Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc. et al.

I'll research this case across multiple sources.

Let me verify additional details on the parties, counsel, PTAB proceedings, and the Federal Circuit appeals.

Case Overview — Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-04160-NKL (W.D. Mo.)

The parties. Plaintiff Intellectual Ventures II LLC is one of the licensing affiliates of Intellectual Ventures (founded 2000 and managed by Intellectual Ventures Management, LLC), the best-known "non-practicing entity" in the patent system. IV's complaint itself describes a dual business — internal invention and patent filing plus large-scale acquisition and licensing from individual inventors and institutions — and states that by mid-2013 IV had acquired more than 70,000 IP assets and earned over $3 billion in licensing revenue (Compl., Doc. 1 ¶¶ 9–12, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/[4515310](/patent/4515310)/1/intellectual-ventures-ii-llc-v-commerce-bancshares-inc/). But IV II does not make or sell products or services covered by the asserted patents, and courts in the related campaign squarely labeled it "a non-practicing entity that acquires and licenses patents"; the W.D. Mo. § 285 order credited the fact that IV was suing to "monetize" its portfolio and that IV, IV II and affiliates had filed more than 80 patent suits since 2009 (Doc. 102 at 6–7, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mowd.[109989](/patent/109989)/gov.uscourts.mowd.109989.102.0.pdf). Defendants Commerce Bancshares, Inc. and Commerce Bank are a Kansas City–headquartered regional bank holding company and its state-chartered trust-company bank subsidiary — operating, real-economy financial institutions that do not manufacture the accused technology. IV's theory was thus classic NPE-driven, end-user/indirect-infringement pleading: Commerce allegedly infringed by using commercially standard IT security products and by inducing its customers to use them (e.g., Doc. 1 Counts I–V).

The accused technology and the patents. IV accused Commerce's ordinary online-banking and IT security stack rather than any bespoke product: compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) for encrypting data in transit, unspecified "Security Practices," Netscreen network security/intrusion detection systems and PCI-DSS § 11.4 firewall/IDS deployments, the ROAMPay Mobile Payment product, and use of the IBM System z10 Business Class Server (Doc. 1; Doc. 102 at 2–3). The five asserted patents were: U.S. 5,745,574 — "Security Infrastructure for Electronic Transactions" (issued Apr. 28, 1998), certificate/PKI-based security for electronic transactions (accused via PCI-DSS encryption and, in contentions, RSA SecurID products); U.S. 6,826,694 — "High Resolution Access Control" (issued Nov. 30, 2004), access control implemented through electronic packet filtering; U.S. 6,715,084 — "Firewall System and Method Via Feedback From Broad-Scope Monitoring For Intrusion Detection" (issued Mar. 30, 2004), a firewall coupled to centralized/distributed intrusion monitoring; U.S. 6,314,409 — "System For Controlling Access And Distribution Of Digital Property" (issued Nov. 6, 2001), enforcement of access rights over protected digital content; and U.S. 7,634,666 — "Crypto-Engine For Cryptographic Processing Of Data" (issued Dec. 15, 2009), a hardware cryptographic engine (accused only through the z10 "crypto card," a claim IV abandoned). The case was filed June 20, 2013 in the W.D. Mo. Central Division (Jefferson City) before Judge Nanette K. Laughrey, one day after IV sent Commerce an infringement demand letter; Commerce moved to stay on Apr. 25, 2014 (Doc. 63), and on June 4, 2014 Judge Laughrey granted the stay and dismissed without prejudice, subject to reopening within 45 days after completion of the IPR process (Doc. 82; 2014 WL 2511308; https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4515310/82/intellectual-ventures-ii-llc-v-commerce-bancshares-inc/). Venue matters here in three respects: it is the defendant's home state rather than a plaintiff-friendly patent docket; the Central Division/Boone County (Columbia) hook in the complaint (Doc. 1, venue ¶) put the case before a judge who was receptive to a PTO-first approach; and the stay was part of a coordinated, multi-district effort to push the same five patents into the PTAB rather than litigate them in parallel.

