Mobility IP Holdings, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al.

I'll research this case thoroughly using web search, starting with the parties and patents.

Let me dig deeper into the patents, the IPR, and the plaintiff's background and related litigation.

Now let me research the parallel Apple litigation, the IPR petitions, and Mobility IP's corporate background.

Case Overview and Background

The parties. Plaintiff Mobility IP Holdings, Inc. is described in its own complaint as "a Texas corporation that holds all right, title, and interest" in the seven patents-in-suit, which it acquired from Neology, Inc., a Poway/San Diego-based RFID and secure-identification company (Law360 PTAB docket text; complaint ¶¶18–20). Complaint ¶18 states that Neology "began applying for patents" in this space in the early 2000s and "eventually assigned these patents to Mobility IP"; the '345 and '924 patents came into Neology's hands by acquisition rather than original invention. There is no public indication that Mobility IP makes, sells, or licenses anything — Korean business press covering the filing expressly characterized the plaintiff as an NPE/patent-management entity ("특허관리형법인(NPE)") (Seoul Wire, Mar. 1, 2026) — and its litigation conduct is consistent with that label: it filed this case in E.D. Tex. and, using the same seven patents, a parallel campaign against Apple Inc. in W.D. Tex. (Mobility IP Holdings Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 7:26-cv-00075), accusing Apple Pay on iPhone XR and later, Apple Watch Series 5+, and iPads (Apple complaint analysis). Note that Mobility IP Holdings is a different entity from Mobility Workx, LLC, an unrelated NPE that sued Samsung in E.D. Tex. in 2024 (No. 4:24-cv-00798) — the similar names are a trap for the unwary. Defendants Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korea) and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. are operating companies: the U.S. arm sells and supports the Galaxy device ecosystem and the Samsung Pay/Samsung Wallet service. Counsel of record on the defense side includes Melissa Richards Smith (who signed Samsung's unopposed extension motion, Dkt. 15), supplemented by several pro hac vice appearances on June 23–24, 2026 (Dkts. 24–26, 29); plaintiff's appearances include Jason McManis, Howard Wisnia, Justin Kenney, Weining Bai, Warren McCarty, and others (Dkts. 7–12, 17). I could not verify firm affiliations or PACER directly — docket text above comes from a third-party aggregator (docket mirror).

The accused technology and the asserted patents. The accusation targets contactless mobile payments through Samsung Wallet (formerly Samsung Pay) on essentially the entire Galaxy mobile line — S, A, Note (through 2021), Xcover, Z Fold, Z Flip, Watch, and Tab series — with the Galaxy S23 Ultra pleaded as the exemplar and the plaintiff asserting the same theory against "all other Samsung mobile devices sold in the United States in the past six years" (Compl. ¶¶21, 24–25). The infringement story is a hardware/software pipeline: a biometric-authenticated phone holds a tokenized Device Account Number in an embedded secure element (eSE), an ISO 7816-4 style reader interrogates that secure element, an NXP NFC controller/bridge chip converts the file data into an RF signal for the merchant's POS terminal, and the processor generates an EMV dynamic cryptogram — the complaint even includes a Galaxy S23 Ultra motherboard teardown identifying the NXP part (complaint analysis, §III–IV). Patent-by-patent: '345 — a cellular device with a secure element, an ISO 7816-4 secure-element reader, an NFC "bridge chip," and a communications controller that derives transaction authorization data (asserted claim 23); '924 — the corresponding "token" hardware architecture: motherboard mounting structure, affixed secure element, interrogator, and communications controller (asserted claim 60); '772, '807, '513, '412, '187 — the Neology "System and Method for Providing Secure Identification/Transactional Solutions" family, all claiming priority to a July 9, 2002 provisional and directed to securely verifying and tracking identification/transaction information; the '772 and '807 name Francisco Martinez de Velasco Cortina and Manfred Rietzler as inventors (Google Patents family listing; EP family member). That lineage matters: sibling patents in the same specification family (US 8,325,044 and 8,587,436) were held invalid for lack of written description in the Kapsch ITC/Neology dispute, with the Federal Circuit affirming (Neology v. ITC, No. 18-1338 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 19, 2019) (nonprecedential)), and various Neology patents were hit with IPRs as early as 2015 (see, e.g., IPR2015-00808/00814/00815/00818/00819/00823/00824). Those rulings do not bind the asserted patents, but they are the obvious §112 roadmap for Samsung.

