLC

Bottom line: Five attorneys appeared for Hanger Solutions — two Delaware counsel from Stamoulis & Weinblatt LLC (Wilmington), and three out-of-state attorneys admitted pro hac vice who were part of the Atlanta-based plaintiff-side team that ran the IPinvestments Group/Hanger campaigns. All appearances occurred within the first three weeks of the case, well before the April 9, 2021 voluntary dismissal. Nothing in this case was sealed, and no in-house counsel appeared.

Docket grounding

• D.I. 1 (Jan. 14, 2021) — Complaint filed by Stamatios Stamoulis; D.I. 4 Rule 7.1 disclosure (parent: Brainbox Innovations, LLC); D.I. 3 patent report listing the '623, '159, and '227 patents.
• D.I. 6 (Jan. 29, 2021) — Motion for Pro Hac Vice Appearance of James F. McDonough, III, Jonathan R. Miller, and Travis E. Lynch, filed by Stamoulis; SO ORDERED by Judge Maryellen Noreika on Feb. 2, 2021.
• Feb. 4, 2021 docket entry — PHV attorneys "for Hanger Solutions, LLC added for electronic noticing," with Delaware counsel designated as the CM/ECF filers under Local Rule 83.5(d).
• D.I. 7 — Stipulation extending Extreme's response deadline to Mar. 22, 2021 (filed by defendant's counsel Jack B. Blumenfeld / Andrew M. Moshos, Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell).
• Plaintiff-side docket listing is corroborated by UniCourt's attorney table (Stamoulis, Weinblatt, Miller, Lynch, McDonough) and by the Mondaq/RPX reporting on the filing ("Hanger Solutions is represented by Stamoulis and Weinblatt LLC," Feb. 12, 2021).

Caveats / sourcing notes

• The docket entries do not state the out-of-state firm name on the PHV motion itself; the Atlanta firm affiliation is drawn from the attorneys' own firm bios and from their appearances in related Hanger/DataCloud dockets, not from a face-of-the-docket statement. Firm names for McDonough/Miller/Lynch changed over time (McDonough Law Group → Heninger Garrison Davis → Rozier Hardt McDonough), so treat the "at-the-time" firm as reported rather than docket-verified.
• No corporate/general counsel for Hanger Solutions entered an appearance, and Hanger's parent (Brainbox Innovations, LLC) was only disclosed under Rule 7.1 — no in-house counsel of record exists here.
• I could not retrieve the full PACER docket sheet behind the Feb. 4, 2021 snapshot (Justia's crawl stops there, and the case was dismissed two months later), so I cannot rule out a subsequent notice of withdrawal or substitution before the April 9, 2021 dismissal; the UniCourt docket snapshot (last updated Mar. 15, 2021) still lists all five attorneys, with no withdrawals noted.

I'll research Extreme Networks' defense team in this D. Del. action.

Confirmed the two Delaware counsel. Now let me check the CourtListener docket for any additional appearances (PHV, withdrawal) and the counsel's bios.

Defendant's counsel of record — Extreme Networks, Inc.

Bottom line: Two attorneys are listed on the docket as counsel for Extreme Networks — both from Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP in Wilmington, Delaware. Jack B. Blumenfeld (partner) is listed as lead/relationship counsel; Andrew M. ("Andy") Moshos (then a junior associate, Delaware Bar No. 6685) is the attorney who actually filed the only defense paper in the case, D.I. 7 (the stipulated extension to March 22, 2021). No out-of-state or pro hac vice defense counsel ever appeared, no in-house Extreme attorney entered an appearance, and because no answer, Rule 12 motion, or counterclaim was filed before Hanger's April 9, 2021 dismissal, the defense team never made a substantive filing on the merits. Compare the plaintiff's side, which had three PHV admissions (D.I. 6); the asymmetry is notable and consistent with a case that died before national counsel needed to be admitted.

Docket grounding

• D.I. 7 (Feb. 4, 2021) — "STIPULATION TO EXTEND TIME for the defendant to answer, move or otherwise respond to the Complaint to March 22, 2021," filed by Moshos, Andrew for Extreme Networks; SO ORDERED by Judge Noreika the same day (answer deadline set to 3/22/2021). This is the only defense-authored entry on the retrievable docket.
• Attorney table — Justia's docket page for No. 1:21-cv-00040 and UniCourt's attorney table (last refreshed 2021-03-15) both list the defendant as "Represented By: Jack B. Blumenfeld" and "Andrew Mark Moshos." No other defense names appear.
• No PHV motion for any defense attorney appears on the docket (contrast D.I. 6 for the plaintiff), and no notice of appearance, answer, or Rule 12 motion precedes the April 9, 2021 dismissal.

Caveats / sourcing notes

• Blumenfeld's formal appearance document is not in the retrievable record. The free aggregators' attorney tables list him, but the Justia crawl stops at Feb. 4, 2021 and UniCourt's at Mar. 15, 2021, and I could not pull a PACER image of a notice of appearance bearing his name. The most likely explanation is standard D. Del. practice — the Morris Nichols firm-level appearance registered both the partner and the associate on CM/ECF when D.I. 7 was filed — but treat his role as listed-of-record rather than document-verified in this research pass. Confirming via a PACER docket-sheet attorney report is the clean fix.
• Firm attribution is docket/aggregator-grounded for Morris Nichols (Moshos's signature block on D.I. 7 and contemporaneous Morris Nichols filings in other D. Del. cases use 1201 N. Market Street). Note that the Morris Nichols contact data surfaced for Moshos in later filings reflects a later move (Potter Anderson's Hercules Plaza address), which is why I separate "at-the-time" from "current" firm.
• No indication of who, if anyone, was behind Delaware counsel as national/outside counsel. Morris Nichols frequently serves as local counsel in D. Del. patent cases, but because no PHV motion was ever filed and no substantive defense paper was ever submitted, no out-of-state defense attorney became counsel of record in this action. Any suggestion of an unadmitted national team (e.g., from Extreme's other NPE litigations, such as DataCloud Technologies, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-00764-LPS) would be speculation; I did not verify Extreme's defense roster in that parallel case before exhausting my research steps. That is the one open thread worth pulling if you need the full defense-side picture.
• Nothing in this case was sealed, and there is no sealed-appearance issue to flag.