Why it matters. This case is a leading specimen of IV's 2013 "banks" campaign — roughly a dozen-plus suits against banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, BBVA Compass, Fifth Third, PNC, SunTrust, Huntington, U.S. Bancorp and First National Bank of Omaha — and of the IPR linkage that ultimately gutted it. IPR petitions were filed both by the defendants themselves and by non-party IBM, including IPR2014-00682 (IBM; the '084 patent, obvious over Porras in view of Cheswick), IPR2014-00801 (Commerce/the Banks; '084 anticipation by Aucsmith, with claim 33 not anticipated), and Compass Bank's IPR2014-00724/-00786 plus CBM2014-00157 (per Doc. 102 at 4 n.1 and Jones Day's case summary, https://www.jonesday.com/en/practices/experience/2017/03/compass-bank-prevails-in-ipr-proceedings-challenging-intellectual-ventures-patents). Every asserted claim of the '574, '694, '084 and '409 patents was held unpatentable or invalid (via IPR and via the S.D.N.Y. § 101 decision in Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. JP Morgan Chase & Co., No. 13-cv-03777 (AKH), 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56092 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 28, 2015)); the Federal Circuit affirmed as to the '694 and '084 patents in Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Compass Bank, 671 F. App'x 788 (Fed. Cir. 2016), and in the consolidated appeal captioned Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc., 682 F. App'x 891 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 27, 2017) (Nos. 2016-1519/-1520/-1528; Dyk, Plager, Reyna, JJ.) — a claim-construction-driven affirmance that defense counsel Kutak Rock publicly framed as a blow to NPE business models and a lasting win for the financial-services industry (https://www.kutakrock.com/newspublications/news/2017/08/appeals-court-affirmation-of-firewall-patents-inva). The docket resolves the "unconfirmed disposition" noted in the case summary: the case was reopened May 11, 2017, final judgment entered for Commerce on May 31, 2017 (Docs. 83–85), Commerce's Fed. R. Civ. P. 54/§ 285 motion followed (Doc. 86), and on Sept. 29, 2017 Judge Laughrey denied attorney fees but awarded $1,804.49 in costs, holding that invalidation of the patents did not by itself make the case exceptional under Octane Fitness and that IV's § 101 positions were reasonable given the unsettled law (Doc. 102; clerk's judgment Doc. 103, Oct. 2, 2017). Two additional reasons the case is cited: the June 4, 2014 stay order is frequently cited for the practice of non-petitioner defendants voluntarily accepting § 315(e) estoppel as a condition of the stay (see Canvs Corp. v. United States, 118 Fed. Cl. 587 (2014)), and the district court's § 285 order is a notable post-Octane data point that mass NPE filing and complete invalidation, without more, do not support fee-shifting. Sourcing caveats: docket entries and the two opinions above are well documented (CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, Casetext, RPX Insight at https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/mowdce-109989-intellectual-ventures-ii-v-commerce-bancshares); counsel attributions are only partially verified — Senniger Powers LLP (Marc W. Vander Tuig; Kyle Gottuso appearing) and Kutak Rock LLP (Jason S. Jackson, lead appellate counsel for the Banks) are supported, while commerce-side appearances by Jones Day attorneys and IV's appellate counsel (Brenton R. Babcock, Edward M. Cannon) are drawn from Federal Circuit docket filings and should be confirmed before formal citation; specific PTAB petition numbers for the '574 and '666 patents were not independently confirmed in the sources retrieved.

I'll research this case across PACER-adjacent sources, PTAB records, and legal news. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig into the docket entries for pleadings, the PTAB proceedings, and the Federal Circuit appeals.

Key Legal Developments & Outcome — Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-04160-NKL (W.D. Mo.)

The following chronology builds on the existing summary (complaint 2013-06-20; stay/dismissal 2014-06-04) and adds the docket-level detail, the post-stay reopening, and the parallel PTAB/Federal Circuit track.

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1. Filing & Initial Pleadings

2013-06-19 — IV II sent Commerce a pre-suit infringement letter; the next day it filed suit. Commerce's later fee briefing emphasized that IV "had not previously contacted Commerce to discuss the purported infringement," an issue the court ultimately weighed in the § 285 analysis (2017-09-29 Order, Doc. 102).

2013-06-20 — Complaint filed (Doc. 1, by Norman Eli Siegel for IV II). Five counts, one per patent, with these specific theories:

• '574 (Security Infrastructure For Electronic Transactions) — infringement via Commerce's PCI Data Security Standard compliance for encrypting data during communication sessions.
• '694 (High Resolution Access Control) and '084 (Firewall System And Method Via Feedback…) — via Commerce's "Security Practices"; Count III specifically pled induced and contributory infringement of claim 26 of the '084 patent through commercebank.com.
• '409 (System For Controlling Access And Distribution of Digital Property) — via ROAMPay Mobile Payment / PCI-DSS technology (claim 38).
• '666 (Crypto-Engine For Cryptographic Processing Of Data) — via use of the IBM System z10 Business Class Server (claim 4).