Posture, venue, and why the case matters. Filed February 27, 2026 in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas and assigned to Chief District Judge Rodney Gilstrap (case flags JRG4 and JURY; 28 U.S.C. §1338) (docket mirror). Service was effected March 3–4, 2026; Samsung's unopposed extension motion was granted March 12, 2026 (Dkt. 16, answers due June 23, 2026); Samsung answered and filed a Rule 7.1 disclosure statement on June 23, 2026 (Dkts. 27–28); and a scheduling order issued June 24, 2026 (Dkt. 30). No merits ruling, claim construction order, or trial date has been reported; the content of Samsung's answer (presumably non-infringement and invalidity defenses and possibly counterclaims) is not publicly verifiable from the sources reviewed. Marshall/E.D. Tex. remains the highest-volume patent venue with a deep, fast local ruleset, and Gilstrap's docket gives plaintiffs a large body of claim-construction precedent in payment/RFID-adjacent arts — which is precisely why an NPE with a 2002-priority RFID family would choose it, and why the Apple case going to W.D. Tex. instead is worth watching. The case is notable on three fronts. First, coordinated multi-front IPR activity: on September 19, 2026, four IPRs against Mobility IP Holdings were docketed — IPR2026-00501 and IPR2026-00503, both captioned Samsung Electronics America, Inc. v. Mobility IP Holdings, Inc., plus IPR2026-00500 and IPR2026-00504, which a Law360 PTAB listing shows under "Apple Inc. et al." (IPR2026-00503 record; IPR2026-00501 record; Law360 PTAB search). I could not confirm from a primary source the exact patent-to-petition mapping or Apple's full petitioner lineup — caution is warranted there. All four were filed roughly six-and-a-half months after service, comfortably inside the 35 U.S.C. §315(b) one-year window closing around March 2027. Second, discretionary-denial context: Samsung has recently been on the losing end of Director-level Fintiv/HN Hill-style denials of its petitions where the patent owner had long-settled expectations and a parallel district case was scheduled (see the Maxell/Samsung submissions listing denials in IPR2025-00344, IPR2025-00535 and others) (PTAB filing), so how the Board treats these early-stage Mobility IP petitions will be a useful signal. Third, market stakes: the complaint pleads that contactless payments reached roughly 25% of U.S. card transactions by 2024, and the accused devices span Samsung's flagship phone, foldable, watch, and tablet lines — a damages theory aimed at the whole Samsung Wallet install base rather than a single product, with an alleged notice date the Korean press reports as 2016 (supporting a willfulness narrative) (Seoul Wire). No Unified Patents or RPX coverage of this specific campaign was found in the searches run; treat any such claim as unsourced.

I'll research this case and the asserted patents. Let me start with several searches in parallel.

Let me dig into the PTAB proceedings and docket details.

Sourcing note

The case is real in the docket record and active, but the public docket for 2:26-cv-00157 remains incomplete as of the search cutoff — the aggregated docket (docketupdate/ExParte mirrors) expressly flags "The docket is incomplete" and only surfaces entries through 2026-06-24 (Dkt. 30). Nothing beyond that date appears. I found no reported Markman order, dispositive-motion ruling, trial, verdict, or final disposition for this case. Where I could not confirm something, I say so rather than fill the gap.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

Complaint substance (grounded in the complaint as reproduced): Mobility IP, a Texas corporation, pleads ownership of all seven asserted patents, tracing them to Neology, Inc. — the '772, '807, '513, '412, and '187 patents from Neology's own filings, and the '345 and '924 patents from Neology's acquisition of secure-element/NFC payment technology. Named inventors identified in the complaint include C. Douglas Yeager ('345) and Francisco Martinez de Velasco Cortina / Manfred Rietzler ('772). The asserted claims are stated to include claim 23 of the '345 patent and claim 60 of the '924 patent (among others). Infringement theories target Samsung Pay/Samsung Wallet tokenization, cryptogram generation, eSE storage, ISO 7816-4 emulation, NFC transmission, and biometric authentication. Accused instrumentalities: Galaxy A, S, Note, Xcover, Z Fold, Z Flip, Watch, and Tab lines, with the Galaxy S23 Ultra as the exemplar (and an NXP NFC/secure-element teardown allegation). The complaint pleads willfulness as of service (Count II, ¶50). Plaintiff's identified claim-construction pressure points include "cellular network adapter" and "mounting structure" ('924) and "startup instruction comprising an unpredictable number" ('345).

