Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corporation

I'll research this case thoroughly before drafting the overview.

Let me dig into the specific patents, the dismissal, and the broader campaign.

Case Overview & Background — Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., No. 4:22-cv-00152-CDL (M.D. Ga.)

Parties. Plaintiff Hanger Solutions, LLC is a Georgia limited liability company with its principal place of business at 44 Milton Avenue, Suite 254, Alpharetta, Georgia (Fulton County), and it disclosed Brainbox Innovations, LLC as its corporate parent in its Rule 7.1 statement (Dkt. 2). It is not an operating company: reporting by RPX/Mondaq describes Hanger as one of several Georgia entities associated with the Atlanta monetization firm IPInvestments Group LLC, which acquired thousands of patent assets from Intellectual Ventures (IV) beginning in late 2019, spawning a family of litigation vehicles (CDN Innovations, CommWorks Solutions, DataCloud Technologies, DigiMedia Tech) and at least one complaint in which Hanger states that it "does not sell, offer to sell, make, or use any products itself" — i.e., a classic NPE/PAE with no § 287 marking obligation (Mondaq/RPX, Feb. 12, 2021). Defendant Mediacom Communications Corporation is a U.S. cable/broadband operator (a well-known provider in smaller and mid-sized markets); its Rule 7.1 disclosure identifies JMCC Corporation as its corporate parent (Dkt. 12).

Accused technology. The complaint targets the "Mediacom Website Infrastructure" — the websites mediacom.com and mediacomcable.com, plus related internal systems and architecture — which Hanger alleges is used to advertise, sell, and support Mediacom's "Xtream" high-speed internet access service (Compl. ¶¶ 20–21). The allegedly infringing functionalities are mundane, back-end web operations: configuring computers via comparison of stored configuration data, routing data by domain name between public and private networks/addressing spaces, and generating cryptographic key pairs in connection with TLS/ECDHE handshakes (Compl. ¶¶ 31, 42, 53, 64, 75). Notably, the accused instrumentality is Mediacom's website/marketing infrastructure rather than the broadband network itself — a common NPE tactic that pushes a large operating company's routine IT operations into the claim scope (complaint analysis via Ex Parte AI case page). The five asserted patents are: U.S. 6,098,098 and 6,119,171 (issued 2000; computer/network configuration and domain-name-related data routing) — titles not verified in my searches; U.S. 6,430,623, "Domain Name Routing" (Domain Name Router mapping domain names to local addresses on stub networks; issued Aug. 2002; inventor Hasan S. Alkhatib; original assignee IP Dynamics, Inc.); U.S. 6,772,227, "Communicating Between Address Spaces" (routing messages between address spaces where the destination lacks a routable address; issued Aug. 2004; Alkhatib/IP Dynamics); and U.S. 6,868,160, "System and Method for Providing Secure Sharing of Electronic Data" (public/private key pairs generated algorithmically from unique user attributes rather than stored certificates; issued Mar. 2005; original assignee AT&T Delaware Intellectual Property, Inc.) — per Unified Patents' patent pages and for the '160. The '623 and '227 patents belong to the same Alkhatib/IP Dynamics family, which was assigned to IV in 2008 — the same assets Hanger has asserted against Extreme Networks, Squarespace, Charter, and Cequel Communications (Mondaq; Charter complaint, W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-00070).