2013-06-23 — Commerce served; 2013-06-28 — defense counsel (Senniger Powers, St. Louis) appeared. Commerce ordered third-party patent file histories on 2013-07-24 to prepare its answer (answer due 2013-08-30) — a timing point later litigated in the bill-of-costs dispute.

2013-08-30 (Doc. 18) — Commerce's Answer, Affirmative Defenses, and Counterclaims. Defenses included: failure to state a claim; non-infringement (literal and DOE); invalidity under §§ 101, 102, 103, and/or 112; prosecution-history estoppel; § 286/§ 287 damages limitations; § 288 costs bar; laches/estoppel/waiver/acquiescence/unclean hands; patent exhaustion/implied license. Commerce's prayer sought dismissal, a declaration that the case is exceptional, and fees and costs. Commerce pleaded counterclaims (the excerpt available cuts off at the counterclaim heading; the counterclaims sought declaratory relief of non-infringement/invalidity as is standard in this campaign — I could not retrieve the full counterclaim text, so treat the specific DJ counts as unconfirmed).
Sources: Answer excerpt (Justia/archive.org PDF, Doc. 18).

Notably absent: No motion to dismiss and no motion to transfer appear on this docket. The court itself later observed that Commerce "fail[ed] to move to dismiss on the ground that the allegations were not adequately particular" — a fact used against Commerce on the fee motion. So the § 285 motion was, in substance, Commerce's first merits-attack vehicle after the stay.

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2. Scheduling & Case Management

• 2013-09-30 — Scheduling Order entered (discovery cutoff 2014-12-19; trial 2015-05-11).
• 2013-10-30 (Doc. 44) — Amended Scheduling Order.
• 2014-01-07 (Doc. 53) — Order granting Commerce's unopposed motion to extend patent-specific disclosure deadlines: invalidity contentions due 2014-01-24; proposed claim terms exchanged 2014-02-07; meet-and-confer to narrow terms 2014-02-14.

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3. Discovery Milestones with Strategic Significance

• 2013-09-04 — Commerce advised IV II it does not use the crypto card of the IBM System z10 — the sole accused component for the '666 patent.
• November 2013 — court-supervised mediation efforts (no settlement).
• 2013-11-22 — Commerce's counsel supplied declarations substantiating non-use of the zSeries crypto card.
• 2013-11-25 — IV II served infringement contentions (reportedly 400+ pages) that dropped the '666 patent entirely.
• 2014-05-12 — after negotiations, the parties executed a covenant not to sue and filed a stipulation of dismissal of all '666 claims.
• Fact discovery never closed (would have been 2014-12-19); no depositions had been taken as of the stay motion. The absence of substantive discovery became a contested point: Commerce told the court the case "remains in its infancy," then was held to that representation when attacking IV II's contentions.

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4. Claim Construction (Never Reached)

• 2014-03-28 — Joint Prehearing Statement and Claim Construction Chart (agreed and disputed constructions).
• 2014-04-23 — Revised Joint Prehearing Statement and Claim Construction Chart.
• 2014-04-28 — Opening claim construction briefs.
• 2014-05-19 — Responsive claim construction briefs.
• 2014-06-12 — Markman hearing scheduled — never held. The stay (below) issued eight days before it.

Result: no Markman ruling ever issued in this case. Claim construction was instead effectively decided by the PTAB under the broadest-reasonable-construction standard and reviewed by the Federal Circuit — see § 7.

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5. Pre-Trial Motions of Substance — the Stay

2014-04-25 (Doc. 63) — Commerce moved to stay pending IPR, filed within days of IBM's final IPR petition and before IV II's opening claim construction brief.

2014-06-04 (Doc. 82) — Judge Nanette K. Laughrey granted the stay and ordered the case dismissed without prejudice, subject to reopening within 45 days after (a) denial of all pending IPR petitions, or (b) if any were instituted, issuance of a § 318 final written decision in each IPR (or final decision on appeal), whichever was later. Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc., No. 2:13-CV-04160-NKL, 2014 WL 2511308 (W.D. Mo. Jun. 4, 2014).

