Hulu, LLC et al. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC

I'll research the underlying litigation, the patent, and the parties to build this overview.

Case overview and background

Note on scope and one correction up front. The case in the metadata (IPR2018-01227) is the PTAB proceeding; the "infringement litigation" it shadows is Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 1:17-cv-01692-CFC-SRF (D. Del.), later refiled as Nos. 2:19-cv-06359/06361-GW-JC (C.D. Cal.), plus the parallel Amazon, Hulu and Google suits. Also, the '298 patent is not one of the "Fallon" adaptive-compression patents that dominate the Realtime story; it is a separately acquired 3D-video decoding patent, which matters to how the case should be framed.

The parties. The challengers/petitioners are three streaming-video operating companies: Netflix, Inc. and Netflix Streaming Services, Inc. (Los Gatos, CA), Amazon.com, Inc. (with Amazon Digital Services LLC and Amazon.com Services, Inc. as real parties in interest), and Hulu, LLC — Hulu's updated mandatory notices list AT&T, Comcast, Twenty-First Century Fox and Disney as 10%+ owners (Petitioners' Updated Mandatory Notices, IPR2018-01187). All were represented in the IPRs by Baker Botts LLP (Harper Batts, Eliot Williams, Chris Ponder, Jennifer Nall). The patent owner, Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, is a Texas LLC with its principal place of business in Tyler, Texas (per its IPR power of attorney, signed by manager Richard Tashjian) — a non-practicing assertion vehicle affiliated with Realtime Data LLC d/b/a IXO, which Unified Patents characterized in April 2018 as "a Realtime Data affiliate and well-known NPE" (Unified Patents). Its litigation counsel was Russ August & Kabat (Marc Fenster, Reza Mirzaie, Philip Wang), with Bayard as Delaware local counsel (docket, D. Del. 17-1692).

The patent and the accused technology. U.S. Patent No. 9,578,298 B2, "Method for Decoding 2D-Compatible Stereoscopic Video Flows," issued February 21, 2017 to inventors Giovanni Ballocca, Paolo D'Amato and Saverio Celia, naming Sisvel Technology S.r.l. (None, Italy) as applicant — i.e., an Italian licensing-house-origin asset that Realtime acquired and asserted (patent front page; family member). In one line: it claims a decoder that receives a stereoscopic stream of frame-packed composite frames (side-by-side or top-bottom), reads signalling metadata (e.g., SEI / cropping-rectangle information) identifying the frame region holding one eye's image, and decodes only that region so a conventional 2D set-top or TV displays a 2D picture from 3D content. The accused technology was therefore not a compression codec per se but standards-based video delivery using H.264/AVC and HEVC/H.265, including HEVC's frame-packing-arrangement SEI signalling — Google's complaint analysis, for example, accused YouTube, Google Photos, Chromecast Ultra and Duo (complaint analysis, 2:18-cv-03629); the Netflix and Amazon/Hulu suits targeted their streaming services and encoder pipelines, with the '298 patent pleaded against some defendants (e.g., ARRIS in the Colorado DISH/Sling case) on claim 1 only.

Procedural posture and why the venues matter. Realtime filed the '298-containing Delaware action against Netflix on November 21, 2017 (D.I. 1, 17-1692), in a campaign spanning E.D. Tex. (Amazon, 6:17-cv-00549, filed 9/27/2017), C.D. Cal. (Hulu, 2:17-cv-07611, filed 10/17/2017; Google, 2:18-cv-03629), D. Colo. (Apple, Sling/DISH, and others), and D. Mass. (Adobe) — the list of related matters runs more than a dozen cases (Petitioners' mandatory notices). In Delaware the case sat before Judge Colm F. Connolly with Magistrate Judge Sherry R. Fallon; Netflix's motion to transfer to N.D. Cal. was denied (D.I. 44, adopted at D.I. 46, Nov. 9, 2018), and on December 12, 2018 Judge Fallon issued a Report and Recommendation (D.I. 48) finding four of the six asserted patents ('535, '477, '907, '046) ineligible under § 101 — notably not the '298 or '462 (R&R text). Realtime voluntarily dismissed Delaware on July 22, 2019, the day after a parallel-action ineligibility ruling, and re-filed the same six patents in C.D. Cal. before Judge George H. Wu, splitting the '298/'777 into No. 2:19-cv-06359 and the four compression patents into No. 2:19-cv-06361 — then dismissed both, producing the § 285/inherent-power fee award (Nov. 23, 2020) affirmed by the Federal Circuit in *

I'll research this case and its underlying district court litigation. Let me start with several searches.

