Peter Henrik Pedersen v. Intuit, Inc.

Case Overview: Pedersen v. Intuit, Inc. (W.D. Tex., No. 6:22-cv-00588-ADA-DTG)

Parties and their roles. Plaintiff Peter Henrik Pedersen is an individual inventor residing in Søborg, Denmark (per the face of the patent), who has pursued a serial, high-volume patent-assertion campaign against technology companies; Unified Patents describes him as "believed to be associated with AiPi Solutions," an assertion-campaign entity. His conduct here fits the non-practicing-entity (NPE/PAE) pattern: he does not practice the patent but asserts it broadly against software and messaging platforms. He was represented in this action by William P. Ramey III, a frequent Waco patent plaintiff's counsel. Defendant Intuit, Inc. is a large operating company (TurboTax, QuickBooks, and, notably for this case, Mailchimp, the email-marketing platform Intuit acquired in 2021), represented by Erick Scott Robinson. The complaint, filed June 8, 2022, asserts infringement of a single patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 (ECF No. 1; UniCourt/Justia dockets).

Accused technology and patent. The patent-in-suit, the '920 Patent, titled "Profile responsive electronic message management system" (filed July 12, 2001; issued Nov. 15, 2005), is directed to a system and method for the central specification and management of how electronic messages from multiple messengers are distributed to recipients. In technical terms, it claims a message-management system with (i) a recipient-profile application that stores recipient-specified delivery parameters (where, when, and how specific types of messages from specific messengers are delivered), (ii) a messenger-profile application, (iii) a message-input application, and (iv) an individual message generator that combines profile data with incoming messages to produce individualized messages (claims 1, 14–17 were the claims at issue in the IPR; Fed. Cir. slip op. in Pedersen v. Unified Patents, No. 2024-2090). The specific Intuit instrumentalities accused are identified in Exhibit A to the complaint, which I could not retrieve; however, given the patent's focus on profile-driven message/email distribution and Pedersen's parallel suits against email-marketing and messaging platforms (Constant Contact, Mailgun, Zoho, Salesforce, Oracle's Responsys, Monday.com, Zendesk, etc. — per Unified Patents), Intuit's Mailchimp platform is the apparent target. That specific identification should be treated as an inference until the complaint's exhibit is reviewed on PACER.

Procedural posture, venue, and significance. The case was filed in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas and assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright (with Magistrate Judge Derek T. Gilliland — hence "ADA-DTG"), at the time the most patent-plaintiff-friendly and busiest patent docket in the country; Pedersen filed this case alongside related '920 actions against Upland Software (6:22-cv-00594) and Ziff Davis (6:22-cv-00597), plus a later Monday.com case (6:22-cv-00923). Intuit was served June 10, 2022, and after an extension answered/responded by August 15, 2022. Intuit moved to stay pending inter partes review (ECF No. 25), and on January 30, 2024 — at the initial pretrial conference — the Court granted the stay (ECF No. 42), mirroring the stays granted in the related cases. The stay was tied to IPR2023-00029, Unified Patents, LLC v. Pedersen, in which the PTAB issued a final written decision on May 10, 2024, holding all challenged claims (1 and 14–17) unpatentable as obvious over Funk in view of Law or Kamakura; the Federal Circuit affirmed on March 26, 2026 (Pedersen v. Unified Patents, No. 2024-2090, nonprecedential, per Lourie and Hughes, JJ., and Chief District Judge Kleeh). With the asserted claims invalidated and that result now affirmed, the stayed Intuit action has been effectively neutralized — though the current docket status (as of September 2026) is not confirmed in my sources beyond "open/pending" listings. The case is notable as a textbook example of an NPE's multi-defendant Waco campaign (asserted previously against Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, Adobe, and Wix, among others, per Unified Patents) being dismantled through a Unified Patents-led IPR, illustrating how IPR stays in Albright's court coupled with PTAB invalidity can terminate serial assertions; a parallel Adobe IPR (IPR2023-00986) also terminated via pre-institution settlement in October 2023.