Key holdings:

• Applied the three-factor test (stage of case; issue simplification; undue prejudice/tactical disadvantage); all three favored a stay, and the court invoked the W.D. Mo. "liberal policy in favor of granting stays."
• Rejected IV II's argument that IPR could not fully resolve the case — the inquiry is whether IPR could "make this litigation simpler and more efficient," not whether it eliminates every issue.
• Crucially, because Commerce filed its own IPR petitions (IPR2014-00801) and agreed to be bound by the estoppel effects of IBM's petitions "as if [defendants] were the 'petitioner' under § 315(e)," the court found § 315(e) estoppel would apply to all grounds raised or reasonably could have been raised. This is a frequently cited stay/estoppel concession.
• No undue prejudice: parties were not direct competitors; delay alone insufficient.

Same day (Doc. 81) — Commerce noticed the parallel stay order in Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. BBVA Compass Bancshares, Inc., reflecting the coordinated multi-district banking campaign (Huntington, First National Bank of Omaha, SunTrust, U.S. Bancorp, etc., all stayed in 2014).

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6. Parallel PTAB Proceedings

The IPR petitions were filed 2014-04-07 to 2014-05-22 by IBM (as a non-party) and by Commerce Bancshares + Compass Bank + First National Bank of Omaha jointly, covering all asserted claims of the four remaining patents, plus a CBM on the fifth:

Sources: Jones Day case summary (identifying IPR Nos. 2014-00724, -00786, -00801); Patexia IPR2014-00801 summary; Nat'l Law Review institution-decision write-up.

Notable institution-decision holding in IPR2014-00801: the Board rejected IV II's RPI challenge that BBVA and IBM should have been named real parties-in-interest, finding no showing that either exercised or could have exercised control over the petition.

Outcome across the family: per the district court's later findings, "every asserted claim of the patents that were at issue has been found unpatentable or invalid under 35 U.S.C. §§ 101, 102, and/or 103," citing Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. JP Morgan Chase & Co., No. 13-cv-03777 (AKH), 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56092 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 28, 2015) (the § 101 invalidation, in the parallel SDNY banking case), plus IPR2014-00786, IPR2014-00682, IPR2014-00801, and CBM2014-00157.

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7. Federal Circuit Appeals

• IV II appealed the PTAB's '694 and '084 unpatentability findings; it declined to appeal the adverse '574 decision (a fact the district court credited as evidence of good faith).
• 2016 — Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Compass Bank, No. 16-1416, 671 F. App'x 788 (Fed. Cir. 2016) — affirmed (the '694-related appeal).
• 2017 — Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc., No. 2016-1519, 682 F. App'x 891 (Fed. Cir. 2017) — affirmed the Board's cancellation of claims 26, 28, 30–33 of the '084 patent. The opinion (authored per the PTAB records by the Bisk panel) rejected IV II's sole claim-construction argument that "analyzing data" requires direct examination of raw data; the court held the broadest reasonable construction permits analysis of "information about the data." Because IBM's IPR2014-00682 disposed of all claims at issue in both proceedings, the court found the banks' cross-appeal in IPR2014-00801 (no anticipation of claim 33) moot.
  Sources: CourtListener opinion, 4378493.

(The 671 F. App'x 788 citation appears in the district court's fee order; I could not independently pull the full text of that opinion within this session — treat the exact panel/date as from the citing order.)

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8. Reopening, Judgment, and the § 285 Motion

• 2017-05-11 (Doc. 83) — Case reopened.
• 2017-05-31 (Docs. 84, 85) — Commerce moved to reopen and enter final judgment; the court entered final judgment in favor of Commerce on each remaining claim, and the Clerk entered judgment.
• 2017-06-14 (Docs. 86–89) — Commerce moved for attorney fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285 and filed a bill of costs (with sealed support and a motion for leave to file).
• 2017-07-19 (Docs. 97–99) — IV II's objections to the bill of costs and (partly sealed) opposition to fees; 2017-08-02 (Docs. 100–101) — Commerce's replies.
• 2017-09-29 (Doc. 102) — Order (Judge Laughrey): attorney fees DENIED; Commerce awarded costs of $1,804.49 ($325 less than requested). Reported as Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-04160-NKL (W.D. Mo. Sept. 29, 2017).

Fee-analysis highlights (important because this is the case's only substantive merits-side opinion after the stay):

• Applied Octane Fitness and Checkpoint Systems — no fee award as a "penalty for failure to win."