Counterclaims: The docket text for Dkt. 27 is styled simply "Answer to Complaint." I found no confirmed record of Samsung counterclaims (e.g., declaratory judgment of non-infringement/invalidity) in the available docket. Treat counterclaims as unconfirmed rather than absent.

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2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• Motion to dismiss / transfer: None surfaced. No § 1404(a) transfer motion and no Rule 12 motion on this docket. The only early motion was Samsung's unopposed answer extension (Dkt. 15), which also waived the foreign-service requirement for Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. — a housekeeping move, not a venue or service challenge.
• Stay pending IPR: No stay motion appears on the docket. This is notable given that (a) Samsung filed an IPR against Mobility IP in September 2026 (see §6), and (b) Samsung has repeatedly sought EDTX stays in its other NPE cases (e.g., Mojo Mobility, Headwater, Vasu, Keyless Licensing). Any stay request here would most likely come after an institution decision, so it is a live possibility post-dating the public record.
• Summary judgment: None reported.

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3. Claim construction (Markman)

No Markman order or hearing has been reported as of 2026-09-29. The June 24, 2026 scheduling order (Dkt. 30) almost certainly set a Markman/claim-construction track, but the terms and dates are not publicly reproduced. Given the June 23 answer and June 24 scheduling order, a Markman hearing in this Marshall Division case would ordinarily fall in late 2026 into 2027 — i.e., not yet reached.

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4. Discovery milestones of strategic significance

No discovery events appear on the public docket yet. Two things with strategic weight are already teed up:

1. Willfulness/knowledge timeline. The complaint dates Samsung's knowledge to service and points to Samsung's awareness of the patents as early as 2016; combined with the broad six-year damages window, this frames a Georgia-Pacific royalty narrative rather than an injunction narrative.
2. Claim-scope battles already forecast in the pleadings — whether "cellular network adapter" can read on an entire handset, whether a generic motherboard is a "mounting structure," and whether the accused devices actually perform the "await a startup instruction comprising an unpredictable number" step. These will drive both infringement and invalidity discovery.

The docket does not yet show infringement contentions, invalidity contentions, election of asserted claims, or expert reports.

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5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial date confirmed for this case, no verdict, no JMOL/new-trial/fee motions. A September 14, 2026 trial date appears in an unrelated PTAB petition record (IPR2025-01027 context); I could not tie it to this case, and a ~6.5-month complaint-to-trial timeline would be extraordinary, so I treat it as not this case.

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6. Parallel PTAB proceedings

• IPR2026-00505 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Mobility IP Holdings, Inc., filed 2026-09-19, status pending, no institution decision, judge panel not yet assigned. This is the only IPR I could confirm naming Mobility IP as patent owner. It was filed roughly three weeks before this report and about nine months after the complaint — consistent with Samsung's typical post-answer IPR strategy targeting asserted claims.
• How many petitions? Samsung's practice in parallel NPE litigations is to file multiple petitions (often one per patent or per claim group). I found only one docketed Mobility IP IPR, so additional IPR2026-xxxxx petitions may exist that did not surface in my searches. Flag as incomplete.
• Effect on the litigation: None yet. No institution decision means no § 315(b) bar analysis, no Fintiv/§ 325(d) discretionary-denial ruling, and no stay posture are on the record. If instituted, expect Samsung to move to stay under Judge Gilstrap's practice — which, per Samsung's own PTAB briefing in parallel cases, emphasizes the gap between the district trial date and the statutory Final Written Decision deadline.

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7. Present posture (as of 2026-09-29)

Active and in early pre-trial. The case is past pleadings (answer filed 2026-06-23) and into the scheduling/discovery phase under a Docket Control Order entered 2026-06-24, with a first PTAB petition (IPR2026-00505) filed 2026-09-19. There is no merits ruling, no claim construction order, no stay, no trial, and no disposition. Whether the case settles, is stayed pending IPR, or proceeds to Markman will be the next decision points.

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Gaps and caveats

• The public docket is incomplete past 2026-06-24; intervening discovery, scheduling amendments, IPR-related status notices, and any stay motion may exist but were not retrievable.
• Samsung's counterclaims and any affirmative-defense specifics are unverified.
• IPR count is likely understated — confirm on the PTAB Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End (PTAB E2E) system whether Samsung filed companion petitions against the other six asserted patents.
• A separate, similarly named Mobility IP Holding, LLC v. Para Mobility PTY LTD, No. 3:26-cv-01456 (N.D.N.Y., filed 2026-07-28), asserts different patents (9,863,577; 10,125,920) against a different defendant. Note the entity distinction (LLC vs. the Inc. plaintiff here) before treating it as related-party activity.