Let me dig into the PTAB proceeding and the underlying district court case.

Key finding: the PTAB's final written decision in IPR2018-01227 confirmed patentability. Let me verify details, the appeal, and the litigation's disposition.

Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Hulu, LLC et al. — Litigation Chronology and Outcome

Scope note. The case in the metadata (IPR2018‑01227) is the PTAB proceeding, not the district court case. The "patent infringement litigation" involving U.S. Patent No. 9,578,298 ("Methods for decoding

I'll search several angles to find press coverage of this IPR and the underlying district court litigation.

Press coverage: thin on the IPR itself, richer on the surrounding Realtime campaign

Coverage specifically of IPR2018-01227 is sparse and largely docket-driven. The only article I located squarely on this proceeding is a Mealey's report dated 2019‑05‑02, headlined "Patent Owner Tells Board Netflix Petition Should Be Rejected," which summarized Realtime's May 1, 2019 patent owner response arguing that "inter partes review (IPR) is not warranted because the patent in suit is neither anticipated nor obvious" in Netflix Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, No. IPR2018-01227. Mealey's had earlier covered the joint-petitioner filing campaign in the sibling proceeding, reporting on 2018‑06‑13 that Amazon, Hulu and Netflix told the Board a data-compression patent claimed "known compression concepts" (Mealey's, addressing IPR2018-01187 rather than the '298 patent). I found no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Ars Technica, The Verge, or EFF coverage of this IPR, and no press report of the merits outcome of IPR2018-01227 — consistent with the fact that the only case-specific reporting I could retrieve is trade-press docket summary rather than analysis of the Board's reasoning.

The wider Realtime Adaptive Streaming campaign drew more attention. Law360 maintains a case page for In re: Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC Patent Litigation (MDL No. 2845) recording its 2018‑08‑02 report that the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation "declined to centralize in Colorado or Texas federal court nine infringement suits involving digital data compression patents filed against Hulu, Netflix and others, determining that the allegations against the companies are too disparate"; the Panel's order, 326 F. Supp. 3d 1374, lists the '298 patent among the eight asserted Realtime patents (CourtListener). Industry-side commentary came from Unified Patents, which on 2018‑04‑09 described Realtime Adaptive Streaming as "a Realtime Data affiliate and well-known NPE" whose '535 patent had been asserted "against such companies as Samsung, Adobe, Apple, Netflix, Sony, Polycom, Cisco, Hulu, Echostar, Amazon, Sling TV and others."

The '298 patent also appears, unnamed in headlines but expressly listed, in trade coverage of the subsequent attorneys'-fee fights. IPWatchdog reported on 2022‑07‑27 that the Federal Circuit affirmed a California fee award to Netflix, quoting the court's statement that "[r]ealtime undoubtedly realized that by refiling in California, it could effectively erase the Delaware magistrate judge's fulsome and compelling patent-ineligibility analysis and findings," and noting that Realtime's Delaware suit had asserted six patents including "U.S. Patent No. 9,578,298 ('298 patent)." Procopio's weekly Federal Circuit summaries on JD Supra likewise recapped that decision, and later covered Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Sling TV (JD Supra); Alston & Bird summarized the same 2024 ruling, explaining that the court vacated a § 285 fee award because "the district court relied on the six red flags without explaining the weight for each flag," with the PTAB's invalidity decisions on Realtime's related patent among the discounted "red flags."

