Peter Henrik Pedersen v. Upland Software, Inc.

Case overview. Pedersen v. Upland Software, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00594-ADA-DTG (W.D. Tex., Waco Div.), is a patent-infringement suit filed in June 2022 by Peter Henrik Pedersen, an individual inventor-plaintiff whose enforcement is widely characterized as NPE/PAE activity. Unified Patents describes Pedersen as "believed to be associated with AiPi Solutions," and the '920 patent was asserted in a broad campaign against roughly twenty major technology and software companies (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, Adobe, Salesforce, Zoho, Intuit, Wix, Zendesk, Ziff Davis, Blackbaud, Constant Contact, Monday.com, Aurea, and others). Unified Patents' litigation portal classifies Pedersen's entity type as "NPE (Individual)." Upland Software, Inc. is the defendant—a publicly traded (NASDAQ: UPLD) enterprise software company whose product lines include email-marketing and customer-messaging platforms (its Adestra brand is its flagship email marketing suite). Pedersen, represented by William P. Ramey III (Ramey LLP, formerly Ramey & Schwaller), alleged infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920, "Profile Responsive Electronic Message Management System," issued November 15, 2005 (Complaint, ECF No. 1, with Exhibit A claim chart; answer with jury demand at ECF No. 8). The complaint accused Upland's email-marketing/message-distribution software of practicing the claimed system; the specific accused product names in the complaint were not confirmed in the publicly available docket excerpts I located, so that detail should be verified against ECF No. 1-1 if needed.

Patent and procedural posture. The '920 patent claims an electronic message management system comprising recipient and messenger profile applications, a message input application, and an individual message generator that assembles and delivers messages according to recipient-specified "delivery parameters" (where, when, and how specific types of messages from specific messengers are delivered). In other words, it claims a centralized, profile-driven email/message routing and personalization system—essentially a broad e-marketing and message-distribution patent. The case was assigned to District Judge Alan D. Albright (with Magistrate Judge Derek T. Gilliland, per the ADA-DTG case suffix) in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas—at filing, the most patentee-friendly venue in the country, which drove the bulk of NPE litigation before the 2022 reassignment rules diluted Judge Albright's patent docket. Upland answered in July 2022 (ECF No. 8, counsel Edward Cavazos and Benjamin Bernell), then moved to stay pending inter partes review (ECF No. 11). The case did not reach trial: Pedersen filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (ECF No. 29), and the case was dismissed on the day of the initial pretrial conference, January 30, 2024—the same day Judge Albright granted stays in the related Pedersen cases against Intuit (6:22-cv-00588) and Ziff Davis (6:22-cv-00597) (see Order Granting Motion to Stay in Pedersen v. Monday.com, 6:22-cv-00923, signed March 13, 2024, which recounts the Upland dismissal, citing ECF No. 29; Unified Patents portal lists 6:22-cv-00594 as "Closed").

Why the case is notable. This suit is a unit of one of the larger single-patent NPE campaigns of the early 2020s, and its trajectory illustrates how centralized IPR challenges can collapse an entire litigation wave. On October 14, 2022, Unified Patents petitioned for IPR (IPR2023-00029) challenging claims 1 and 14-17 of the '920 patent on obviousness grounds (over Funk in view of Law or Kamakura); the PTAB instituted, and its final written decision found the challenged claims unpatentable. The district-court cases then unraveled—Upland was voluntarily dismissed, Intuit and Ziff Davis were stayed, and other defendants (including Oracle in IPR2023-00867) pursued parallel challenges. The coda came on March 26, 2026, when the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB in Pedersen v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2024-2090 (nonprecedential; Lourie and Hughes, C.JJ., and Kleeh, Chief D.J.), holding the obviousness finding supported by substantial evidence—effectively confirming the '920 patent invalid and neutralizing Pedersen's remaining enforcement leverage. Separately, the campaign generated a notable pleading-stage ruling in a companion case (Pedersen v. Zoho Corp., 1:23-cv-71-DII, Judge Pitman, May 23, 2023), which denied a Rule 12(b)(6) motion on the ground that the defendant's "recipient specified by messenger" argument was really a premature claim-construction dispute. Sources: Unified Patents insights (Oct. 17, 2022; Mar. 26, 2026), PTACTS/docket-alarm copies of Judge Albright's March 13, 2024 stay order, Justia docket for 6:22-cv-00594, the Federal Circuit's Vitallaw-summarized opinion, and CourtListener's Zoho order.

