Innovative Display Technologies LLC v. American Honda Motor Co., Inc.

I'll research this case across multiple sources to build an accurate overview.

Let me dig into the docket, the Acacia/IDT corporate structure, and the IPR history for the '956 patent.

Now let me verify the docket details, the number of patents asserted against Honda, and the venue picture.

Case Overview — Innovative Display Technologies LLC v. American Honda Motor Co., Inc., No. 2:14-cv-00222 (E.D. Tex.)

The parties. Plaintiff Innovative Display Technologies LLC ("IDT") is a Texas limited liability company with its principal place of business at 2400 Dallas Parkway, Suite 200, Plano, Texas — i.e., a patent-holding and licensing entity, not an operating company. Its patents came from Jeffery R. Parker's Ohio-based lighting business, Solid State Opto Limited (BVI), and were assigned to IDT; the Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies IDT as an "acquired patents" asserter, and the district court itself described Acacia Research Group LLC ("ARG") as "IDT's parent company," with roughly a dozen Plano employees doing "business development, engineering, licensing, [and] management" work (IDT v. BMW of North America, No. 2:14-cv-00106, Dkt. 35 (E.D. Tex. 2015)). That places IDT squarely in the Acacia Research licensing model: a purpose-built subsidiary holding a consolidated patent portfolio and asserting it against large numbers of end-product sellers. The Honda defendants — American Honda Motor Co., Inc.; Honda of America Mfg., Inc.; Honda Manufacturing of Alabama, LLC; and Honda Manufacturing of Indiana, LLC — are the U.S. sales and manufacturing arms of the Honda Motor group; the named entities are conventional operating companies, not suppliers of the accused components. (Honda's tier-one display suppliers were not named as defendants here, a structural feature that mattered later.)

The accused technology. IDT did not accuse an automotive lighting product in the conventional sense. The complaint targeted Honda vehicles "including but not limited to various model years of Honda's Civic Si model" fitted with factory displays, "including but not limited to the 39541-TS8-A61 navigation/entertainment display" — i.e., an interior infotainment/display module, not an exterior lamp. That is a notable mismatch with the face of the asserted patent, and it is the kind of gap that invites non-infringement and invalidity pressure.

The patents. The case is indexed to U.S. Patent No. 6,886,956, "Light Emitting Panel Assemblies for Use in Automotive Applications and the Like," issued May 3, 2005 to Jeffery R. Parker, Mark D. Miller and Thomas A. Hough. In one line: an edge-lit light guide in which LEDs are optically coupled into a light input/transition area of a light-transmitting panel that includes light-extracting deformities or refractive surfaces to redirect and distribute the emitted light. The '956 is a continuation of U.S. Patent No. 6,508,563 (earliest priority January 16, 1996), and IDT itself characterized the two "Auto Pat

I'll research this case across multiple sources.

Good initial data. Let me dig into the specifics of the pleadings, the stay, and the parallel IPRs.

Now let me pin down the district court docket — pleadings, stay motion, and dismissal — plus the lead-case structure.

I'll research the docket and related sources for plaintiff's counsel in this case.

Let me pull the actual complaint and docket materials for this specific case.

Let me look for the actual docket sheet and complaint signature block.

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff Innovative Display Technologies LLC

Verification caveat up front: I was able to retrieve the complaint text, the consolidated claim-construction record, and IDT's PTAB filings naming its counsel, but I could not pull the 2:14-cv-222 docket sheet itself (PACER/RECAP access not available in this session). The names below are drawn from documents that name IDT's counsel in this litigation family; the role labels (lead vs. of counsel) and the completeness of the list are therefore inferred rather than confirmed entry-by-entry from Docket Nos. 1–n in 2:14-cv-222. Any attorney not listed here should be treated as "not verified," not as "did not appear."

Case posture relevant to who signed up

• Filed March 13, 2014, Marshall Division, assigned to Judge Rodney Gilstrap (suffix -JRG); complaint asserted the '956 patent and related Display/Auto Patents against American Honda Motor Co., Honda of America Mfg., Honda Mfg. of Alabama, and Honda Mfg. of Indiana. See complaint reproduced as Ex. 1003 in IPR2015-00489.
• The case was consolidated into the lead case No. 2:14-cv-201-JRG (IDT v. Hyundai Motor Co., et al.); the Honda entities appear as defendants in Judge Gilstrap's May 4, 2015 claim construction opinion, 2:14-cv-201-JRG, Dkt. 244, which also ordered mediation. The case is now closed.

Plaintiff's counsel

Local counsel

I could not verify a Tyler/Marshall local-counsel firm for 2:14-cv-222 from the sources available. E.D. Tex. local counsel in the IDT campaign typically appeared for the limited purpose of admission and discovery coordination, but I decline to name a firm without a docket citation. (Note: Charles Ainsworth of Parker, Bunt & Ainsworth, Tyler, is a frequent E.D. Tex. local counsel for NPE plaintiffs, but I found no source tying him to IDT or to this case — do not attribute him here.)

In-house counsel

None identified. IDT is an NPE/patent-holding LLC (principal place of business at 2400 Dallas Parkway, Suite 200, Plano, TX 75093, per ¶ 1 of the complaint); no in-house counsel appearance was found in the public record.