Reporting goes beyond the court record mainly in characterization. Unified Patents' "well-known NPE" label and its "likely invalid" framing are advocacy, not findings. Patently-O (Dennis Crouch, 2024‑10‑31, via a Harvard-hosted feed copy) reported that DISH sought en banc review of the panel decision vacating a $3.9 million fee award in Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Sling TV and framed the panel's approach as an "overzealous fee award" — the only dollar figure I found in any press account of this family of disputes; I found no reported damages figure or settlement amount for the '298 patent, and the Hulu/Amazon settlements were filed under requests to keep the agreements confidential (see the joint motion to terminate as posted on Docket Alarm, not press). Finally, note a sourcing caveat: the Docket Alarm docket sheet for IPR2018-01227 shows a January 14, 2020 "Final Written Decision" termination date, whereas the case metadata here records termination with certificate issuance on 2021‑07‑21 — I found no press account resolving that discrepancy or describing the Board's disposition of the challenged claims.

Sources

• This Petition challenges a subset of the same claims that have already been challenged and instituted in the prior Netflix IPR
• Docket Alarm | Litigation Outcomes, Delivered - - All Courts
• Amazon.com, Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, IPR2018-01227 (P.T.A.B.) - Track Docket
• **_issue in that case
• Along with the Google and Netflix decisions, the district court also relied on a decision from this Court: the nonprecedential d...
• STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• * (54) _Apple Inc
• Complaint for Patent Infringement, filed in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v
• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• IN THE UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• UNITED STATES JUDICIAL PANEL on MULTIDISTRICT LITIGATION
• HULU, LLC, AMAZON

I'll research counsel of record from several angles: the PTAB docket, the underlying district court suits, and firm/attorney bios.

Counsel of record — with a threshold caveat on who the "plaintiff" is

Two things must be flagged before naming anyone, because the question's framing does not map cleanly onto this docket:

1. The case in the metadata is an IPR, not a district court infringement action. In IPR2018-01227 the party aligned as "plaintiff(s)" in the metadata — Hulu, LLC; Amazon.com, Inc.; Netflix, Inc. — are the petitioners (challengers). Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC is the patent owner/respondent. There is no "plaintiff" in the Rule 3 sense.
2. Caption discrepancy. The metadata caption reads Hulu, LLC et al. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC, but the Docket Alarm docket sheet for IPR2018-01227 is captioned Amazon.com, Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (filed June 15, 2018). Both are consistent with a joint petition by the three petitioners; I simply note the first-named petitioner differs between sources. Per my operating rules I treat the metadata caption as authoritative.

I therefore give (A) petitioners' counsel — the "plaintiff-side" answer, and (B) the mirror-image plaintiff's counsel in the underlying district court suits, since a reader looking for "plaintiff's counsel in this patent infringement case" may mean Realtime.

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A. Counsel of record for the petitioners (Hulu, Amazon, Netflix)

Important sourcing limitation: I could not retrieve the four corners of the IPR2018-01227 petition's own mandatory notices (the PTACTS artifact is not directly text-searchable in the results I obtained). The roster below is reconstructed from three independent docket sources that cross-corroborate: (i) petitioners' updated mandatory notices filed Aug. 21, 2018 in the companion joint proceeding IPR2018-01187 (same three petitioners, same filing campaign); (ii) a Docket Alarm attorney-filter hit listing Eliot Williams as attorney of record on IPR2018-01227 itself; and (iii) Realtime's Aug. 23, 2019 service certification identifying Netflix's counsel of record after Hulu and Amazon were terminated. I flag each attribution's basis.

Petition stage (Baker Botts LLP)

Post-settlement (Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP)

The Law.com/Law360 trade item "Sheppard Mullin Bags 3-Lawyer IP Team From Baker Botts" (Sept. 24, 2018) documents Batts's move, and by August 2019 the Board's and Realtime's papers route service to Sheppard Mullin addresses. After the Oct. 18, 2018 termination of Hulu and Amazon, only Netflix remained, and Netflix's counsel of record was:

In-house counsel: none identified. No Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix in-house attorney appears in any petitioners' mandatory notice I located; each notice designates only outside counsel and a firm-wide service email (e.g., dl-realtime-ipr-service@bakerbotts.com, later Legaltm-Netflix-Realtime-IPRs@sheppardmullin.com). If in-house counsel appeared, it was not in the papers retrievable here.

No "local counsel" — the PTAB does not require a local-counsel designation, and none was made.