Pedersen v. Upland Software, Inc. — Key Legal Developments & Outcome

Case: Peter Henrik Pedersen v. Upland Software, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00594-ADA-DTG (W.D. Tex., Waco Division) — Judge Alan D. Albright; Magistrate Judge Derek T. Gilliland
Patent: U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 ("Profile Responsive Electronic Message Management System")

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1. Filing & Initial Pleadings

• 2022-06-08/09 — Complaint (ECF No. 1). Pedersen, an individual NPE, sued Upland for infringement of the '920 patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271. The complaint identified the '920 patent as the patent in suit at ¶ 12. (Sources: Unified Patents litigation portal, which lists the case as filed 2022-06-08 and status "Closed"; Pedersen's PTAB mandatory notice in IPR2023-00867 lists the filing date as June 9, 2022.) Plaintiff's counsel was William P. Ramey III (Ramey LLP / Ramey & Schwaller), who represented Pedersen across his nationwide WDTX campaign against ~20 defendants asserting the same patent.
• Answer/counterclaims. I could not confirm from available sources the date of Upland's answer or whether it asserted counterclaims. In the parallel related case Pedersen v. Monday.com, the answer came on 2022-12-19 (ECF No. 10); Upland's answer likely fell in a similar window, but that specific docket entry is unverified. Caveat: do not treat an answer date or counterclaim allegations as established.

2. Pre-Trial Motions of Substance

• 2023-06-21 — Upland's Motion to Stay Pending Inter Partes Review (ECF No. 11). Upland moved to stay the case pending IPR of the '920 patent, matching motions filed in the related Intuit (6:22-cv-00588, ECF No. 25) and Ziff Davis (6:22-cv-00597, ECF No. 16) cases. (Source: Judge Gilliland's 2024-03-13 Order Granting Defendant's Motion to Stay in Pedersen v. Monday.com, 6:22-cv-00923-ADA-DTG, ECF No. 11, which expressly recounts the Upland docket.)
• 2024-01-30 — Initial Pretrial Conference. The Upland, Intuit, and Ziff Davis cases all had agreed scheduling motions and an initial pretrial conference before Judge Gilliland on January 30, 2024 (Upland transcript at ECF No. 31). Per the later Monday.com stay order, the Court noted at that conference that plaintiff "has not diligently pursued this case." The Upland case was dismissed on the very day of that conference, before the Court ruled on Upland's stay motion.
• No motions to dismiss, transfer, or summary judgment of substance were reached; the case never progressed past the stay-dismissal stage. No Markman hearing, scheduling order, or trial date was ever set.

3. Claim Construction (Markman)

• Not reached. The case was dismissed before any claim construction proceedings. (The same patent had been through claim construction in an earlier related case, Pedersen v. Mailgun Technologies, No. 6:21-cv-01153-ADA (W.D. Tex., Sept.–Oct. 2022), which was cited in later IPR expert reports, but not in the Upland case.)

4. Discovery Milestones

• None of strategic significance. The docket shows no substantive discovery activity; the case stalled after the stay motion, and Judge Gilliland later characterized the related cases as having been pursued without diligence ("Plaintiff has not diligently pursued this case and will not be unduly prejudiced by a stay" — Monday.com stay order, quoting the 2024-01-30 IPTC transcript at ECF No. 44 pp. 14–15 in the Intuit case).

5. Trial Events & Verdict

• None. The case was voluntarily dismissed before trial, so there was no verdict, JMOL, new-trial motion, or fee award.

6. Final Disposition

• 2024-01-30 — Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (ECF No. 29). Pedersen voluntarily dismissed Upland with a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal on the day of the initial pretrial conference. (Sources: Judge Gilliland's 2024-03-13 Monday.com stay order: "The case against Upland was dismissed on the day of the initial pre-trial conference... Upland Software, 6:22-cv-00594-ADA-DTG, ECF No. 29 (Notice of Voluntary Dismissal).") Unified Patents' litigation portal confirms the case is Closed. Whether the dismissal was with or without prejudice (and whether it was a unilateral Rule 41(a)(1) notice or a stipulation) is not confirmed from my sources.
• The practical driver: with Unified Patents' IPR pending and multiple co-pending IPRs threatening the only asserted patent, Pedersen shed the Upland action rather than litigate it.