• No improper purpose: IV II's monetization/litigation volume (80+ suits since 2009) and aggressive strategy alone do not make a case exceptional; no evidence of settlement-extraction harassment.

• Inadequate pre-suit investigation — the only factor favoring Commerce: IV II never contacted Commerce pre-suit to confirm use of accused products, and the declaration/affidavits were silent on pre-suit efforts. But failure of pre-suit investigation alone has never supported a fee award under § 285.

• Infringement contentions were sufficiently particular given IV II's limited visibility into non-public banking systems and Commerce's own representation that the case was "in its infancy."

• Invalidity alone ≠ exceptional: presumed validity at filing; the § 101 landscape was "in flux" pre/post-Alice; the '574 (Kapidzic paper) position was not objectively baseless; the alleged inconsistent claim-construction positions (court references a typo "’087 Patent") did not render the case exceptional.

• Costs: the $325 in assignment-record costs were struck (Commerce answered without a standing defense, so ownership discovery wasn't necessary); the file-history costs were allowed in full despite IV II's objection, because Commerce reasonably used an expedited third-party vendor in the short window before its 2013-08-30 answer deadline.

• 2017-10-02 (Doc. 103) — Clerk's Judgment on costs. 2017-10-05 (Doc. 104) — attorney withdrawal. Latest docket entry: 2017-10-16.

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9. Final Disposition / Present Posture

• The litigation itself never reached claim construction, summary judgment, or trial. It was stayed 2014-06-04 and dismissed without prejudice; the entire merits case was effectively resolved in the PTAB, with the Federal Circuit affirming in 2016–2017.
• The case was reopened and closed by final judgment in favor of Commerce Bancshares/Commerce Bank on 2017-05-31, followed by the 2017-09-29 fee/cost order.
• No appeal of the district court judgment appears on the record I could access; the only appellate activity was IV II's appeals of the PTAB decisions.
• This case is now a cited authority on stay practice and on the estoppel concession by non-petitioner defendants (cited in Canvs Corp. v. United States, 118 Fed. Cl. 587 (2014), among others).

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10. Gaps and Caveats

• Counterclaim specifics (Doc. 18): the full text (DJ counts, any inequitable conduct or antitrust counts) was not retrieved; I have only the affirmative defenses and prayer.
• Exact IPR-to-patent mapping for IPR2014-00724 vs. -00786 ('574 vs. '694) is inferred from the Jones Day summary and appeal citations, not confirmed from PTAB records directly.
• No docket entries between the 2014-06-04 dismissal (Doc. 82) and the 2017-05-11 reopening (Doc. 83) appear in the RECAP/CourtListener listing — the case sat dormant for roughly three years, consistent with the stay formula.
• The '409 patent's invalidation appears tied to CBM2014-00157 and/or the SDNY § 101 ruling; which vehicle definitively cancelled the asserted '409 claims is not fully confirmed.
• I did not find any motion to dismiss, motion to transfer, summary judgment motion, or mediation/settlement agreement on this docket — the case's substantive life was the stay fight and the post-judgment fee fight.

Bottom line: The case was a bellwether in IV II's 2013 bank campaign that was derailed by IPRs before any Markman ruling or trial; Commerce obtained a complete defense win by virtue of the PTAB cancellations (affirmed by the Federal Circuit), a final judgment in its favor (2017-05-31), a cost award of $1,804.49, but no attorney fees under § 285 (2017-09-29).

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

I have strong primary-source data from the 2017 attorney-fees opinion, which lists plaintiff's counsel of record. Let me verify firm locations, roles, and docket appearance entries.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Intellectual Ventures II LLC

Bottom line: IV II was represented by a three-firm team — a Silicon Valley patent boutique (Feinberg Day) as primary patent trial counsel, a San Francisco plaintiffs' firm (Lieff Cabraser) as co-counsel, and a Kansas City firm (Stueve Siegel Hanson) as local counsel. All out-of-state counsel appeared pro hac vice. The most authoritative single list is the court's own attorney roster in the September 29, 2017 § 285 order (Doc. 102), which recites every appearance for the plaintiff. No in-house IV counsel appears on the docket.

⚠️ Sourcing note: I could not pull the PACER docket sheet directly. The roster below is reconstructed from (a) the W.D. Mo. § 285 order of 9/29/2017 (Doc. 102), which lists all counsel appearing for IV II; (b) the CourtListener docket for 2:13-cv-04160; and (c) the complaint (Doc. 1) and pro hac vice orders on that docket. The docket does not formally label anyone "lead counsel" for plaintiff, so the role characterizations below are my inference from who signed which filings.