Withdrawal note: I found no docket entry formally granting withdrawal of Baker Botts (Eliot Williams / Jennifer Nall) following the Hulu/Amazon termination; the substitution is reflected practically through the changed service designations rather than a located order. Treat the "withdrew" characterization as inference, not a cited ruling.

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B. Counsel for the actual district-court plaintiff (Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC)

Because the '298 patent's enforcement campaign is the "patent infringement case" surrounding this IPR, here is plaintiff-side counsel in the parallel litigations, for completeness.

Realtime's principal litigation firm — Russ August & Kabat (Los Angeles, 12424 Wilshire Blvd., 12th Fl.):

• Marc A. Fenster (CA SBN 181067) — founder/partner; lead plaintiff-side strategist across the Realtime campaign.
• Brian D. Ledahl (CA SBN 186579) — partner.
• Reza Mirzaie (CA SBN 246953) — argued/signed Realtime's Federal Circuit opening brief in the Realtime v. Netflix fee appeal (Nos. 21-1484; C.D. Cal. 2:19-cv-06359-GW-JC and 2:19-cv-06361-GW-JC, Judge George H. Wu).
• Paul A. Kroeger (CA SBN 229074); C. Jay Chung (CA SBN 252794); Philip X. Wang (CA SBN 262239) — all listed as trial counsel in Realtime's Fed. Cir. Rule 47.4(a)(1) disclosure; Shani M. Williams also disclosed as appearing below.

Delaware local counsel — Bayard, P.A. (600 N. King St., Suite 400, Wilmington, DE): Stephen B. Brauerman and Sara E. Bussiere, who signed and received service in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., C.A. No. 17-1692 (JFB)(SRF) (D. Del., filed Nov. 21, 2017), the case in which the '298 patent was one of six asserted patents.

PTAB counsel for Realtime (patent owner) — Noroozi PC + Russ August & Kabat: per Realtime's Aug. 23, 2019 updated mandatory notices, Joel P.N. Stonedale (Reg. No. 76,924), Noroozi PC, 111 Congress Ave., Suite 400, Austin, TX, is lead counsel; Kayvan B. Noroozi (pro hac vice), Noroozi PC, Los Angeles, is first back-up; Neil A. Rubin (Reg. No. 67,030) and Kent Shum (Reg. No. 61,117), Russ August & Kabat, are back-up. Those notices were filed in IPR2018-01187; I did not locate the parallel '298-specific notice, so treat application to IPR2018-01227 as highly likely but not directly confirmed.

(For symmetry, and because they are frequently confused with plaintiff's counsel: Netflix's district-court defense team was Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell — Jack B. Blumenfeld, Wilmington — with Winston & Strawn (Katherine Vidal, Matthew R. McCullough, Andrew B. Grossman) in the Delaware action, and Fenwick & West (Todd Gregorian, David Hadden, Saina Shamilov) in the C.D. Cal. fee litigation.)

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Caveats and unresolved items

• Sealing: the Hulu and Amazon settlement agreements were filed with confidentiality requests (see the joint motion to terminate posted on Docket Alarm), but counsel designations themselves are public; nothing in the counsel record is sealed.
• Unverified: (i) the IPR2018-01227 petition's

I'll research counsel of record for Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC (the patent owner / defendant-side party in this IPR and the related district court suits).

Let me pull the actual IPR2018-01227 docket and related filings for the patent owner's counsel designations.

Let me retrieve the actual power-of-attorney and hearing records in IPR2018-01227.

Threshold point: who the "defendant" is here

The metadata lists Hulu, Amazon and Netflix as plaintiffs/petitioners and Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC as defendant, but IPR2018‑01227 is an administrative trial with no defendant — Realtime appears as Patent Owner, and in the parallel district court actions Realtime was the plaintiff (e.g., Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Hulu, LLC, No. 2:17‑cv‑07611 (C.D. Cal.); Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 1:17‑cv‑01692 (D. Del.)). So I have treated the request as aimed at Realtime's counsel of record (the party adverse to the petitioners), and I flag the district‑court side separately below.