I'll search for press coverage from multiple angles.

Let me search additional angles: the parallel Apple suit, PTAB coverage, and legal trade press.

Press coverage of Mobility IP Holdings v. Samsung

The honest headline: this case has generated almost no mainstream or legal-trade press coverage. I ran searches by case caption, by party names paired with "Samsung Pay"/"Samsung Wallet," by the seven asserted patent numbers, and by the parallel Apple suit; the only genuinely journalistic article I found anywhere that reports on this litigation is a Korean-language piece. Seoul Wire (서울와이어), in its "Biz&Law" column, reported on 2026-03-01 — two days after filing — that "삼성전자가 미국 특허관리형법인(NPE)으로부터 모바일 결제 시스템 관련 특허침해로 피소됐다" ("Samsung Electronics has been sued by a U.S. patent-management entity [NPE] for infringement of mobile-payment-system patents"), and it is the only outlet I found that identifies the seven patents in suit (8,151,345; 8,548,924; 8,766,772; 8,933,807; 10,235,513; 10,706,412; 10,762,187), traces them to Neology, Inc., and describes the accused Galaxy A/S/Note/Xcover/Z Fold/Z Flip/Watch/Tab lines. Notably, Seoul Wire frames the case as part of a broader pattern of NPE pressure on Samsung's payment stack rather than as an isolated filing — its headline translates to "Samsung Electronics sued for U.S. patent infringement over Pay/Wallet… NPE attacks intensify" — and it carries a subheadline attributing to the plaintiff the assertion that "Samsung likely knew of these patents in 2016."

On significance and numbers, the reporting is thin and goes slightly beyond the record. Seoul Wire's substantive value-add is its technical summary: it reports that the complaint maps the Samsung Pay/Wallet transaction flow onto an ISO 7816-4-style secure-element read, an NFC-generated RF signal to the merchant POS terminal, and storage in the embedded secure element (eSE) of a token derived by encrypting the physical card number — consistent with, and essentially derivative of, the complaint itself. Critically, no outlet I found reports any damages figure, royalty rate, licensing demand, or settlement number for this case, and no outlet reports a market-impact estimate. Nor did I find any executive statement from Samsung or Mobility IP, any analyst commentary, or any industry-reaction piece. The one place the 2016 knowledge date surfaces is Seoul Wire's characterization of the plaintiff's willfulness narrative; treat that as the outlet's gloss on the pleading rather than a judicially confirmed fact, since the docket shows no ruling on knowledge or intent.

Adjacent coverage exists but is not about this case, and I flag it only to prevent conflation. The closest trade-press treatment of "Samsung Pay patent litigation" I located concerns different plaintiffs entirely — for example, a Chinese-language STPI/NARLabs piece summarizing Law360's 2026-05-12 report on iCashe suing Apple, Google and Lenovo over tap-to-pay (and noting iCashe's earlier 2024 E.D. Tex. suit against Samsung), and Seoul Wire's separate coverage of Surecell Transactions LLC v. Samsung over a different six-patent contactless-payment family. Neither discusses Mobility IP. Likewise, the RPX Empower and Ex Parte entries for this campaign are litigation databases, not journalism, and should not be cited as press accounts.

Bottom line for the reader: aside from the single Seoul Wire article, the public narrative of this case is being written by docket aggregators, not reporters. I found no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, Ars Technica, The Verge, or EFF coverage of Mobility IP Holdings v. Samsung, and no coverage at all of the June 2026 answer, the June 24 scheduling order, or the September 2026 IPR petitions. Whether that silence reflects the case's early stage, the plaintiff's low public profile, or reduced newsroom coverage of routine E.D. Tex. NPE filings, I cannot determine from the sources available — but readers should not assume the absence of coverage signals the absence of significance, particularly given the parallel Apple action and the four Samsung/Apple IPR petitions filed in September 2026.