What I'd want to confirm against the docket

1. Docket No. 1 signature block (would confirm who actually signed the complaint and at which address).
2. Any "Notice of Appearance" / pro hac vice motions in 2:14-cv-222 before consolidation (would capture associates, e.g., other Bragalone Conroy attorneys such as Justin T. DeRose or Patrick J. Leahy, whose participation in this case I could not verify and therefore have not listed).
3. The consolidation order transferring 2:14-cv-222 into 2:14-cv-201-JRG, and any withdrawal/re-substitution of counsel near case closure.

Sources consulted: Original complaint in IDT v. American Honda, No. 2:14-cv-222 (E.D. Tex.), reproduced as Ex. 1003, IPR2015-00489; IDT's § 42.8 mandatory notices, IPR2015-00895, Paper 5 (Apr. 9, 2015) and IPR2015-00489; IDT's Patent Owner exhibit list, IPR2015-00574 (May 6, 2015); IDT v. Hyundai Motor Co., No. 2:14-cv-201-JRG, Dkt. 244 (E.D. Tex. May 4, 2015) (claim construction; consolidating Honda, BMW, VW, Toyota, Nissan, Kia, Mercedes, Subaru, Sprint and other automotive defendants); Stanford NPE Litigation Database entries for the '956 and '177 patents.

I'll research the docket and counsel appearances for this case across multiple sources.

Let me pull the actual docket sheet and look for Honda's appearances.

The consolidated docket names some attorneys, but I need to confirm which firm represented Honda specifically. Let me check CourtListener/RECAP and the joint claim construction papers.

Counsel of Record for Defendants — Verification Status

Bottom line up front: My searches were cut short before I could pull the actual docket sheet (PACER/CourtListener) or a signature block from a Honda filing. What follows distinguishes what is documented from what remains unverified. I am not going to attribute a firm to a named attorney without a source that actually says so.

What is documented

The identification problem I ran into

The consolidated lead docket (2:14-cv-00201) carried Hyundai, Nissan, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Honda together, plus third-party supplier defendants (e.g., Stanley Electric, Koito), and UniCourt's summary shows 68+ attorneys of record. That docket page lists attorney names without reliably mapping each to a party. Specifically:

• Patino / Weber / Pisano are listed under "Defendant Attorneys," which on a consolidated docket most plausibly maps to the lead-case defendants rather than to Honda, though I could not confirm.
• Biddinger / Smith are listed under "Consolidated Defendant and Counter Defendant Attorneys" — the category Honda would fall into as a member-case defendant — but "counter-defendant" is ambiguous here because several OEMs filed third-party complaints against suppliers.

I therefore cannot responsibly state that any of these five attorneys is Honda's counsel of record, or name their firms. I have not verified firm affiliations for any of them, and I will not guess (e.g., I will not assert a Foley & Lardner, Locke Lord, or similar affiliation without a source).

What is not in dispute

• Honda did not file its own IPRs against the '956/'563 patents. The 2015 petition wave came from Koito/Stanley (IPR2015-00575), Volkswagen (IPR2015-00798), Toyota (IPR2015-00829, -00896), BMW (IPR2015-00934), Mercedes-Benz (IPR2015-00994) and Ford (IPR2015-01540), with Mayer Brown LLP (Robert G. Pluta, Amanda K. Streff, Jamie B. Beaber, Baldine B. Paul, Anita Y. Lam) as petitioner's counsel in at least the '177/'194 petitions. So there is no Honda PTAB counsel to report — Honda's posture appears to have been to ride the supplier/industry IPRs rather than file its own.
• No sealed-appearance issue: Honda plainly appeared and litigated (counterclaims were dismissed on the merits-with-prejudice basis), so this is not a case where counsel never appeared. The gap is my sourcing, not the record.
• For completeness on the other side: IDT's district-court team in the consolidated litigation signature blocks included Amir H. Alavi (Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing P.C., Houston) and Jeffrey Ray Bragalone (Bragalone Conroy, Dallas); AZA (George W. Webb III, Alavi, Brian Simmons) handled IDT's PTAB patent-owner papers.

How to close this out (specific, in order of efficiency)

1. PACER, No. 2:14-cv-00222, Dkt. 1 attachments and the first Honda filing — Honda's answer/affirmative defenses/counterclaims in the member case will carry the full signature block with firm and office, and is the single most probative document.
2. No. 2:14-cv-00201, Dkt. 216 (Joint Claim Construction and Prehearing Statement) and Dkt. 244 (Claim Construction Order, May 4, 2015) — the joint statement lists every defendant's counsel with firm; the order's caption block and the appearance list will isolate Honda.
3. No. 2:14-cv-00201, the July 22, 2015 joint motion to dismiss — joint motions are signed by each defendant group's counsel, so Honda's signatory is identified by name and firm.
4. Expect a local-counsel pairing: E.D. Tex. practice (and Judge Gilstrap's requirements) makes it near-certain Honda had both lead patent counsel, likely out-of-state, and a Marshall/Tyler local counsel. Treat that as an expectation to verify, not a finding.

Flag on the case metadata: the docket confirms the case is closed, but note the file was not resolved on the merits of the '956 patent — it was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice July 22, 2015 as part of the coordinated automotive settlement, after the May 4, 2015 Hyundai claim construction order construed the '956/"Auto Patents" terms. Any later summary describing this as an adjudicated win or loss on the '956 would be wrong.