Pedersen v. Intuit, Inc. — Key Legal Developments & Outcome

Case: Peter Henrik Pedersen v. Intuit, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00588-ADA(-DTG) (W.D. Tex., Waco Division)
Patent in suit: U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 ("Profile Responsive Electronic Message Management System")
Judge: Alan D. Albright (presiding); Derek T. Gilliland (magistrate judge, pretrial matters)

1. Filing & initial pleadings

• 2022-06-08 — Complaint filed (ECF No. 1) alleging infringement of the '920 patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271, along with AO 120 patent notice (ECF No. 2), summons request (ECF No. 3), and plaintiff's certificate of interested parties (ECF No. 4). Case assigned to Judge Albright. Plaintiff was represented by William P. Ramey III. (UniCourt docket; Justia docket.)
• 2022-06-10 — Intuit served; answer initially due 2022-07-01 (ECF No. 6).
• 2022-06-27 — Intuit filed a notice of 45-day extension (ECF No. 7); answer deadline reset to 2022-08-15. Intuit was represented by Erick Scott Robinson. (The docket I could access does not confirm the substance or ECF number of Intuit's eventual answer or any counterclaims — that portion of the docket was not available in the public sources retrieved.)

The case was one of a group of related '920 patent suits Pedersen filed in W.D. Tex. against Intuit (6:22-cv-00588), Upland Software (6:22-cv-00594), Ziff Davis (6:22-cv-00597), and later Monday.com (6:22-cv-00923).

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• Motion to stay pending IPR (Intuit, ECF No. 25) — Intuit moved to stay the case pending inter partes review of the '920 patent (IPR2023-00029, Unified Patents v. Pedersen). The motion is referenced in the related Monday.com stay order. The exact filing date was not in the sources retrieved, but it came after the PTAB's institution decision (see below).
• 2024-01-30 — At the videoconference Initial Pretrial Conference before Magistrate Judge Gilliland (transcript at ECF No. 44), the Court granted Intuit's motion to stay pending resolution of IPR2023-00029, per the Order Granting Motion to Stay at ECF No. 42. On the same day, the Court granted the parallel stay in Ziff Davis (6:22-cv-00597, ECF No. 37) and the Upland case was voluntarily dismissed (6:22-cv-00594, ECF No. 29). (Monday.com stay order, 2024-03-13, quoting Intuit docket entries 42 and 44; PTACTS/Docket Alarm copy.)
• No motion to dismiss or transfer of record confirmed in the sources retrieved; the litigation was effectively frozen by the stay before those issues matured.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

The case was stayed at the initial pretrial conference stage, before any Markman hearing or claim construction order issued in the district court. Claim construction issues were instead resolved in the parallel IPR, where the PTAB applied the Phillips standard in finding the challenged claims obvious (see below).

4. Discovery milestones

Discovery did not progress meaningfully: the parties had only reached the scheduling-order stage (agreed motion for scheduling order and initial pretrial conference on 2024-01-30) when the case was stayed. No significant discovery disputes or milestone rulings were identified in the sources retrieved.

5. Trial, verdict, and post-trial motions

None. The case was stayed pending IPR before trial and never proceeded to verdict. There was no JMOL, new-trial motion, or fee motion in the district court.

6. Parallel PTAB IPR proceedings (and effect on the litigation)

• IPR2023-00029, Unified Patents, LLC v. Pedersen (the IPR that drove the stay):
  • 2022-10-14 — Petition filed challenging claims 1 and 14–17 of the '920 patent on obviousness grounds (Funk (US 5,937,162) in view of Law (US 7,058,586) or Kamakura (US 6,047,310)).
  • 2023-05-15 — PTAB instituted review of all challenged claims (claims 1, 14–17). (Patexia/IPR case summary.)
  • 2024-03-20 — Oral argument transcript.
  • 2024-05-10 — Final Written Decision (Paper 29): all challenged claims (1, 14–17) held unpatentable as obvious. (Patexia; Unified Patents summary.)
  • 2024-07-12 — Pedersen filed a Notice of Appeal to the Federal Circuit (Appeal No. 2024-2090). (PTACTS notice of appeal.)
  • 2026-03-26 — Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's obviousness holding in a nonprecedential opinion (Lourie and Hughes, Circuit Judges; Chief District Judge Kleeh), holding the Board's finding on the "delivery parameters" limitation was supported by substantial evidence. (Pedersen v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2024-2090 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 26, 2026).)
• IPR2023-00867, Oracle Corp. v. Pedersen — a second IPR on the '920 patent; it was pending in parallel (mandatory notices dated 2023-06-02). Its final outcome was not confirmed in the sources retrieved.