Sources

• Complaint analysis | 4:24-cv-00798 | Mobility Workx LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | Ex Parte
• McKool Smith Named 2026 IP “Litigation Department of the Year” by Texas Lawyer
• McKool Smith Named 2026 IP "Litigation Department of the Year" by Texas Lawyer - Trade like a pro: Leverage real-time discussions and market-moving ideas to outperform
• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS MARSHALL DIVISION
• Trial Underway in Patent Infringement Case Against Samsung Electronics - The Texas Lawbook
• Mobility Workx v. Samsung: Wireless Mobility Patent Dispute | PatSnap - Your Agentic AI Partner
• McKool Smith Named 2026 IP
• Mobility IP et al v. Samsung Electronics Co, LTD et al, 2:26-cv-00157 (E.D.Tex.)
• 7:26-cv-00075 | Mobility IP Holdings, Inc. v. Apple Inc. | RPX Empower
• Apple Federal Litigation Filings
• 7:26-cv-00075 | Mobility IP Holdings Inc v. Apple Inc | Ex Parte

I'll research the docket and plaintiff's counsel for this case. Let me run several targeted searches.

The docket excerpt reveals several plaintiff-side appearances. Let me dig into each attorney and firm.

Plaintiff's counsel of record — Mobility IP Holdings, Inc. v. Samsung (E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00157)

Bottom line: Five attorney appearances have been entered for plaintiff Mobility IP Holdings, Inc. on the public docket, all between March 2 and April 2, 2026. The team is led out of AZA (Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing PLLC) in Houston/Dallas, with Howard N. Wisnia (Wisnia PC, San Diego) — a patent-side specialist — appearing separately. No in-house counsel has appeared (consistent with Mobility IP being an NPE/patent-holding entity). I could not verify a formal "lead counsel" designation (no designation filing appears on the docket excerpt) and no local counsel has yet been identified in the sources I could retrieve.

Confirmed appearances (from the docket)

Source: docket excerpt for 2:26-cv-00157 at gaeflex docket mirror ("NOTICE of Attorney Appearance by … on behalf of Mobility IP Holdings, Inc."); case page at Ex Parte AI Lab.

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1. Warren Joseph McCarty III — AZA, Dallas (Managing Partner)

• Firm/office: AZA (Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, PLLC); he became managing partner of AZA's new Dallas office when it opened in January 2026, after serving as a partner at Caldwell Cassady & Curry (and earlier The McCarty Firm, P.C.). (AZA announcement; Super Lawyers profile)
• Relevant experience: Co-lead counsel with McManis in the $78.5M EDTX patent verdict against Samsung Electronics (2025, automatic content recognition software); AZA states he has been counsel in tech cases producing verdicts/settlements > $2.5B since 2015, including three 2024 plaintiff patent trial wins totaling >$93M, and he is lead counsel to Acer in its SEP suits against AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Named to IAM's IP Strategists list and Benchmark Litigation's 40 & Under. (AZA press release, Aug. 2026; Benchmark release)
• Note: He has beaten Samsung in an EDTX patent jury trial within the last year — highly relevant to this case.

2. Jason McManis — AZA, Houston (Partner; Head of IP Group)

• Firm/office: AZA, 1221 McKinney St., Suite 2500, Houston, TX. (AZA/Benchmark release)
• Relevant experience: Head of AZA's IP group; tried the $78.5M Anonymous Media Research v. Samsung verdict with McCarty in 2025 (Androvett reports the two East Texas juries together returned ~$524M against Samsung in related ACR/media cases). Named to Lawdragon 500 Global IP Lawyers (2025, 2026) and Benchmark 40 & Under. He is the attorney who filed the plaintiff's summons returns here (Docs. 13–14), suggesting a case-management/lead role. (Androvett coverage; AZA tag page)

3. Weining Bai — AZA, Houston (Partner)

• Firm/office: AZA, Houston (licensed in Texas since 2016; U. Penn J.D. 2016; native Mandarin speaker with China litigation experience).
• Relevant experience: Plaintiff- and defense-side patent litigator; instrumental in the damages model in the $78.5M Anonymous Media v. Samsung verdict; represents Acer in 4G/LTE/5G SEP litigation against AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Nokia, Ericsson; Saint Lawrence Communications — ~$9M EDTX jury verdict with willful infringement finding against Motorola and settlements with Apple/ZTE in HD Voice SEP campaign; also EDTX plaintiff work for NeoLayer LLC (2:26-cv-00459). (AZA bio; Best Lawyers bio; Chambers release)

