Nokia of America Corp. v. Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment, Inc.

I'll research this case across PTAB records, docket sources, and legal press to verify the details.

Good initial data. Let me dig into the related district court litigation, the broader IPR series, and the patent itself.

Let me pin down the '458 patent's technical content, the related AT&T case, and the outcome of the parallel litigation.

Case Overview — Nokia of America Corp. v. Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment, Inc., IPR2025-00492

Important framing note: IPR2025-00492 is not an Article III infringement suit — it is a PTAB inter partes review, a validity proceeding. The "litigation" it belongs to is a set of parallel E.D. Tex. infringement cases in which Nokia's customers (AT&T, Charter) are the defendants. I cover both below, and flag where sourcing is thin.

Paragraph 1 — The parties

Patent Owner ASSIA (Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment, Inc.) is a Redwood City, California software company founded in 2003 by Dr. John M. Cioffi, the Stanford professor emeritus widely credited as the "father of DSL" (National Medal of Technology and Innovation; 2014 Internet Hall of Fame inductee for DSL/VDSL/vectoring). ASSIA sells Dynamic Line Management (DLM) / Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM) software that DSL operators use to optimize speed and stability on copper networks, and holds a portfolio of 500+ patents (see the Paris court's description of ASSIA as a world leader in DSL broadband-optimization solutions, Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris, RG 2021, p. 5). It is therefore a genuine operating company (software vendor), not a classic shell PAE/NPE — but in practice it litigates like a dedicated enforcer, having run assertion campaigns against **BT (UK), Orange and

I'll research this case and the related litigation/PTAB proceedings.

I'll research counsel of record for the petitioner (Nokia) in this IPR. Let me search across PTAB filings, docket sources, and firm announcements.

I found the petitioner's counsel list. Let me verify each attorney's role, firm/office, and background.

Counsel of Record — Nokia of America Corp. (Petitioner)

Threshold note: This is a PTAB inter partes review, not a district court infringement action. Nokia is the petitioner (functionally the "plaintiff" side), and ASSIA is the patent owner. There is no PACER district-court docket with appearances; counsel of record is established by the petition's mandatory notices and the Board's own papers. The identifying papers are:

• Paper 9 – Decision, Settlement Prior to Institution of Trial (June 24, 2025), which lists "For Petitioner" counsel (via Docket Alarm: link
• Notice of Refund (mailed Aug. 4, 2025), which reproduces the same petitioner service list (PTACTS: link)

Both papers list the petitioner's counsel identically as: Scott Stevens, Christopher Douglas, Nicholas Marais, Daniel O'Connor — Alston & Bird LLP, plus Matthew Turk (mturk@foley.com).

Petitioner's counsel

Notes, gaps, and caveats

• No "local counsel" or in-house counsel appear on this IPR docket. Nokia's in-house IP leadership (e.g., its Head of IP Services / IPR licensing counsel) is not listed as counsel of record in the papers retrieved.
• Lead vs. back-up designations come from the ordering in the Board's papers and the petitioner's mandatory notices; I did not obtain the petition's power-of-attorney page for this proceeding to confirm the formal lead/back-up labels. The Alston & Bird team filed under firm customer number 00826.
• Same team across the Nokia/ASSIA family: the identical petitioner counsel appear in the companion proceedings filed the same day — IPR2025-00428 (U.S. 7,991,122) and IPR2025-00451 (AT&T + Nokia v. ASSIA, U.S. 9,954,631), all terminated-settled (IPR2025-00451 mandatory notice).
• For completeness (patent-owner side, not asked but adjacent): ASSIA's counsel of record are Michael D. Specht, Jason A. Fitzsimmons, and Richard M. Bemben of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC (with Caldwell Cassady Curry LLP appearing as litigation counsel in the parallel IPR2025-00451 service list).
• Settlement: the case terminated pre-institution on June 24, 2025, and the settlement agreement (Ex. 1026) was ordered kept confidential under 37 C.F.R. § 42.74(c), so no merits briefing or institution decision exists.

Verification confidence: High for the names, firms, and Alston & Bird office locations of Stevens and Douglas (multiple independent sources: PTACTS filings, firm bios, Chambers). Moderate for O'Connor. Low/unverified for Marais and Turk's individual backgrounds — I could not retrieve their firm bios or confirm Turk's Foley & Lardner affiliation and role, so those should not be relied on without pulling their power-of-attorney pages directly from PTACTS.

I'll research ASSIA's counsel of record in this IPR. Note the framing caveat up front: this is a PTAB proceeding, so ASSIA is the patent owner (functionally the "defendant" side), and appearances come from mandatory notices and Board papers rather than a PACER docket. Let me verify and expand on the patent-owner counsel already flagged in the prior section.

Strong result — the Board's refund notice and a sister-case mandatory notice confirm ASSIA's team. Let me pin down the patent-owner mandatory notices for this IPR specifically, plus the parallel district court litigation context.

Let me try to pull the patent-owner mandatory notices filed directly in IPR2025-00492 and identify the parallel district court case against Nokia.