Procedural posture and venue. Hanger filed on September 28, 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, Macon Division, assigned to Chief Judge Clay D. Land (case number 4:22-cv-00152-CDL); both sides demanded a jury (the docket oddly codes the cause of action as 15 U.S.C. § 1126, a trademark provision, likely a docketing artifact). Mediacom answered and counterclaimed on November 23, 2022 (Dkt. 13), and made pro hac vice appearances (Yusuf Esat, Amr O. Aly) alongside Georgia local counsel Coby S. Nixon and Seth K. Trimble. Hanger was represented by James F. McDonough III of Rozier Hardt McDonough PLLC (Atlanta). The case was terminated December 30, 2022 with status "Dismissed – Other," roughly three months after filing (Patexia case summary); the docket entries I could retrieve do not disclose the reason, so whether this was a voluntary dismissal, a settlement/license, or a refiling elsewhere is not established by the sources I found and should not be assumed. Venue matters here for two reasons: Hanger sued in its home district (plaintiff is Alpharetta-based, in-state), and it did so unlike its parallel campaign suits against Charter and Cequel, which were filed in the Western District of Texas, Waco Division, before Judge Alan Albright — making the M.D. Ga. filing a deliberate alternative to Waco and an illustration of NPE forum-shopping across both plaintiff-home and plaintiff-friendly districts.

Why it's notable. First, it is a case study in the post-Intellectual-Ventures divestiture wave: Hanger's assertion of IV-spun-out assets (mixed with AT&T-origin assets like the '160) reflects how IV's massive late-2019 portfolio sales to IPInvestments Group generated multiple serial NPE campaigns against telecom, networking, and cloud defendants. Second, it illustrates venue strategy, with the same NPE simultaneously litigating in Waco's patent-heavy docket and its own home

I'll research the docket chronology, the dismissal mechanism, and any parallel PTAB proceedings before drafting.

Key Legal Developments & Outcome — Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., No. 4:22-cv-00152-CDL (M.D. Ga.)

Bottom line

This was a short-lived, pleadings-only case. It ran 93 days from complaint (2022-09-28) to termination (2022-12-30), never reached a scheduling order, discovery, Markman, or summary judgment, and closed with a "Dismissed – Other" termination code. No opinion, verdict, judgment, fee award, or appeal exists. The only substantive defense-side instrument filed was Mediacom's answer and counterclaim. Critically, I found no PTAB proceeding on any of the five asserted patents — no IPR, PGR, or stay motion appears in any of the records retrieved — so the dismissal was not driven by a PTAB outcome in this matter.

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Chronology of docket events

All entries below are from the docket as mirrored at Dockets.Justia, No. 4:22-cv-00152 and UniCourt.

The dismissal: what is and is not established

The docket mirrors I could access are snapshots that end before the dismissal: Justia's sheet notes "last retrieved on November 23, 2022," and UniCourt's data was "last updated … 11/27/2022." Neither shows a post-answer dismissal filing. Accordingly:

• Established: the case was terminated 2022-12-30 and coded "Dismissed – Other."
• Not established: whether the dismissal was (a) a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) stipulation of dismissal signed by all parties, (b) an unopposed Rule 41(a)(2) motion/order, or (c) a dismissal with or without prejudice. Because Mediacom had already answered and counterclaimed (Dkt. 13, 2022-11-23), Hanger could not dismiss unilaterally by notice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) — a stipulation or court order was required. That makes a joint stipulation the most probable mechanism, but this is inference from the Rules and the answer date, not a sourced fact.
• No settlement document, license, consent judgment, or Rule 41 order appears in any retrieved record. Media/Docket coverage of the closing is absent — no Law360, Reuters, or IPWatchdog item on the dismissal surfaced in my searches.

What never happened (and why that matters)

The retrieved docket through the answer shows, and no later source contradicts, the absence of:

• Any motion to dismiss, transfer, or stay — notably no § 1404(a) venue-transfer motion, despite the TC Heartland/In re Google* backdrop that has made NPE venue in plaintiff-home districts contestable. Mediacom instead answered and counterclaimed, i.e., it submitted to M.D. Ga. rather than fighting forum (contrast Hanger's Charter and Cequel suits, which it filed in Waco).
• Any § 101 or § 112 motion challenging the five patents, even though the accused instrumentality was routine website/TLS infrastructure — the kind of target that invites eligibility and indefiniteness attacks (the complaint's own claim-mapping for the '098 requires proving a negative limitation — comparing data "without sending said second information" — a classic § 112 written-description vulnerability noted in the complaint analysis).
• No scheduling conference or scheduling order, no Rule 26(f) report, no discovery, no Markman briefing or claim construction order, no expert reports, no summary judgment, no trial, no JMOL/new-trial/fee motion.
• No appeal. No Federal Circuit docket was located; a stipulated dismissal without prejudice would in any event not ordinarily be appealable.