4. Howard Neil Wisnia — Wisnia PC, San Diego (Principal)

• Firm/office: Wisnia PC, 12636 High Bluff Dr., Suite 400, San Diego, CA 92130 (Cal. Bar No. 184626; USPTO Reg. No. 37,502). (Cal. State Bar record; PatentBots profile)
• Caveat: A Martindale/Lawyers.com listing shows him at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo in San Francisco — that appears to be stale/erroneous aggregator data; his State Bar and USPTO records, and every recent filing, list Wisnia PC. (Martindale)
• Relevant experience: Patent-owner enforcement and PTAB work. Plaintiff's counsel to Ikorongo Texas LLC / Ikorongo Technology LLC (e.g., v. Lyft, W.D. Tex. 2021) and designated lead counsel in multiple IPRs (e.g., IPR2023-00470 rail collision-avoidance petitions for Humatics/Siemens Mobility petitioners). Also appeared defense-side for HTC/ZTE in Cellular Communications Equipment LLC v. HTC (E.D. Tex. 6:16-cv-00475). (Ikorongo/Lyft docket; IPR2023-00470 mandatory notices; Cellular v. HTC docket)
• Why it matters: His appearance (Doc. 17, 4/2/26) is the kind of move seen when the patent owner stands up an IPR response team — relevant because Samsung filed IPR2026-00505 against Mobility IP Holdings on September 19, 2026 (status: pending, no institution decision yet). (IPR2026-00505)

5. Abanoub Henry (Doc. 9, 3/2/26) and Justin Cale Kenney (Doc. 12, 3/4/26)

• Both appeared on the docket for Mobility IP Holdings, Inc., but I could not verify their firms, offices, or backgrounds from the sources retrieved before hitting my search limit. I will not guess a firm. Practically, given the docket timing and the rest of the plaintiff team, the working hypothesis is that they are AZA or McCarty-side attorneys, but that is unconfirmed. Worth a targeted check of the Doc. 9 and Doc. 12 PDFs on PACER (or the attorney roll in the EDTX CM/ECF system) to confirm.

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Caveats and open items

• No formal lead-counsel designation seen. EDTX judges typically require a "lead counsel" designation in the Docket Control Order. The scheduling order (Doc. 30, 6/24/2026) may contain that designation, but its text was not available in my sources.
• Local counsel not identified. E.D. Tex. Local Rule AT-2 requires local counsel; I found no confirmed Marshall/Tyler-area local counsel for plaintiff in the available records. It is possible one of Docs. 18–23 belongs to plaintiff, but the June 2026 appearances cluster around Samsung's June 23, 2026 answer (Doc. 27) and are most plausibly defense-side (Samsung's EDTX counsel of record in parallel matters is Melissa Richards Smith of Gillam & Smith, Longview/Marshall; and WilmerHale tried the Vasu and Anonymous Media Samsung cases in Gilstrap's court — see WilmerHale release).
• Docket is admittedly incomplete on the free mirrors I used ("The docket is incomplete" flag). Nothing indicates any plaintiff filing is sealed; the docket text is public for all entries listed. If counsel appearances exist between Doc. 30 and today (Sept. 29, 2026), they were not reflected in my sources.
• Caption anomaly: the docket is captioned "Mobility IP et al v. Samsung Electronics Co, LTD et al," suggesting the possibility of an additional party; the case metadata (authoritative here) lists only Mobility IP Holdings, Inc. as plaintiff.
• No in-house counsel for Mobility IP appears — expected, since Mobility IP Holdings is a patent-holding/assertion entity that acquired the Neology-origin patents (U.S. 8,151,345; 8,548,924; 8,766,772; 8,933,807; 10,235,513; 10,706,412; 10,762,187).

Sources: Ex Parte AI Lab docket and complaint analysis for 2:26-cv-00157; gaeflex EDTX docket mirror; AZA firm press releases and attorney bios; Cal. State Bar and USPTO practitioner records; AIPLA/PTAB filings; Androvett media coverage; Seoul Wire (Korean-language) report on the March 2026 complaint. Where a fact is not independently sourced (notably the firms of Henry and Kenney), I have flagged it rather than fill the gap.

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

Let me dig into the specific docket entries for the defendant's appearances.

Bottom line

I was able to confirm only one attorney of record for the Samsung defendants from the public sources I could reach, plus the structure of the remaining appearances. The out-of-district (pro hac vice) names are on the docket but their names are not exposed by the free docket mirrors I could access — they would require PACER or the signature block of the Answer (Dkt. 27). I am flagging that gap rather than guessing.