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1. Feinberg Day Alberti & Thompson LLP — Menlo Park, CA (primary patent trial counsel, all pro hac vice)

Firm address: 1600 El Camino Real, Suite 280, Menlo Park, CA 94025. The firm has since renamed twice (Feinberg Day Alberti Lim & Belloli LLP → Feinberg Day Kramer Alberti Lim Tonkovich & Belloli LLP); in 2013 it was Feinberg Day Alberti & Thompson LLP.

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2. Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP — San Francisco, CA (co-counsel, all pro hac vice)

San Francisco-based plaintiffs'/class-action firm that served as IV's co-counsel in the 2013–14 bank campaign; the same attorneys appeared for IV in IV v. Capital One (D. Md.).

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3. Stueve Siegel Hanson LLP — Kansas City, MO (local counsel)

Firm address: 460 Nichols Road, Suite 200, Kansas City, MO 64112.

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4. Appellate / PTAB counsel (parallel proceedings — not the district court appearance)

For the Federal Circuit appeals from the IPRs (Nos. 2016-1519, -1520, -1528; 682 F. App'x 891 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 27, 2017)), IV II was represented by Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox, PLLC, Washington, D.C.:

• Byron Leroy Pickard — argued for appellant IV II (Fed. Cir. 2017).
• Lori A. Gordon — co-counsel.

These attorneys appear in the PTAB/Federal Circuit caption, not as counsel of record in the W.D. Mo. district case.

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Caveats and docket-accuracy notes

• No "lead counsel" designation exists on the face of the docket for plaintiff; the lead/co-counsel/local-counsel division above is analytical. If a formal designation matters, the docket sheet itself (Dkt. 2:13-cv-04160-NKL) should be checked against PACER, since a few attorney entries are only reflected in the 2017 order's roster rather than in individual appearance entries.
• Nothing appears to be sealed as to counsel; appearances were made in open docket entries (complaint Doc. 1; pro hac vice orders including the Gardner order).
• Case-status correction for the existing summary: the metadata says "stayed pending IPR; final disposition unconfirmed." The public record actually shows: stay and dismissal without prejudice on June 4, 2014; case reopened May–June 2017 and final judgment entered for Commerce; § 285 fee motion denied but $1,804.49 in costs taxed (Doc. 102, Sept. 29, 2017); docket closed 10/02/2017 (RPX Insight lists the latest docket entry as 10/16/2017). All asserted claims of the '574, '694, '084, and '409 patents were held unpatentable/invalid, and the '666 patent claims were dismissed by stipulation with a covenant not to sue.

I'll research defense counsel for Commerce Bancshares/Commerce Bank across docket sources, firm websites, and court opinions.

Strong PTAB/appellate data. Now let me pin down the district court appearances and the full defense roster.

Let me pull the CourtListener docket page and the fee-order PDF for the defense attorney roster.

Counsel of Record for Defendants — Commerce Bancshares, Inc. & Commerce Bank

Bottom line: The defense was handled by a two-track team. In the district court (W.D. Mo.), the counsel of record was the St. Louis IP boutique Senniger Powers LLP — principally Marc W. Vander Tuig (who signed nearly every defense filing) with Robert M. Evans, Jr. and Kyle Gottuso, plus three out-of-state attorneys admitted pro hac vice (Meredith L. Ainbinder, Joel R. Leeman, Sharona H. Sternberg). In the parallel PTAB proceedings and the Federal Circuit appeals, the lead firm was Kutak Rock LLP (Omaha) — Jason S. Jackson as lead counsel for the Banks, with Sean P. Connolly — joined by Jones Day (Hilda C. Galvan, Dallas; Geoffrey K. Gavin, Atlanta) and, on the Commerce side, Senniger Powers again. This confirms and expands the partial attribution flagged in the earlier sections.

⚠️ Sourcing note: I could not open the PACER docket sheet directly. The roster below is reconstructed from (a) the CourtListener docket feed and entry list for No. 2:13-cv-04160, (b) PTAB petition/notice filings and oral-hearing transcripts (IPR2014-00719/-00786/-00801), and (c) the Federal Circuit opinions in Nos. 2016-1416 and 2016-1519/-1520/-1528. Individual appearance-entry numbers are noted where the feed text preserved them.

