Peter Henrik Pedersen v. Salesforce.com, Inc.

Case Overview

Parties. Plaintiff Peter Henrik Pedersen is an individual inventor residing in Denmark (Gammel Hareskovvej 285, 3500 Værløse) and the sole owner of U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 ("Profile Responsive Electronic Message Management System"). Unified Patents and RPX describe him as an individual-inventor/NPE-style campaign plaintiff believed to be associated with AiPi Solutions; he was represented here by William P. Ramey III of Ramey & Schwaller, LLP (now Ramey LLP). Defendant Salesforce.com, Inc. is the Delaware-incorporated, San Francisco-headquartered CRM and cloud-software operating company; it was represented by Brian Christopher Nash. Salesforce's ties to the forum included a registered place of business at 600 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX 78701, which the complaint invoked to establish venue and personal jurisdiction.

Accused technology and patent. The complaint (filed April 22, 2022) asserts the '920 patent, which issued November 15, 2005 from a July 12, 2001 application claiming priority to a July 12, 2000 provisional. In one line: claim 1 is drawn to an electronic message management system in which recipients supply profile data specifying where, when, and how specific types of messages from specific messengers are delivered to them, and an "individual message generator" assembles and sends messages according to those delivery parameters (dependent claims 14–17 add message/messenger compatibility matching and delivery by email, voice, fax, digital, or hardcopy means). Pedersen alleged direct infringement, literally and/or under the doctrine of equivalents, of at least claim 1, accusing Salesforce of making, using, selling, and offering for sale products practicing the claimed methods. RPX summarized the campaign as targeting defendants' "email marketing platforms"; the complaint itself does not name a specific Salesforce product line (e.g., Marketing Cloud/Email Studio/Pardot) in the sources I found, so the precise accused product is not independently confirmed.

Procedural posture and venue. The case is 6:22-cv-00409, Western District of Texas, Waco Division, assigned to Judge Alan D. Albright, with a jury demand. Salesforce was served April 25, 2022, and its answer deadline was extended to June 30, 2022. The docket entries I could verify stop in mid-2022 (case status "pending"), and the case's final district-court disposition is not confirmed in the available sources. Venue matters because Judge Albright's Waco courtroom was, at filing, the nation's dominant patent venue — drawing the vast majority of U.S. patent cases through a fast "rocket docket" and patentee-friendly practices — which is why an individual inventor based in Denmark filed this and his related suits there.

Why the case is notable. The suit is part of a serial single-patent campaign: Pedersen first sued Google (6:21-cv-01152), Microsoft (6:21-cv-01154), J2 Global (6:21-cv-01155), and Mailgun in November 2021, then added Zoho (6:22-cv-00408), Salesforce (6:22-cv-00409), and Oracle (6:22-cv-00410) on April 22, 2022, later extending to Intuit, Blackbaud, Constant Contact, Monday.com, Zendesk, Aurea, Adobe, Wix, and Yahoo. The campaign's defining feature is its IPR linkage: Unified Patents petitioned for IPR2023-00029 on October 14, 2022; the PTAB's May 10, 2024 final written decision held all challenged claims (1 and 14–17) unpatentable as obvious, and the Federal Circuit affirmed on March 26, 2026 (Pedersen v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 24-2090). Oracle's IPR2023-00867 and Adobe's IPR2023-00986 terminated by settlement. In practical terms, the Salesforce case — like its siblings — became a stay-and-await-IPR play in which a third-party petitioner effectively resolved the dispute for the entire defendant cohort, and the asserted patent has now been confirmed invalid on appeal, illustrating both the NPE pattern of using WDTX/Albright as a filing hub and the leverage of Unified's IPR program against inventor-owned software patents.

Pedersen v. Salesforce.com, Inc. — Key Legal Developments and Outcome

Case: Peter Henrik Pedersen v. Salesforce.com, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00409-ADA (W.D. Tex.) — patent infringement action over U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 ("Profile Responsive Electronic Message Management System"), before Judge Alan D. Albright.