Confirmed counsel of record

Docket grounding: Smith filed the defense's first substantive filing — the Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to File Answer and Waiver of Foreign Service Requirement (Dkt. 15, filed 3/11/2026), signed on behalf of both SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. That motion was granted 3/12/2026 (Dkt. 16), setting the 6/23/2026 answer deadline reflected in the case summary. Her Marshall address and Bar number are corroborated by her signature blocks in numerous other E.D. Tex. Samsung filings (e.g., archived gov.uscourts.txed documents and the ASUS v. Samsung appearance, Dkt. 16).

Appearance structure on the docket (names not yet retrievable)

The Marshall Division docket for 2:26-cv-00157 shows Samsung appeared in force in June 2026:

• Dkt. 18 — 6/10/2026: Notice of Attorney Appearance (likely co-counsel and/or local counsel; text not exposed by the free mirrors).
• Dkts. 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 — 6/23/2026: five Notices of Attorney Appearance (non-PHV — i.e., attorneys already admitted in E.D. Tex., which is typical for the Gillam & Smith team and any Texas-barred co-counsel).
• Dkts. 24, 25, 26 — 6/23/2026 and Dkt. 29 — 6/24/2026: four Notices of Attorney Appearance – Pro Hac Vice, i.e., out-of-state lead/trial counsel admitted pro hac vice.
• Dkt. 27 — 6/23/2026: Answer to Complaint; Dkt. 28: Rule 7.1 Disclosure Statement / Certificate of Interested Persons.
• Dkt. 30 — 6/24/2026: Scheduling order (aligns with the scheduling order referenced in the case summary).

So the defense is staffed by roughly nine to ten attorneys (5 non-PHV + 4 PHV + local counsel), which is consistent with a multi-patent, multi-product Samsung defense. The individual names behind Dkts. 18–26 and 29 are on the docket but were not obtainable from the free aggregators (ExParte/ai-lab, the docket-mirror site, and Justia) that I could access; those pages explicitly showed "[t]he docket is incomplete" and truncated the defendant-side entries. I will not supply names I cannot source.

How to close the gap (authoritative sources, in order)

1. PACER docket for 2:26-cv-00157, Dkts. 18–29 — each Notice of Attorney Appearance is a one-page PDF naming the attorney, firm, address, bar number, and party.
2. Dkt. 27 (Answer) and Dkt. 28 (Disclosure Statement) — the signature block lists the full defense team with firms, often identifying lead counsel first.
3. Dkt. 15 (Motion for Extension) — already confirms Gillam & Smith as counsel of record as of March 2026.

Parallel PTAB proceeding (relevant to the defense team)

A Samsung-side IPR petition was filed 9/19/2026 — IPR2026-00503, Samsung Electronics America, Inc. v. Mobility IP Holdings, Inc. (USPTO/PTAB). This is almost certainly a validity challenge to one of the seven asserted patents and will be handled by the same or an overlapping Samsung IP team; the mandatory notices in the petition name petitioner's counsel and are a reliable secondary source for identifying Samsung's counsel in this campaign. I could not retrieve the attorney listing for IPR2026-00503 from the free sources in this session (the ExParte PTAB page shows "Pending Judge Assignment" and an empty Attorney field).

Explicit caveats

• No counsel names beyond Melissa R. Smith should be treated as confirmed. In particular, I have not verified that any of the firms that commonly defend Samsung in E.D. Tex. — e.g., Paul Hastings (Robert Unikel, Allan Soobert, Igor Timofeyev), Fish & Richardson (Ruffin Cordell, Michael McKeon), WilmerHale (Mindy Sooter, Mark Selwyn), or DLA Piper (James M. Heintz) — are in this case. Those firms appear in other Samsung matters (Mojo Mobility, Staton Techiya, ASUS, Maxell, Vasu Holdings) and are offered only as context, not as a finding.
• No in-house Samsung counsel (Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. IP Center or Samsung Electronics America legal) is identifiable from the docket; in-house attorneys rarely enter an appearance and none is reflected in the entries I could see.
• Nothing appears to be sealed on the defense-side appearance docket; the limitation is aggregator incompleteness, not a sealing order.
• The plaintiff-side team (McManis Faubion — Jason McManis, Howard Wisnia, Warren J. McCarty III, Thomas DelRosario, Andrea Fair, Zachary Grinovich, Weining Bai, Justin Kenney, Abanoub Henry) is visible on Dkts. 3–5, 7–12, 17, but that is outside the scope of your question.