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Parallel PTAB proceedings

None located, and none with any effect on this case. I searched for IPR/PGR activity on the five asserted patents — 6,098,098; 6,119,171; 6,430,623; 6,772,227; 6,868,160 — and found no petition, institution decision, or final written decision in the records returned. Consistent with that, the docket contains no motion to stay pending IPR and no IPR-statistics-based delay pattern. Two caveats:

1. Negative findings are weaker than positive ones. My searches were constrained (I could not query PTAB's P-TACTS/PTAB Center directly for each patent number, and Unified Patents' portal pages for '623 and '160 were used only for bibliographic data in the prior section). A petition filed and terminated in 2022–2023 is conceivable; I do not assert that no IPR exists — only that none was found and none is reflected in this litigation.
2. The patents were litigated elsewhere before and after, so third-party validity challenges may exist in other dockets. Mediacom's answer/counterclaim invalidity contentions (Dkt. 13) were its own challenge, not a PTAB one.

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Related and parallel litigation (the real driver of this dismissal)

The dismissal is best understood as part of a litigation campaign cadence, not as a discrete merits outcome. Within roughly 90 days in 2022, Mediacom was the target of a coordinated multi-plaintiff push by the IPInvestments Group family of Georgia NPEs:

• DigiMedia Tech LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., No. 4:22-cv-00114 (M.D. Ga., filed 2022-07-14) — same judge (Chief Judge Land); Nixon as local counsel, and a motion to dismiss was filed there (UniCourt).
• CDN Innovations LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., No. 4:22-cv-00138 (M.D. Ga., filed 2022-09-12) — same judge, same local counsel (UniCourt).
• Mediacom's pre-emptive D. Del. declaratory-judgment actions, filed 2022-09-09 — Mediacom Communications Corp. v. CDN Innovations LLC, No. 1:22-cv-01193, and Mediacom Communications Corp. v. DataCloud Tech LLC, No. 1:22-cv-01194 (case list). Note the sequencing: Mediacom sued first in Delaware on 2022-09-09, and Hanger filed here 19 days later — a first-to-file dynamic in which Mediacom was actively forum-shopping against the IPInvestments cohort.
• Hanger's own template for quick exit: in its Waco suit against Charter Communications, No. 6:22-cv-00070 (W.D. Tex.), Hanger filed a NOTICE of Voluntary Dismissal (Dkt. 23) on 2022-06-10 (Patexia document list) — a file-then-dismiss pattern it repeated here six months later, while pressing Cequel Communications, No. 6:22-cv-00330 (W.D. Tex.), filed in the same window.

The competing D. Del. DJ actions and the two sibling M.D. Ga. suits give the most plausible non-merits explanation for the December 30 dismissal: a global stand-down or portfolio-level resolution covering Mediacom and the affiliated plaintiffs. That hypothesis is consistent with the record but unproven — no public settlement, license, or global dismissal order was located. What can be said with confidence is that the case did not end on a ruling: no claim was held invalid, no claim was construed, and no infringement finding was made. The dismissal therefore carries **no preced

I'll research the plaintiff's counsel of record for this specific case.

Let me dig deeper into the docket entries for the Mediacom case specifically to confirm all plaintiff-side appearances.

Let me try to pull the actual docket sheet via CourtListener RECAP to confirm all plaintiff appearances.

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff Hanger Solutions, LLC

Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., No. 4:22-cv-00152-CDL (M.D. Ga., Macon Div.), filed Sept. 28, 2022; terminated Dec. 30, 2022.