Effect on litigation: The PTAB's invalidation of every asserted claim (1 and 14–17) — affirmed on appeal — is the controlling event. Because the asserted claims were cancelled as unpatentable, the district court case had no surviving infringement claim to try.

7. Final disposition / present posture

• The district court case has been stayed since 2024-01-30 (ECF No. 42) pending resolution of IPR2023-00029 and the Federal Circuit appeal.
• As of the sources retrieved (through early/mid-2026), no final dismissal or judgment on the merits in the district court was confirmed. Given the Federal Circuit's affirmance on 2026-03-26 of the PTAB's cancellation of all asserted claims, the expected disposition is dismissal (by stipulation or motion) of the stayed infringement action — but that final docket entry had not been captured in the public sources I retrieved. The ExParte case tracker still listed the case as "Open," which may be stale.
• Practical bottom line: Intuit prevailed. The asserted claims of the '920 patent were invalidated in IPR2023-00029 (FWD 2024-05-10), the Federal Circuit affirmed on 2026-03-26, and the district court case remains stayed with no viable infringement claims remaining.

Sources

• UniCourt case summary & docket (ECF Nos. 1–7); Justia Docket 6:2022cv00588 (retrieved 2022-06-27).
• Order Granting Defendant's Motion to Stay, Pedersen v. Monday.com, 6:22-cv-00923-ADA-DTG (W.D. Tex. Mar. 13, 2024) (PTACTS/Docket Alarm exhibit), citing Intuit ECF Nos. 25, 42, 44.
• IPR2023-00029 docket/Patexia summary (institution 2023-05-15; FWD 2024-05-10; appeal 2024-2090).
• Pedersen v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2024-2090 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 26, 2026) (nonprecedential) — CAFC opinion PDF; Unified Patents insights (2024-05-13, 2026-03-26).

Caveats: (1) Intuit's answer/counterclaims were not visible in the sources retrieved; (2) the exact filing date of Intuit's stay motion (ECF 25) was not confirmed (bracketed between the 2023-05-15 IPR institution and the 2024-01-30 grant); (3) the terminal docket entry disposing of the stayed district court case after the Federal Circuit affirmance was not confirmed.

I'll research the counsel of record for this case using multiple sources.

The initial results show William P. Ramey III filed the complaint. Let me dig deeper into the docket for all plaintiff-side counsel appearances and firm details.

I have strong confirmation on William P. Ramey III. Now let me check for other plaintiff-side attorneys (e.g., Jacob Henry, who handled PTAB matters) who may have entered appearances in this district court case, and look for more recent docket activity.

Based on the available public docket sources (Unicourt, Justia, and PACER-derived entries), here is what is confirmed regarding plaintiff's counsel in Pedersen v. Intuit, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00588 (W.D. Tex., Waco Division):

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff Peter Henrik Pedersen

William P. Ramey III

• Role: Lead counsel / attorney of record (sole plaintiff-side attorney reflected on the initial docket filings). He signed the Complaint (ECF No. 1), the AO 120 patent form notice (ECF No. 2), Request for Summons (ECF No. 3), Certificate of Interested Parties (ECF No. 4), and the executed Summons return (ECF No. 6), all filed June 8–15, 2022. Unicourt and Justia both list "William P. Ramey, III" as the plaintiff's attorney.
• Firm: Ramey LLP (founding/managing partner), 5020 Montrose Blvd., Suite 800, Houston, TX 77006.
• Experience note: A prolific plaintiff-side patent litigator in Judge Albright's W.D. Tex. court and one of the most active NPE-side lawyers in the country; he filed Pedersen's wave of ~20 cases asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 against Intuit, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, Zoho, Yahoo, and others. He has drawn notable sanctions-related scrutiny (e.g., Cisco's motion to require court pre-clearance of new cases, and the N.D. Cal. Koji IP v. Renesas Rule 11/inherent-authority sanctions order involving Ramey LLP lawyers), and was profiled by Bloomberg Law as "the lawyer big tech loves to hate."

