LSI Corporation et al. v. Funai Corporation, Inc. et al.

I'll research this case across the docket, ITC companion proceeding, and patent records.

Case Overview

Parties. This is an operating-company-versus-operating-company fight, not an NPE/PAE assertion. Plaintiffs LSI Corporation (Delaware; HQ Milpitas, California) and its wholly owned subsidiary Agere Systems Inc. (Delaware; Allentown, Pennsylvania) were semiconductor and storage/system-on-chip suppliers; Agere is the former Lucent/AT&T Microelectronics chip business that LSI acquired in 2007, and it is the record owner of the '867 patent (the '087 and '663 patents were assigned to LSI Logic Corporation, the '958 and '867 to Agere Systems). The LSI/Agere side ran a large patent-licensing program alongside its product business, and that program—not a product line—was the engine of this litigation. Defendants are the Funai group: Funai Electric Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan), a Japanese consumer-electronics OEM that builds televisions and disc players for its own brand and under license for Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania, Emerson, Symphonic and Denon; Funai Corporation, Inc. (Rutherford, New Jersey); P&F USA, Inc. (Alpharetta, Georgia), the U.S. sales/marketing arm; and Funai Service Corporation (Groveport, Ohio).

Accused technology. The accused products are Funai's digital televisions, Blu-ray and DVD players/recorders, DTV/DVD and DTV/Blu-ray combination units, multimedia streaming/net-box players, and home-theater systems. LSI grouped them into three buckets in the ITC case: (a) 802.11/Wi-Fi products accused under the '958 and '867 patents (with Wi-Fi chips supplied by Realtek and MediaTek); (b) H.264/AVC products accused under the '663 patent; and (c) "unified memory" products accused under the '087 patent, using MediaTek or Panasonic decoder chips. So the real technology dispute is over commodity Wi-Fi and MPEG/H.264 decoder silicon sitting inside low-margin consumer electronics—which is why the case became a chip-level versus end-product-level licensing fight.

Patents, Court, and Posture

The March 12, 2012 complaint was filed the same day as the companion ITC complaint and, per the ITC record and contemporaneous reporting, asserted the same four patents: U.S. 5,870,087 (MPEG decoder using one unified memory shared by transport logic, system controller and MPEG decoder—LSI Logic); U.S. 6,452,958 (digital modulation using an extended/complementary code set for 802.11 spread spectrum—Agere, declared essential to IEEE 802.11); U.S. 6,707,867 (WLAN receiver/transmitter synchronization: the access point stamps a frame with its timer value, including compensation for medium-access busy delays, and the receiver loads that value to synchronize—essentially

I'll dig into the docket history, the ITC/FC trail, and any PTAB proceedings.

Key facts are emerging. Now let me pin down the C.D. Cal. docket specifics (stay, transfer) and the later N.D. Cal. case.

Now let me find the C.D. Cal. case's ending and any PTAB IPRs on these patents.

Key legal developments & outcome — LSI Corp. v. Funai Corp., No. 2:12-cv-02047 (C.D. Cal.), and the '867 track

Framing note / correction to the prior sections. The earlier "case overview" said the docket "reflects activity through a protective order entered August 20, 2015." That is where the publicly mirrored C.D. Cal. docket ends (Dkt. 61), but it is not the end of the story: the C.D. Cal. action was a shadow of the ITC case, was overtaken by events in 2014–2015 (sett

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

Good leads. Let me dig into the actual docket for this C.D. Cal. case.

Let me pull the actual docket record and confirm the individual attorneys' affiliations.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiffs — LSI Corp. v. Funai Corp., No. 2:12-cv-02047 (C.D. Cal.)

Sourcing caveat up front: PACER itself is paywalled and I could not open the C.D. Cal. docket sheet directly in this session. The names below come from (a) the Justia derivative docket for No. 2:12-cv-02047, which lists four plaintiff-side appearances, and (b) signed filings in the related follow-on action, LSI Corp. v. Funai Elec. Co., No. 3:15-cv-04307-EMC (N.D. Cal.), where the same firm and largely the same team appeared for the same plaintiffs against the same defendants. Where a role or firm detail is inferred rather than directly quoted, I say so.

The team

In-house counsel: No LSI/Avago in-house attorney is identified on the docket material I could access. LSI/Avago legal-department participation is likely but not documented in what I retrieved — I'm not naming anyone.

Important qualifications

1. Single-firm representation. Plaintiffs used one firm throughout — Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, with Denver as the center of gravity and San Francisco supplying the California-barred appearances. There is no separate local-counsel firm visible; Kilpatrick's own San Francisco office filled that function.
2. The four-name Justia listing is a derivative, not PACER. The 2:12-cv-02047 docket extract shows "Represented By: Kenneth S Chang / Kristopher L Reed / Wayne W Call / Christopher D Bright." Justia's party blocks can be truncated or mis-sequenced, so I'd treat the set of names as reliable and the ordering/roles as not.
3. Party-name drift. In C.D. Cal. the plaintiffs were LSI Corporation and Agere Systems Inc. By the 2015 N.D. Cal. refiling the plaintiff group had become LSI Corporation, Agere Systems LLC, and Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (Avago acquired LSI in 2014). If you're chasing the '867 patent specifically, the operative plaintiff entity after mid-2014 is Avago.
4. No sealing issue on appearances. Counsel of record here is public; what was sealed/protective was discovery material (Dkt. 61, protective order, Aug. 20, 2015), not the appearances.