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1. District Court — Senniger Powers LLP, St. Louis, MO (counsel of record)

Firm address: 100 North Broadway, 17th Floor, St. Louis, MO 63102 (also listed in PTAB filings as the service address for Commerce's counsel). Senniger is a St. Louis–based IP boutique that has served as Commerce Bancshares' patent litigation counsel.

No formal "lead counsel" designation for defendants is exposed in the docket text I could retrieve; the lead/other division above is inferred from who signed the contested filings.

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2. Out-of-state defense counsel admitted pro hac vice (W.D. Mo.)

Docket orders in late 2013/early 2014 admitted three out-of-state attorneys for the defendants:

The fact that these three required pro hac vice admission (while Senniger is Missouri-based) indicates they were Commerce's out-of-state litigation team, but I was unable to verify their firm affiliations within this session. Do not cite their firms without checking PACER.

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3. PTAB & Federal Circuit — Kutak Rock LLP and Jones Day (with Senniger Powers)

Commerce was one of three co-petitioners (with Compass Bank and First National Bank of Omaha — "the Banks") in the IPRs that ended this litigation. That joint defense effort had its own counsel structure:

How the two tracks connect: Senniger (district-court counsel) and Kutak Rock/Jones Day (PTAB-appellate counsel) overlapped — Vander Tuig appeared on the IPR papers as back-up counsel and on the Federal Circuit briefs for Commerce, and Gottuso argued at the PTAB hearing. The Federal Circuit's Dec. 9, 2016 opinion in No. 2016-1416 (Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Compass Bank) lists "JASON STEWART JACKSON, Kutak Rock LLP, Omaha, NE, argued for appellees. Also represented by HILDA C. GALVAN, Jones Day, Dallas, TX; GEOFFREY K. GAVIN, Atlanta, GA… Appellee Commerce Bancshares, Inc. also represented by MARC WADE VANDER TUIG, Senniger Powers LLP, St. Louis, MO." That is the single most authoritative confirmation of the combined defense roster.

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4. In-house counsel

No in-house Commerce Bancshares/Commerce Bank attorney appears on the docket in the sources I retrieved. (By contrast, IV's PTAB papers list in-house IP personnel — Donald J. Coulman, Tim R. Seeley — on the plaintiff side.) If Commerce had in-house involvement, it is not reflected in any appearance entry I could access.

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5. Corrections / cross-checks against the earlier sections

• The prior summary listed "Senniger Powers LLP (Marc W. Vander Tuig; Kyle Gottuso appearing)" as supported and "Jason S. Jackson, lead appellate counsel for the Banks" as supported. Both are confirmed and now expanded: Vander Tuig was the district-court lead signer (not merely an attorney of record), Robert M. Evans, Jr. was a third Senniger attorney of record, and the PTAB/appellate team also includes Sean P. Connolly (Kutak Rock) and Geoffrey K. Gavin (Jones Day, Atlanta).
• The prior summary listed Hilda C. Galvan (Jones Day, Dallas) under "commerce-side appearances by Jones Day attorneys… should be confirmed." Confirmed as an appellee-side attorney on the Federal Circuit briefs, but note the Jones Day case summary attributes that firm's IPR work to Compass Bank — so her appearance may have been on behalf of the co-petitioner group rather than Commerce specifically.
• No motion to appear pro hac vice for any defense attorney is sealed in the entries I could see; the three defense pro hac vice orders were granted in open text orders (Nov. 25, 2013 and Jan. 24, 2014).

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6. Gaps and caveats

• Firms for Ainbinder, Leeman, and Sternberg are unconfirmed. The docket text confirms they were admitted for the defendants, but I could not verify their firm affiliations from retrieved sources. Treat as open.
• Formal role designations (lead vs. of counsel vs. local) for the district case are my inference from signature blocks and docket text; the W.D. Mo. docket does not label a lead counsel.
• PTAB petitions for some of the five patents list a lead counsel whose service telephone number (650 area code) I could not resolve to a named firm in the retrieved excerpts — I am deliberately not guessing at that attribution.
• The defense counsel who filed the June 2017 fee motion and bill of costs (Docs. 86–89) and the Sept. 29, 2017 order briefing are not individually identified by name in the excerpts I retrieved, but the surrounding docket text shows Vander Tuig's signature practice on defense filings throughout, and Kutak Rock's release describes Jackson as lead counsel for the Banks in the related PTAB/appeal work.