Related counsel (not confirmed as appearing in this district case — flagged for accuracy)

• Jacob B. Henry (Ramey LLP, Houston) represented Pedersen as patent owner counsel in the parallel PTAB IPRs (IPR2023-00029, IPR2023-00867) and signed updated mandatory notices from Ramey LLP's Houston office. I found no direct evidence that he entered an appearance in the district court case itself.
• Robert Greenspoon, William W. Flachsbart, Mark Magas (Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig PLLC, Chicago, IL) and Thomas Mansfield Dunlap (Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig PLLC, Vienna, VA) represented Pedersen on the Federal Circuit appeal of the IPR (Appeal No. 2024-2090, Pedersen v. Unified Patents, affirmed Mar. 26, 2026). That representation was appellate/PTAB-side, not in this W.D. Tex. action.

Case status context (relevant to counsel confirmation)

• The case was stayed by order (ECF No. 42) in early 2024 pending inter partes review, consistent with the related Pedersen cases against Monday.com, Upland, and Ziff Davis. The PTAB's final written decision in IPR2023-00029 found claims 1 and 14–17 unpatentable, and the Federal Circuit affirmed on March 26, 2026.
• Because the case has been stayed and the underlying docket beyond mid-2022 is not fully reflected in the free public sources I retrieved, I cannot rule out that additional Ramey LLP attorneys (e.g., Susan S.Q. Kalra or Jeffrey E. Kubiak) or local counsel later entered appearances. PACER review of the full docket for 6:22-cv-00588 would be the definitive source for the complete attorney-of-record list; the confirmed filer on every plaintiff document captured is William P. Ramey III.

Counsel of Record for Defendant Intuit, Inc.

Based on the publicly available docket sources I was able to retrieve (Justia Dockets and UniCourt, both mirroring W.D. Tex. PACER entries for 6:22-cv-00588), one attorney of record is confirmed for the defendant:

Erick Scott Robinson

• Role: Outside counsel of record for Intuit, Inc. (first substantive defense filing — Docket No. 7, "Notice of 45-Day Extension of Time to Move, Answer, or Otherwise Respond," filed 6/27/2022 — bears his ECF signature: (Robinson, Erick)). He is the only defendant-side attorney listed in the case's "Represented By" field on Justia/UniCourt as of the docket snapshots available.
• Firm / Office: The docket text itself does not state his firm in the entries I could retrieve. Directory data indicates he was at Porter Hedges LLP, Houston, TX (1000 Main Street) around this period (Huski.ai profile: erobinson@porterhedges.com, 713-226-6752; Martindale lists him at that address). Note: current USPTO OED data (April 2026) lists his firm as Cherry Johnson Siegmund James PC, Waco, TX, so his firm affiliation at the time of filing should be confirmed via the PACER signature block if precision matters.
• Relevant experience: USPTO-registered patent attorney (Reg. No. 51,354) with a substantial patent litigation background — former patent litigator at McKool Smith and Weil, Gotshal & Manges in Texas, later in-house senior patent counsel at Qualcomm and Red Hat, with trial experience on both the plaintiff and defendant side in federal court and before the ITC. That background is consistent with defending a software patent-infringement suit in Judge Albright's Waco division.

Caveats / gaps

• Additional appearances not verified: The case has progressed well beyond the early docket — Intuit filed a motion to stay (ECF No. 25), the court granted the stay (ECF No. 42, with related proceedings before Magistrate Judge Derek T. Gilliland and a January 30, 2024 pretrial conference transcript at ECF No. 44), and the case was stayed pending IPR. Later substantive filings (motion-to-stay briefing, IPR coordination, etc.) may have added more outside counsel and/or Intuit in-house counsel, but those attorney names were not visible in the free docket mirrors I could access. A full PACER docket report (or CourtListener/UniCourt premium view) for entries 8 through 44+ would be needed to confirm whether additional defense counsel entered appearances.
• No indication of sealing: Nothing in the retrieved docket suggests defense filings or counsel lists are sealed; the limitation is simply the incompleteness of free docket sources.
• Firm attribution: I'm flagging the Porter Hedges attribution as high-probability but not docket-confirmed — it comes from lawyer-directory data rather than the filing itself. If you need certainty, the ECF signature block on Docket No. 7 (available on PACER for a small fee) will resolve it.

Bottom line: Erick Scott Robinson is the confirmed defendant-side attorney of record from the early docket; any additional defense counsel (e.g., on the stay motion and IPR-related filings) are not captured in the sources I searched and should be verified through PACER before being reported as counsel of record.