Why the '867 track matters for counsel identification

The '867 patent's life in this campaign effectively ended at the ITC, not in C.D. Cal. The ALJ's July 18, 2013 final initial determination in Inv. No. 337-TA-837 found no violation as to the '867 patent; the Commission then took no position on those findings because the patent expired February 23, 2014, mooting prospective relief (79 Fed. Reg. 13, 2014). The Federal Circuit affirmed on the domestic-industry ground as to the '958 patent and held the Commission did not abuse its discretion in declining to vacate the '867 findings. LSI Corp., Agere Sys. LLC v. USITC, 604 F. App'x 924 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 20, 2015). On the defense side of that ITC track, Funai was represented by Baker & Hostetler (T. Cy Walker, Kevin W. Kirsch) and McDermott Will & Emery (Paul Devinsky) — useful if you're mapping the adversary team, but not plaintiff counsel.

Bottom line: For the C.D. Cal. '867 case, the answer is Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, led by David E. Sipiora, with Kenneth S. Chang and Kristopher L. Reed as the core team and Robert J. Artuz supplying the California-barred appearance. Wayne W. Call and Christopher D. Bright appear on the docket listing but their individual roles and office locations are unconfirmed in the sources I could reach — I'd verify both against the PACER docket sheet (Dkt. 1–20 appearance notices) before relying on them.

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

Let me pull the docket from CourtListener/PACER and check the Justia docket for attorney entries.

Bottom line first

I could not retrieve a docket sheet for C.D. Cal. No. 2:12-cv-02047 that lists attorney appearances (the Justia/CourtListener mirrors for this docket show only the case caption, judges Guilford/Wistrich, and the single Aug. 20, 2015 protective order, Doc. 61). The C.D. Cal. action was a stay-and-follow-on to ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-837, and the Funai side's counsel of record is documented far better in the companion N.D. Cal. action (No. 3:15-cv-04307-EMC) and in the ITC/PTAB filings, where the same Baker & Hostetler team signed for all four Funai entities. Below I give (A) the names I can source to signed filings, and (B) explicit flags on what I could not verify.

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A. Funai defendants' counsel — sourced from signed filings and opinions

The four defendants (Funai Electric Co., Ltd.; Funai Corporation, Inc.; P&F USA, Inc.; Funai Service Corporation) were represented collectively in the LSI/Agere/Avago–Funai litigation family by Baker & Hostetler LLP, with the Cincinnati office acting as lead and California/Washington counsel supporting.

Plaintiffs' side, for contrast (so the names aren't confused): LSI/Agere/Avago were represented by Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP — David E. Sipiora (Denver, lead), Kenneth S. Chang, Kristopher L. Reed, Matthew C. Holohan. These are the names that surface in the docket mirrors and are plaintiffs' counsel, not defendants'.

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B. Explicit caveats / what I could not confirm

1. No verified C.D. Cal. appearance list. PACER for 2:12-cv-02047 was not directly retrievable in this session; Justia's docket page shows only the caption, Judge Andrew J. Guilford, Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Wistrich, and Doc. 61 (protective order, 8/20/2015) (Justia docket). The docket appears to have stalled at ~61 entries, consistent with the case being stayed or held in abeyance pending the ITC investigation — but I cannot confirm a stay order from the sources retrieved.
2. Justia "Represented By" field is unreliable here. That page surfaces "Kenneth S Chang / Wayne W Call / Christopher D Bright." Chang is Kilpatrick Townsend (plaintiffs). I could not confirm whether Call or Bright entered appearances for Funai as local counsel or were associated with plaintiffs; I am not asserting either as Funai counsel without a docket entry. This is exactly the kind of item that needs a PACER pull (Dkt. 1–61, look for "Notice of Appearance" and the JS-44/ADR filings).
3. Firm attribution needs one check. Baker & Hostetler appears consistently as Funai's district court counsel and McDermott as ITC counsel; the split is plausible (common in 337 practice) but is inferred from filer signatures rather than from a retainer disclosure.
4. No sealed-material inference. Nothing in the retrieved record indicates counsel was sealed or that Funai defaulted; the Aug. 2015 protective order implies active, represented litigation at that point.

C. Suggested verification steps (if you need the docket-exact answer)

• PACER: C.D. Cal. 2:12-cv-02047, Dkt. 1–61 — pull the "Notice of Interested Parties/Corporate Disclosure" (usually Dkt. 8–15) and any pro hac vice applications, which name both local and lead counsel.
• Cross-check the C.D. Cal. § 337-related stay order (if any) — it typically lists "counsel of record" for each side.
• Confirm via N.D. Cal. 3:15-cv-04307 Dkt. 1 (LSI's complaint, Sept. 2015) and Funai's answer, which list the same defendants and their counsel.

Confidence: High that Baker & Hostetler (Kirsch/Mancino, Cincinnati; Walker, D.C.; Michel, L.A.) was Funai's defense team in this litigation family; medium that this exact roster is what appears on the 2:12-cv-02047 docket sheet; low/unverified as to any additional C.D. Cal.-specific local counsel and as to in-house participation.