Counsel of Record — Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment, Inc. (Patent Owner / functionally "defendant")

Threshold note (same caveat as the petitioner-side section): This is a PTAB inter partes review, not a district-court action. There is no PACER appearance sheet. "Defendant-side" counsel of record is established by the patent owner's mandatory notices and the Board's own service blocks. For IPR2025-00492 specifically, the operative papers listing patent-owner counsel are:

• Paper 9 – Termination Decision (Settlement Prior to Institution), June 24, 2025 (Docket Alarm PDF) — service block reads: "Michael D. Specht, Jason A. Fitzsimmons, Richard M. Bemben — Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC."
• Notice of Refund, mailed Aug. 4, 2025 (PTACTS) (link) — reproduces the identical three-name Sterne Kessler patent-owner block.

Patent Owner's counsel of record — IPR2025-00492

Reg. numbers, addresses, and role designations are taken verbatim from ASSIA's mandatory notices in the companion case IPR2025-00395, which discloses the identical Sterne Kessler team (Docket Alarm PDF) — and from the -00492 refund notice/termination decision.

Important scope caveats

• Only the three Sterne Kessler attorneys appear for the patent owner in the -00492 papers themselves. I did not retrieve a standalone "Patent Owner's Mandatory Notices" PDF filed in -00492; the team is confirmed from the Board's termination decision and refund notice (both of which carry the patent-owner service block). The formal lead/back-up labels above come from the parallel -00395 mandatory notice filed Feb. 6, 2025, which discloses the same three-name core.
• The patent-owner team was larger in the companion IPRs. ASSIA's -00395 mandatory notice also lists Caldwell Cassady & Curry (Dallas) as litigation counsel: Justin Nemunaitis (pro hac vice motion to be filed) and Bjorn A. Blomquist (Reg. No. 80,344), both at 2121 N. Pearl St., Ste. 1200, Dallas, TX 75201. The prior section flagged Caldwell Cassady in the IPR2025-00451 service list. I could not confirm that Caldwell Cassady (or any additional firm) entered an appearance in this -00492 proceeding before it settled — the -00492 service blocks list only Sterne Kessler. Flag: verify from the -00492 docket/POPR before relying.
• Alberti Lim (Kramer Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP) also co-counsels ASSIA, but in the Charter IPR series (e.g., IPR2024-01379), not in the Nokia -00492. Names there: David L. Alberti, Hong S. Lin, Sal Lim (Alberti Lim press release). This is adjacent context, not -00492 counsel of record.
• Sterne Kessler's ASSIA bench is deeper than the three named here. Firm announcements for the ASSIA wins also name Ryan C. Richardson and Timothy L. Tang on ASSIA matters (SK press releases). Neither appears in the -00492/-00395 service blocks, so treat them as firm-level, not case-level, participants.
• No in-house counsel appear as of record. ASSIA's CEO is founder Dr. John M. Cioffi and its General Counsel is reported as Ethan Andelman (Redwood City, CA) in parallel European coverage (Juve Patent re ASSIA v. KPN/Nokia) — but neither is listed as PTAB counsel of record in the U.S. papers retrieved.
• Settlement forecloses further appearances. Because the case terminated pre-institution on June 24, 2025, with the settlement agreement (Ex. 1026) kept confidential under 37 C.F.R. § 42.74(c), there is no institution decision, no POPR on the merits, and no later counsel activity in this docket to report. Any counsel not on the service block at termination effectively never appeared here.

Parallel district-court context (where the "defendant" framing actually lives)

The Board's papers identify the co-pending litigation in which ASSIA is the plaintiff and Nokia/AT&T/Charter are the defendants:

• Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment, Inc. v. AT&T Inc. et al., No. 2:24-cv-00029 (E.D. Tex., filed Jan. 19, 2024) — per ASSIA's -00395 mandatory notice, this action involves the patents challenged in -00428, -00451, and -00492 (including the '458 patent), i.e., Nokia and AT&T as defendants in the same E.D. Tex. campaign.
• Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment, Inc. v. Charter Communications, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-0124 (E.D. Tex., Marshall Div., filed Feb. 21, 2024) — the Charter-side litigation underlying the five denied Charter IPRs.
• A 2025 E.D. Tex. lead case, 2:25-cv-00697-JRG-RSP, shows Nokia of America Corp. as a defendant briefing a partial motion to dismiss a patent-infringement amended complaint (govinfo PDF) — plausibly an ASSIA-v.-Nokia continuation suit, though I could not confirm ASSIA is the plaintiff in that specific case; treat as unverified.

Where I'd pull primary sources to close gaps: the IPR2025-00492 "Patent Owner's Mandatory Notices" (stored at PTACTS petition No. 1557299) to confirm the formal lead/back-up designations and whether Caldwell Cassady or in-house counsel were ever added; and the E.D. Tex. docket sheets for 2:24-cv-00029 and 2:25-cv-00697 to capture ASSIA's district-court trial counsel (likely Sterne Kessler + local E.D. Tex. counsel), which is distinct from the PTAB team above.

Verification confidence: High for the three Sterne Kessler attorneys (Specht, Fitzsimmons, Bemben) as patent-owner counsel of record in IPR2025-00492 — corroborated by three independent Board filings (termination decision, refund notice, and the sister-case mandatory notice). Moderate for the Caldwell Cassady and Alberti Lim presence (documented in companion ASSIA matters, not confirmed in -00492 itself). Low/unverified for the 2:25-cv-00697 plaintiff identification and for any in-house counsel of record.