7. Parallel PTAB Proceedings & Their Effect

• IPR2023-00029 — Unified Patents, LLC v. Pedersen (the operative IPR for this case).
  • 2022-10-14: Petition filed challenging claims 1 and 14–17 of the '920 patent as obvious over Funk (U.S. Pat. 5,937,162) in view of Law (U.S. Pat. 7,058,586) or Kamakura (U.S. Pat. 6,047,310). Unified was represented by Haynes and Boone (Jon Bowser, Angela Oliver, Michael McCarty, Matt Beck) and Unified in-house counsel.
  • Trial instituted; oral hearing held 2024-02-14.
  • 2024-05-10: Final Written Decision — all challenged claims (1, 14–17) held unpatentable as obvious.
  • 2026-03-26: Federal Circuit affirmed in Pedersen v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 24-2090 (nonprecedential; Judges Lourie and Hughes, Chief District Judge Kleeh), holding the Board's obviousness finding supported by substantial evidence (Funk taught sender/messenger-specific delivery parameters). (Sources: Unified Patents "News & Views," 2024-05-10; Fed. Cir. opinion 24-2090, decided 2026-03-26.)
• IPR2023-00867 — Oracle Corp. v. Pedersen (petition phase; Pedersen's updated mandatory notice filed 2023-08-29 references the Upland case as "Pending" as of that date).
• IPR2023-00986 — Adobe Inc. v. Pedersen (petition filed 2023-06-01 challenging claims 1–11 and 14–18; Dr. Philip Greenspun declaration).
• Effect on the litigation: Upland's stay motion (ECF No. 11) was premised on IPR2023-00029, whose final written decision was then expected by May 15, 2024. Because Pedersen voluntarily dismissed Upland on 2024-01-30 — before the stay motion was decided and before the PTAB's FWD — the litigation ended without the Court ever ruling on the stay. In the surviving related cases (Intuit, Ziff Davis, Monday.com), Judge Gilliland granted stays pending IPR2023-00029 on 2024-03-13; the May 10, 2024 FWD invalidating the only asserted patent then gutted the remainder of Pedersen's '920 campaign.

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Bottom Line

Pedersen v. Upland Software never reached the merits: filed June 2022, stalled behind Upland's June 2023 motion to stay pending IPR, and was voluntarily dismissed by Pedersen on 2024-01-30 (ECF No. 29) — the same day as the initial pretrial conference and about three months before the PTAB invalidated all challenged claims of the '920 patent (IPR2023-00029, FWD 2024-05-10), a decision the Federal Circuit affirmed on 2026-03-26. The case is closed with no judgment on infringement, no damages, and no fees awarded.

Unverified items: Upland's answer date/counterclaims, the with/without-prejudice terms of the dismissal, and the docket number/date of the Court's dismissal entry (if any was entered beyond the notice itself) could not be confirmed from public sources searched; those specifics would require a PACER look-up of 6:22-cv-00594.

Based on my research, here is what the record shows regarding plaintiff's counsel in Pedersen v. Upland Software, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00594 (W.D. Tex.):

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record

William P. Ramey III

• Role: Lead counsel (signing attorney on all initial plaintiff filings)
• Firm: Ramey LLP, 5020 Montrose Blvd., Suite 8, Houston, TX 77006
• Source: The Justia docket for 6:22-cv-00594 (retrieved Aug. 5, 2022) shows Ramey as the e-filing attorney on the Complaint (ECF No. 1), Request for Issuance of Summons (ECF No. 3), Certificate of Interested Parties (ECF No. 4), and Return of Service (ECF No. 6). Ramey LLP is also the firm identified as patent-owner counsel for Peter Henrik Pedersen in the parallel PTAB proceedings involving the same patent (e.g., IPR2023-00867, Oracle v. Pedersen, mandatory notice dated Aug. 29, 2023, listing Ramey LLP at the Houston address).
• Experience note: Ramey is a well-known Waco/WDTX patent plaintiff's lawyer who has represented Pedersen across his campaign asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,965,920 (against Oracle, SAP America, Intuit, Ziff Davis, Monday.com, and others), in addition to many other patent infringement actions before Judge Albright.

Jacob B. Henry (likely co-counsel, though not independently confirmed on this specific district docket)

• Role: Co-counsel / backup (appeared for Pedersen as patent owner in the parallel IPRs)
• Firm: Ramey LLP, Houston, TX
• Source: IPR2023-00867 mandatory notice (Aug. 29, 2023) and IPR2023-00029 (Unified Patents v. Pedersen) list Jacob B. Henry (USPTO Reg. No. 61,093) of Ramey LLP as attorney for patent owner Pedersen on the same '920 patent. He signed the IPR filings at jhenry@rameyfirm.com. I could not independently confirm a filed notice of appearance by Henry in the Upland district docket from the available search results, so his district-court appearance should be verified against PACER if precision is needed.