Bottom line

The docket and party/attorney records for this specific M.D. Ga. case identify a single plaintiff-side attorney of record: James F. McDonough, III, of Rozier Hardt McDonough PLLC (Atlanta). No separate Georgia local counsel, and no second Hanger-side attorney, is reflected in the records I retrieved. This is consistent with (and does not contradict) the case-overview section already generated, which named McDonough as Hanger's counsel.

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Plaintiff's counsel of record

James F. McDonough, III — Lead counsel (and, per the docket, sole plaintiff-side counsel of record)

• Firm / office: Rozier Hardt McDonough PLLC, 3621 Vinings Slope SE, Suite 4300, Atlanta, Georgia 30339 (the firm operates additional offices in Austin, TX and Denver, CO).
• Role: Lead/principal counsel for Hanger. Consolidating services (UniCourt mirror of the M.D. Ga. docket) list exactly one "Plaintiff and Counter-Defendant Attorney" for the case: JAMES F MCDONOUGH, III (UniCourt case page); the Justia docket sheet likewise shows McDonough as the plaintiff attorney of record (Justia docket).
• Bar/admission: Georgia bar, and admitted to the M.D. Ga. itself (his sworn pro hac vice declaration in an unrelated PTAB matter lists "U.S. District Court, Georgia – Middle District" among his admissions), which likely explains why no separate Georgia local counsel was needed for Hanger as it was for Mediacom's out-of-state counsel (McDonough PHV declaration, IPR2022-01169).
• Patent-litigation experience (well documented):
  • He is the recurring lead attorney for Hanger Solutions across its entire assertion campaign — the Extreme Networks (D. Del. 1:21-cv-00040) and Squarespace (D. Del. 1:21-cv-00774) suits, in which he moved for pro hac vice admission alongside Jonathan R. Miller and Travis E. Lynch (Justia — Extreme Networks; Unified Patents — Squarespace); and the Charter Communications (W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-00070) and Cequel Communications (W.D. Tex. 6:22-cv-00330) suits filed before Judge Albright, where he signed the pleadings (Charter complaint/amended complaint, via Patexia; RPX litigation document — Charter dkt.).
  • His firm bio describes him as a technology-focused plaintiff-side litigator and former managing editor of the Emory Law Journal who has "served as lead counsel in hundreds of litigated matters"; it lists telecommunications, wireless networks, encryption, cloud computing, and data-security technologies among his subject-matter areas — a close fit for the Hanger portfolio (Rozier Hardt McDonough bio). He is also identified in third-party profiles as an IAM Strategy 300–recognized IP strategist (per a LinkedIn-derived profile; treat as lower-confidence).
  • Law360's attorney tracker shows a long docket of patent filings under his name, primarily for NPE plaintiffs (e.g., Fleet Connect Solutions, Nearby Systems, IoT Innovations) (Law360 profile).

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Attorneys who appeared for Hanger in parallel cases but are NOT shown on this docket

Hanger's other suits in the same campaign used a fuller Rozier Hardt McDonough team — C. Matthew Rozier (Denver), Jonathan L. Hardt (Austin), Jonathan R. Miller (Atlanta), and Travis E. Lynch (Atlanta), plus Delaware local counsel Stamatios Stamoulis / Richard C. Weinblatt (Stamoulis & Weinblatt) in the D. Del. actions (RPX Charter pleading caption; Justia — Squarespace). None of these attorneys is listed on the M.D. Ga. Mediacom docket in the records I retrieved, and I found no Delaware-style local-counsel appearance for Hanger in M.D. Ga. I flag this as an observation about the retrieved records, not a guarantee — if additional appearances were filed after the docket snapshot dates (Justia's sheet was last retrieved Nov. 23, 2022; UniCourt's data updated Nov. 27, 2022), I could not see them.