1. Filing & initial pleadings

• 2022-04-22 — Complaint filed (Dkt. 1). Plaintiff Peter Henrik Pedersen, represented by William P. Ramey III (Ramey & Schwaller LLP/Ramey LLP), sued Salesforce.com, Inc. for direct infringement of the '920 patent (35 U.S.C. § 271(a)), alleging Salesforce's email-marketing platforms infringe at least claim 1. Jury demanded by plaintiff. The same day, the court issued summons (Dkt. 4), the AO 120 patent notice was filed (Dkt. 2), and the case was assigned to Judge Albright (Justia docket; Unicourt case summary).
• 2022-04-25 — Salesforce served (summons returned executed, Dkt. 5, filed 2022-05-05); answer was due 2022-05-16.
• 2022-05-12 — Answer deadline extended to 2022-06-30 (Dkt. 6, Notice of Extension of Time; Salesforce counsel: Brian Christopher Nash). (Justia docket.)
• Answer/counterclaims: The docket text for Salesforce's substantive answer and any counterclaims was not captured in the retrievable record (Justia's docket snapshot ends 2022-05-12; PACER would show the 6/30/2022 filing). Not confirmed from public sources — do not rely on unverified details.
• Case context: This was one of three WDTX suits filed the same day by Pedersen — Salesforce (6:22-cv-00409), Oracle (6:22-cv-00410), and Zoho (6:22-cv-00408) — in an email-management campaign first launched in November 2021 against Google/Alphabet, Mailgun, Microsoft, and Ziff Davis (RPX, 2022-04-29).

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• No motion to dismiss, transfer, or stay specific to this case is confirmed in the retrievable record. The case was listed as "Pending - Other Pending" as of mid-2022 (Unicourt), and as an "Active" related district-court matter in the Unified Patents IPR petition exhibits (Docket Alarm/P.T.A.B. Exhibit 1012, Oct. 2022) and in Pedersen's updated mandatory notices in IPR2023-00029 dated 2024-01-23 (which lists Pedersen v. Salesforce, 6:22-cv-00409 as an active related matter, alongside Intuit 6:22-cv-00588 and Zoho).
• Given the parallel IPR on the '920 patent (below), a stay or dismissal is plausible, but no stay order or transfer order is verified in the sources retrieved.

3. Claim construction (Markman)

• No Markman order in the Salesforce case is confirmed. The only claim-construction order surfaced in the record is from a different Pedersen case: Pedersen v. Mailgun Technologies, Inc., No. 6:21-cv-01153-ADA (W.D. Tex.), with responsive briefs and a Claim Construction Order at Dkts. 23 (2022-09-12) and 33 (2022-10-19), as cited in the Philip Greenspun expert declaration filed in IPR2023-00986 (Adobe v. Pedersen, 2023-06-01). Whether the Salesforce case reached Markman before the IPR disposition is unconfirmed.

4. Discovery milestones

• No case-specific discovery milestones (e.g., claim charts, infringement/invalidity contentions, depositions, expert reports) are confirmed in the retrievable record. The case appears to have proceeded in the shadow of the PTAB proceedings.

5. Parallel PTAB IPR/PGR proceedings — the decisive event

• IPR2023-00029 — Unified Patents, LLC v. Peter Henrik Pedersen (U.S. Patent 6,965,920):
  • 2022-10-14 — Petition for IPR filed by Unified Patents, challenging claims 1 and 14–17 on obviousness grounds (per Patent Owner's Preliminary Response).
  • ~2023-02-17 — Patent Owner's Preliminary Response filed by Pedersen opposing institution (Docket Alarm).
  • Institution was granted (date not retrieved, but implied by the final written decision).
  • 2024-05-10 — Final Written Decision: PTAB held all challenged claims (1 and 14–17) unpatentable as obvious over Funk in view of either Law or Kamakura (Unified Patents insight, 2024-05-13; Fed. Cir. opinion).
  • 2026-03-26 — Federal Circuit affirmed in Pedersen v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2024-2090 (Fed. Cir., nonprecedential; Lourie and Hughes, C.JJ., and Kleeh, C.D.J., opinion by Kleeh), holding the Board's obviousness findings supported by substantial evidence, including that Funk discloses messenger-specific, user-specified delivery parameters (cafc.uscourts.gov opinion PDF; Patterson Sheridan Fed. Cir. summary; IP Law Daily/VitalLaw).
• IPR2023-00986 — Adobe Inc. v. Pedersen also challenged the '920 patent (per the 2023-06-01 Greenspun declaration exhibit); its outcome was not retrieved and is unconfirmed.
• Effect on litigation: Unified Patents' May 13, 2024 post-FWD summary noted the '920 patent was "currently asserted against … Salesforce …" — i.e., the Salesforce action was still alive as of the PTAB's invalidity ruling. The Fed. Cir. affirmance (March 2026) extinguished the only asserted patent's viable claims, which is the controlling development for the district case.

6. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

• No trial, verdict, JMOL, new-trial motion, or fee motion in this case is confirmed. Given the PTAB's 2024-05-10 final written decision invalidating all challenged claims and the 2026-03-26 affirmance, the case almost certainly did not proceed to trial on the merits.

7. Final disposition / present posture

• The Salesforce case remains "Pending"/"Open" in the last retrieved records (Unicourt as of 2022-06-21; Pedersen's IPR mandatory notices as of 2024-01-23; Unified's 2024-05-13 post-FWD summary).
• No final judgment, stipulated dismissal, or settlement is confirmed in the retrievable sources. The likely path — dismissal or judgment of non-infringement/invalidity following the IPR final written decision and Federal Circuit affirmance — is inference, not a verified docket fact. To confirm the terminal disposition, you would need PACER (case 6:22-cv-00409-ADA) or a current docket service, since the public docket snapshots retrieved (Justia, 2022-05-12; Unicourt, 2022-06-21) predate the IPR outcome.

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Bottom line

The decisive development in this litigation is the PTAB's invalidation of the asserted claims in IPR2023-00029 (2024-05-10), affirmed by the Federal Circuit (2026-03-26) — which functionally resolved the Salesforce case against the patentee even though the district court docket's terminal entry was not confirmed in the available sources.

Based on the available docket records, PACER-adjacent sources (UniCourt, Justia, CourtListener-indexed dockets), the complaint itself, and Ramey LLP's own announcements, here is what is confirmed regarding plaintiff's counsel of record in Pedersen v. Salesforce.com, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00409 (W.D. Tex.):

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record

1. William P. Ramey III — Lead counsel (counsel who signed and filed the pleadings)

• Firm: Ramey & Schwaller, LLP, which became Ramey LLP (the firm's own website describes Ramey LLP as "a full-service intellectual property law firm" operating from its Houston office; the PTAB mandatory-notice signature block for Pedersen's related IPR lists Ramey LLP, 5020 Montrose Blvd., Suite 8, Houston, Texas 77006).
• Role: Managing Partner of Ramey LLP and the attorney of record who filed the complaint, requested summons, and executed the return of service in this case. Docket entries #1 (Complaint, filed 4/22/2022), #3 (Request for Issuance of Summons), and #5 (Summons Returned Executed, 5/5/2022) are all attributed to "(Ramey, William)" — see Justia docket for Peter Pedersen v. Salesforce.com Inc., No. 6:2022cv00409 (txwdce/1170609), and UniCourt's case summary identifying "William P. Ramey, III of Ramey & Schwaller, LLP" as plaintiff's representative.
• Experience note: Ramey is a well-known patent-litigation plaintiff's lawyer, particularly active in W.D. Tex. before Judge Albright, running a high-volume patent-enforcement practice (including the broader Pedersen campaign asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 against Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Zoho, Ziff Davis, Blackbaud, Constant Contact, Monday.com, Wix, Zendesk, and others). His practice has also drawn judicial scrutiny — e.g., in January 2024, RPX reported that a D. Colo. magistrate judge ordered Ramey to show cause regarding neglectful behavior, raising questions about whether his firm was "spread too thin."

Important caveats

• No additional plaintiff attorneys confirmed as counsel of record in this specific district case. While the docket sources I could access (Justia's snapshot as of May 12, 2022; UniCourt's June 2022 snapshot) list only William P. Ramey III for the plaintiff, the later docket (after May 2022) was not fully retrievable in my searches. It is possible that additional Ramey LLP attorneys (e.g., Jacob B. Henry, who signed Pedersen's PTAB mandatory notices in related IPR2023-00029 as "Attorney for Patent Owner") later entered appearances in the district court case, but I could not verify any such entry from the record.
• No separate local counsel identified. The complaint was filed in Waco by Ramey's Houston firm; the docket does not reflect a separate Texas-local counsel appearance distinct from Ramey (whose firm is Houston-based, within the W.D. Tex.).
• No in-house counsel for plaintiff — Pedersen is an individual inventor (a Danish citizen, per the complaint's allegation) and is not represented by corporate in-house counsel.
• Case posture: As of the available records, the case was "Pending – Other Pending" (UniCourt) and "Active" (RPX/Docket Alarm, Sept. 2022). The underlying patent's asserted claims (1, 14–17) were later held unpatentable in IPR2023-00029, affirmed by the Federal Circuit on March 26, 2026 (Pedersen v. Unified Patents, No. 2024-2090, nonprecedential), which would bear on the eventual disposition of this district case — but I could not confirm a final judgment or dismissal order on this docket from my searches.