Caveats and Case Status Notes

• Docket visibility is limited: The Justia docket for this case was last retrieved on August 5, 2022, so I only directly confirmed filings through ECF No. 10. The Justia attorney listing also contains a truncated second name beginning "Donald H." which I could not verify from any reliable source; I will not speculate as to that attorney's identity or role.
• Pro hac vice activity appears to relate to the defense: ECF No. 9 (July 26, 2022) is a "Pro Hac Vice Letter to James Quail," which — read alongside the answer filed the same day by Upland's counsel Edward Cavazos and Benjamin Bernell — appears to concern defendant Upland's out-of-state counsel rather than plaintiff's team.
• Case outcome: The case has since been voluntarily dismissed (ECF No. 29, Notice of Voluntary Dismissal; dismissed on the day of the initial pretrial conference on Jan. 30, 2024), and the Unified Patents litigation portal lists the case as closed. That dismissal does not change who the counsel of record were while the case was pending.
• Later IPR counsel change: In IPR2023-00029, Pedersen later substituted counsel from Ramey LLP to Whitestone Law (Joseph Zito, lead; Erik Lund, backup) in late 2023/early 2024. That change occurred in the PTAB proceeding after this district case was already winding down, and I have no evidence it affected the district-court record in the Upland case.

Bottom line: The confirmed plaintiff's counsel of record is William P. Ramey III of Ramey LLP (Houston, TX), the signing attorney on the complaint and all early plaintiff filings. For a complete, authoritative attorney list (including any additional Ramey LLP associates who may have entered appearances after August 2022, and the identity of the truncated "Donald H." entry), a PACER review of the docket's attorney appearance records would be needed.

Defendant's Counsel of Record — Pedersen v. Upland Software, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00594-ADA-DTG (W.D. Tex.)

Based on the docket record (Justia mirror of the W.D. Tex. docket, last retrieved Aug. 5, 2022) and firm/attorney sources, Upland Software, Inc. was represented by the following attorneys of record:

1. Edward A. Cavazos — Lead / local counsel

• Firm: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, Austin, TX office (managing partner of the Austin office)
• Role: Appears to be lead counsel for Upland. He signed the Answer with Jury Demand (ECF No. 8, filed July 26, 2022) and the Notice of Extension of Time (ECF No. 7, June 29, 2022).
• Experience: Longtime Upland Software outside counsel; Pillsbury's bio states he represents Upland "in a wide array of technology-related matters … and defense of patent infringement claims in multiple cases filed in U.S. District Courts." He previously defended Upland in Pherah LLC v. Upland Software, Inc., No. 6:15-cv-00959 (E.D. Tex. – Marshall). He is Chambers/Best Lawyers/IAM Patent 1000 recognized for IP litigation and technology law. (Sources: Justia docket; Pillsbury attorney bio; LawTally/PlainSite case listings.)

2. Benjamin L. Bernell — Associate/counsel (firm not fully confirmed)

• Firm: Listed on the docket as counsel for Upland; appears to be a Pillsbury (Austin) colleague of Cavazos based on docket context, but I could not independently verify his firm from the available search results.
• Role: Filed the Rule 7.1 Disclosure Statement for Upland (ECF No. 10, Aug. 5, 2022).
• Experience: Not verified in this search.

3. James Quail — Pro hac vice applicant / co-counsel

• Firm: Not identified in available sources.
• Role: The court issued a Pro Hac Vice Letter to James Quail (ECF No. 9, July 26, 2022), indicating Upland sought to admit him pro hac vice. His firm and whether he ultimately appeared are not confirmed from the sources retrieved.
• Experience: Not verified.

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Important caveats and case-status notes

• Case outcome: Although the case metadata lists the status as "Filed," the case was later voluntarily dismissed. A PTAB exhibit (an order granting a stay in the related Pedersen v. Monday.com case) references Upland's Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (ECF No. 29) filed on the day of the initial pretrial conference (Jan. 30, 2024), and ECF No. 31 dismissing the case. Unified Patents' litigation portal likewise lists 6:22-cv-00594 as closed. (Sources: DocketAlarm PTAB exhibit 1029 in IPR2025-01334; Unified Patents portal.)
• In-house counsel: No Upland in-house attorneys were identified in the docket entries retrieved; I did not find evidence of in-house counsel of record in this case.
• Later-stage filings: The Justia docket snapshot ends Aug. 5, 2022. Counsel appearing on the later motion to stay (ECF No. 11), the voluntary dismissal (ECF No. 29), and the dismissal order (ECF No. 31) are not confirmed from the available sources, so the roster above may be incomplete for the case's full lifespan.
• Verification limit: Because I could not retrieve the full PACER docket or later filings, Bernell's and Quail's firm affiliations should be verified against the actual pleadings (ECF Nos. 8–10) or the W.D. Tex. PACER attorney docket before relying on them for service or conflict purposes.