Defendant's counsel (for contrast / completeness)

Mediacom was represented by Yusuf Esat and Amr O. Aly (pro hac vice, admitted by orders at Dkts. 10–11) with Georgia local counsel Coby S. Nixon (Ga. Bar No. 545005) and Seth Kincaid Trimble (Ga. Bar No. 851055), who entered appearances Oct. 25, 2022 (Dkts. 5–6) and filed the answer/counterclaim (Dkt. 13) and corporate disclosure (Dkt. 12) (Justia docket; UniCourt).

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Caveats on sourcing

• No sealed-filing issue: The case terminated quickly (Dkt. entry showing dismissal Dec. 30, 2022), and I found no indication that counsel appearances were sealed. The complaint signed by plaintiff's counsel is reflected in the case record.
• Primary-source limitation: I could not open the raw PACER docket or the complaint PDF itself; the attorney roster above rests on the Justia and UniCourt docket mirrors and on the parallel-case pleadings. If an appearance by an additional Hanger attorney was docketed only in the final days before dismissal, it may not appear in those mirrors. Anyone needing a certified counsel list should confirm against the PACER docket for 4:22-cv-00152-CDL.
• Email/contact details: I did not independently verify current firm contact information beyond the firm website; the addresses above (Atlanta office) match the firm's published location and the caption block used in the parallel Hanger pleadings.

I'll research defense counsel for Mediacom in this case.

I have the four defense attorneys. Now let me research their firms and offices.

Counsel of Record — Defendant Mediacom Communications Corporation

Four attorneys have appeared for Mediacom in Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., No. 4:22-cv-00152-CDL (M.D. Ga.). They divide cleanly into a two-lawyer national patent team admitted pro hac vice and two Georgia local counsel. All four were sourced from the docket (Dockets.Justia, 4:22-cv-00152; UniCourt case page).

Both pro hac vice petitions list the same local counsel of record: "Coby S. Nixon – 545005; Seth K. Trimble – 851055" (Dkt. 9). Nixon executed the operative defense filings — the answer and counterclaim and the earlier stipulation extending time to respond.

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Amr O. Aly — lead counsel

• Firm/office: Jenner & Block LLP, New York. His Jenner & Block bio identifies him as a Partner in the New York office and, critically, lists the Mediacom representations (below), which is the strongest available evidence of his firm affiliation at the time (Jenner & Block bio PDF; jenner.com profile).
• Relevant experience: A career patent-defense lawyer for operating companies; Best Lawyers in America (Litigation–Patent, 2024–2026), Legal 500. He has represented Mediacom itself in prior NPE suits: Global Interactive Media, Inc. v. Mediacom Communications Corp. (S.D.N.Y.) and Network Congestion Solutions LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp. (D. Del.) — in both he is described as lead counsel (Jenner bio PDF). He also appeared for Mediacom in CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., 1:20-cv-07529 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 14, 2020), filing Mediacom's notice of appearance and answer/counterclaim (docket) — the same IPInvestments-family plaintiff cohort at issue here.
• Caveat on firm history: Some third-party directories still list Aly at Mayer Brown (New York), where he handled older telecom/encryption matters such as Uniloc v. Avaya/ShoreTel, Odyssey Wireless v. Motorola Mobility, and DataTreasury v. Wells Fargo (LawTally profile). Treat the Jenner & Block affiliation as the one sourcing the 2022 Mediacom matters, but note the discrepancy is unresolved by a primary source (the pro hac vice certificate of good standing is not text-searchable in my retrievals).

Yusuf Esat — national counsel

• Firm/office: Jenner & Block LLP, Chicago (353 N. Clark St.); email yesat@jenner.com, +1 312 840 7654 (jenner.com profile).
• Role: He is the attorney who filed the pro hac vice petition in this case ([Dkt. 9]), i.e., the Jenner & Block lawyer primarily shepherding the M.D. Ga. appearances.
• Relevant experience: Registered patent attorney (USPTO) and a frequent PTAB practitioner; LEAP practitioner (the USPTO's Legal Experience and Advancement Program for junior advocates) — he was granted leave to argue a PTAB hearing as a LEAP practitioner (PTAB notice). He litigates patent cases in pharma and content-delivery/telecom fields; part of the Jenner team that secured a Federal Circuit win for Roku against a $41M infringement claim (Jenner news, Nov. 10, 2021). He has since appeared pro hac vice for Altice/CSC Holdings/Cequel in Freedom Patents LLC v. Altice USA (E.D. Tex.) and for Vyve Broadband in CommWorks Solutions v. Vyve Broadband (W.D. Tex.) (docket; docket) — confirming the Jenner/Broadband-defense pattern.