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1. Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC — PTAB counsel of record (IPR2018‑01227)

Realtime's PTAB representation was handled by Russ August & Kabat ("RAK"), Los Angeles, the same firm that ran its district court campaign.

Petitioners' side (for cross‑reference only): In the jointly filed Amazon/Hulu/Netflix Realtime IPR family, the petitioners were represented by Baker Botts LLP — Harper Batts (Reg. No. 56,160) as lead, with Eliot Williams (50,822), Chris Ponder (77,167) and Jennifer Nall (57,053) as back‑up, per Petitioners' Updated Mandatory Notices in IPR2018‑01187 (Aug. 21, 2018). Docket Alarm's index also associates Eliot Williams with IPR2018‑01227. I did not retrieve the 01227‑specific petitioner power of attorney (Paper 1–3) to confirm the designation rosters were identical in this proceeding.

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2. Realtime's district court counsel (Realtime as plaintiff)

• Russ August & Kabat (Marc A. Fenster, Reza Mirzaie, Brian D. Ledahl, Paul A. Kroeger, C. Jay Chung, Philip X. Wang, Neil A. Rubin, Kent N. Shum, Shani Williams) — national trial counsel across the Realtime campaign, per signature blocks in Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix (D. Del.) and the Federal Circuit Rule 47.4(a)(1) disclosure in the fee appeal.
• Delaware local counsel: the docket‑derived attorney list for Realtime v. Netflix, No. 1:17‑cv‑01692 (D. Del.), shows Stephen B. Brauerman and Sara E. Bussiere appearing for Realtime alongside the RAK lawyers — the standard Bayard, P.A. (Wilmington) Delaware‑counsel pairing, though the compiled list I retrieved does not itself print the firm name, so confirm the Bayard affiliation on PACER before citing it.
• Fee‑litigation / appellate counsel: same RAK team (Mirzaie, Fenster, Ledahl, Kroeger, Wang, Chung, Williams) on Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Netflix, Inc., Fed. Cir. No. 2021‑2251.

Defense‑side counsel in the district court action (if the question is really about the Netflix suit): the docket list for No. 1:17‑cv‑01692 identifies Jack B. Blumenfeld and Sapna S. Mehta (Delaware counsel; Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell) and J. David Hadden, Earl W. Mah, Ravi R. Ranganath, Saina S. Shamilov (Fenwick & West) for Netflix. I could not verify Hulu's district‑court counsel in Realtime v. Hulu, No. 2:17‑cv‑07611, and I am not going to guess at it; in the separate Realtime v. Google/YouTube case (No. 2:18‑cv‑03629) the defendants were represented by Munger, Tolles & Olson (Ted Dane, Peter A. Detre, Peter E. Gratzinger, Zachary M. Briers), which is a different defendant and should not be conflated with Hulu.

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3. Sourcing and gaps — read before relying on the table

• Not verified against the 01227 papers themselves. The IPR2018‑01227 docket (Docket Alarm) shows a Patent Owner Power of Attorney (Paper 6) and a "Realtime Updated Power of Attorney" (Paper 25, filed July 12, 2019), but the contents of those two documents were not retrievable in my searches. The attorney names above are drawn from (i) Realtime's Feb. 3, 2020 updated power of attorney in the companion cluster (IPR2019‑01033/-01035/-01036, which is the '298 patent) naming Wang as lead with Chung, Shum, Mirzaie, Rubin and Tsuei; (ii) signature blocks on Realtime's PTAB filings in the related '477/'046 IPRs; and (iii) petitioner certificates of service in the sibling IPRs identifying RAK as Realtime's counsel. The July 12, 2019 updated POA date lines up with a change in Realtime's PTAB representation (away from the Noroozi PC lead designation), but I could not read the document to confirm the exact roster in 01227.
• No sealed filings or non‑appearances at issue. All of the above counsel appeared on the public record; the confidentiality in this family of cases attaches to the Hulu/Amazon settlement agreements (joint motion to terminate, Oct. 3, 2018), not to counsel identities.
• Docket discrepancy already flagged in the earlier section bears on counsel continuity. Docket Alarm records IPR2018‑01227 as terminating Jan. 14, 2020 on a Final Written