Bottom line

The only plaintiff counsel of record I can confirm with reliable sourcing is William P. Ramey III (Ramey LLP / formerly Ramey & Schwaller, LLP, Houston, TX) as lead/filing counsel. If you need a complete, up-to-date attorney list (including any pro hac vice or later substitute counsel), a PACER query of the full docket for 6:22-cv-00409 would be required — I could not verify additional appearances from publicly available sources.

I'll research the counsel of record for Salesforce.com in this case. Let me run several searches.

I found initial docket information. Let me dig deeper into the defense counsel and their firm affiliations.

Let me check the fuller docket for additional defense counsel appearances and case status.

Based on my research of the docket (via Justia, UniCourt, and RPX sources), here is what can be confirmed about defense counsel in Pedersen v. Salesforce.com, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00409 (W.D. Tex., Judge Alan D. Albright):

Counsel of Record for Defendant Salesforce.com, Inc.

Brian Christopher Nash

• Role: Defense counsel of record / local counsel (W.D. Tex.-admitted). He filed the defendant's first substantive docket entry—Filing 6, "Notice of Extension of Time for Defendant to Respond to Plaintiff's Complaint" (May 12, 2022)—which reset Salesforce's answer deadline to June 30, 2022. He is the only defense attorney listed on the retrieved docket (Justia/UniCourt list him as the sole "Defendant Attorney" for this case).
• Firm/Office: At the time of this case (2022), Bracewell LLP, 111 Congress Avenue, Ste. 2300, Austin, TX 78701 (per Martindale-Hubbell). Note: he has since moved firms—he was earlier with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman (Austin, per Texas State Bar records) and is now with Morrison & Foerster LLP (per his 2025 appearances in W.D. Tex. cases). For this 2022 matter, Bracewell is the firm affiliation.
• Experience: Registered patent attorney (UT Law '05; Iowa State B.S.M.E.), admitted to the W.D. Tex., E.D. Tex., Federal Circuit, and USPTO. He routinely serves as Texas local counsel for large tech defendants in Judge Albright's court—e.g., Amazon.com (Sonrai Memory Ltd. v. Amazon, 6:21-cv-00787), SolarWinds (Proven Networks v. SolarWinds, 6:20-cv-00338), Cisco (QPrivacy USA v. Cisco), Intel (Advanced Cluster Systems v. Intel, 7:24-cv-00245, where he sponsored pro hac vice motions for Munger Tolles lead counsel), Bumble, and CrowdStrike (Skysong Innovations v. CrowdStrike).

Important caveats

• No lead/out-of-state counsel identified. The retrieved docket (through roughly June 2022) shows only Nash appearing for Salesforce. If Salesforce later entered additional counsel (e.g., a national litigation firm or in-house attorneys) via later appearances, those entries were not visible in the sources I could access. Do not assume any other attorneys appeared.
• Case status: The case was "Pending" as of the last docket update I retrieved (UniCourt update dated ~June 21, 2022; Justia docket retrieved May 12, 2022). The RPX campaign tracker and Docket Alarm listings show the case as active into late 2022, but I could not confirm the final disposition (settlement, dismissal, or transfer) from the available snippets. The case's later procedural history—including any additional counsel appearances—should be verified directly on PACER (Case No. 6:22-cv-00409) before relying on this list as complete.

Bottom line: The only confirmed defense attorney of record is Brian Christopher Nash of Bracewell LLP (Austin), serving as Salesforce's local/defense counsel in the W.D. Tex. The docket evidence does not disclose a separate lead or in-house counsel for the defendant as of the retrieved filings.