Coby S. Nixon — local counsel

• Firm/office: Taylor English Duma LLP, 1600 Parkwood Circle, Suite 200, Atlanta, GA 30339 (Georgia Bar No. 545005). His Mercer University engineering advisory-board entry lists him as "Partner & Chair, Intellectual Property Litigation, Taylor English Duma LLP," which matches the period of this case (Mercer Engineering NEAB). He is now at Buchalter APC (Atlanta) per 2025–2026 Law360/Buchalter items (Law360 attorney page; Buchalter news) — a later move, not his affiliation at filing.
• Relevant experience: Registered patent attorney with both prosecution and litigation practices; former Alston & Bird associate representing clients against NPEs (e.g., he submitted a venue-transfer declaration for Nokia in Nokia Corp. v. Apple Inc., W.D. Wis.) and started at Smith, Gambrell & Russell (LawTally profile; Nixon declaration, W.D. Wis.). He is Georgia Trend "Legal Elite" in IP law.
• Related activity in this campaign: Nixon served as local counsel for Mediacom in the sibling M.D. Ga. cases before the same judge (Chief Judge Clay D. Land) — CDN Innovations LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp. (filed Sept. 12, 2022) and DigiMedia Tech LLC v. Mediacom Communications Corp., where he also filed a motion to dismiss (CDN docket; DigiMedia docket).

Seth Kincaid Trimble — local counsel

• Role: Local counsel of record (Georgia Bar No. 851055), appearing Oct. 25, 2022 (Dkt. 6) and named jointly with Nixon as local counsel on both pro hac vice petitions.
• Firm/office — NOT ESTABLISHED. My searches did not return a confirmed firm or office for Mr. Trimble, and I could not complete a dedicated lookup. The most likely assumption — that he practiced alongside Nixon at Taylor English Duma — is inference, not a sourced fact, and I am flagging it as unverified rather than asserting it. This is the one attorney of the four for whom I could not independently confirm a firm via a primary or reliable secondary source; any firm attribution should be confirmed against the pro hac vice certificate of good standing attached to Dkt. 9/8 or a State Bar of Georgia directory.

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Observations / cross-references

• Consistent with the prior section's procedural account: the earlier summary noted "pro hac vice appearances (Yusuf Esat, Amr O. Aly) alongside Georgia local counsel Coby S. Nixon and Seth K. Trimble." The docket confirms exactly that composition — no additional defense counsel appear in the retrieved docket through the Nov. 23, 2022 answer/counterclaim [Dkt. 13]. No in-house Mediacom attorney appears on the docket.
• No fee dispute or substitution appears in the retrieved docket; the case terminated Dec. 30, 2022 (Patexia summary) without any further appearance of record disclosed in my sources. Whether additional counsel worked behind the scenes on the dismissal is not shown on the docket.
• Representation pattern: Mediacom used a single national patent-defense team (Jenner & Block) staffed consistently against the IPInvestments-family plaintiffs (CommWorks 2020 → Hanger 2022), paired with Atlanta local counsel — a routine pro hac vice/local-counsel arrangement in M.D. Ga., where local counsel is required for the out-of-state lawyers to appear.

Sourcing note: Names and roles are grounded in the docket (Dockets.Justia, UniCourt); firm affiliations for Aly and Esat rest on the Jenner & Block bios and related case dockets; Nixon's rests on Taylor English/Mercer/Law360 sources; Trimble's firm is unconfirmed and is not asserted here.