Litigation

RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Adobe Inc. et al.

closed

3:18-md-02874-SI

Filed
2018-10-01
Terminated
2021-09-27

Patents at issue (1)

7710560

Summary

MDL No. 2874 consolidated RAH Color Technologies LLC's infringement actions against Adobe, Xerox, and others with Electronics For Imaging's declaratory-judgment action. The NPE Litigation Database lists the MDL as involving U.S. Patent 7,710,560; final judgment was entered on September 27, 2021, and the MDL docket closed July 26, 2022.

Case overview & background

Plain-language overview of the case: parties, accused product, patents at issue, and why the suit matters.

Case Overview: In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, MDL No. 2874 (N.D. Cal. 3:18-md-02874-SI)

The parties. RAH Color Technologies LLC is an inventor-owned patent holding company — a Virginia LLC (originally New York, with an office in Rochester, N.Y., later Alexandria, Va.) whose sole member is Dr. Richard A. Holub, a Ph.D. neurophysiologist who spent 1983–94 as a color scientist/engineer at Eikonix/Eastman Kodak, Agfa/Bayer and SuperMac Technologies, served as president of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts, taught at RIT, and contributed to CGATS graphic-arts standards. Holub built a networked color-reproduction prototype, formed Imagicolor Corp. in 1998 to commercialize it, and after that venture failed formed RAH in 2005 as a licensing vehicle; the company describes itself as owning 33–35 U.S. patents, all Holub's own inventions, and reported roughly 27 licensees over ten years at an average of under $1 million per license (Joint Preliminary Status Report, MDL Dkt. filed Jan. 7, 2019). Stanford's NPE Litigation Database classifies the '560 campaign as both "individual-inventor-started" and "product company," which is a fair characterization: RAH is a PAE in function but not a patent aggregator — it asserts only patents from its founder's own R&D. The defendants are the operating backbone of the digital prepress/print-color industry rather than a random group of alleged infringers: Adobe Inc. (San Jose — Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat/Creative Cloud color settings and ICC color management), Xerox Corp. (presses, print servers, FreeFlow), Electronics For Imaging/EFI (Fremont, Cal. — Fiery servers, Command WorkStation, Color Profiler Suite), Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Prinect Press Center/Color Toolbox), Dalim Software GmbH (ES/ESI workflow software), Quad/Graphics (a large commercial printer accused as an end user), and Eastman Kodak Co. (sued in W.D.N.Y., No. 6:19-cv-06112).

The technology and patents. The accused technology is the ICC color-management workflow itself — building device profiles from spectrophotometric readings, chromatic-adaptation and AToB0/BToA0 tag handling, gamut mapping against the ICC v.4 Perceptual Reference Medium Gamut, gray-component replacement, and ΔE-based verification of press output. The '560 patent, "System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites" (issued May 4, 2010), claims an apparatus: a processor/computer system with programs and data representative of light measured from media, and dependent claims on using that measured data to calculate color-reproduction error (claim 51, ΔE) and to graphically represent device gamuts (claim 54); RAH asserted claims 46, 51 and 54 of the '560 against Heidelberg's Prinect color-measurement/Color Toolbox systems (N.D. Ill. No. 1:19-cv-00193 complaint, Counts XXIV–XXVI) and listed the '560 in its Xerox pleading. One important caveat about the metadata: although the '560 is the patent indexed for this MDL in the NPE database (npe.law.stanford.edu/patent/7710560), the MDL as actually litigated covered a family of roughly nine to fourteen related RAH patents (including the '870, '251, '897, '433, '008, '761, '444, '704, '357 and '052). Adobe's case, No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI, was pleaded on the '897, '008, '761 and '444 — not the '560 — and Adobe's four IPRs targeted those four patents. The '560 appears to have been the tail of the campaign rather than its center of gravity; on its face (application filed Aug. 25, 1997, per Google Patents), its term would have run out around August 2017 absent adjustment, which is consistent with the court's observation that some RAH family patents had already expired — but I could not verify the '560's exact expiration date, so treat that as inference, not fact.

Procedural posture and why it matters. The JPML centralized the campaign as MDL No. 2874 by order of October 1, 2018, transferring the Adobe (N.D. Cal.), Xerox (W.D.N.Y. No. 6:18-cv-06746) and EFI declaratory-judgment (E.D. Va. No. 1:18-cv-01436) actions, then adding Heidelberg, Dalim and Kodak as tag-alongs; pretrial proceedings went to Senior Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco (Courtroom 1, 450 Golden Gate Ave.), under Pretrial Order #1 (govinfo, USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-00518). Venue is the whole story here. RAH's natural fora were Rochester (its old home, where Xerox and Kodak sit) and N.D. Ill.; EFI preemptively filed a DJ action in N.D. Cal., which Judge (then-Judge) Orrick dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction over RAH on October 24, 2018, and transferred to E.D. Va. — after which the JPML pulled it back to California anyway. The practical result was that a Virginia NPE litigated a national campaign

Key legal developments & outcome

Major rulings, motions, claim construction, settlements, and the present posture or final disposition.

Good foundation. Now let me pull the key orders — claim construction, summary judgment, and PTAB decisions.

Let me pull the CourtListener dockets and the district court's substantive orders.

Overview: what this MDL actually was

Before the chronology, one important framing point. The NPE Litigation Database entry (and the case metadata) lists a single patent — U.S. 7,710,560 — for MDL No. 2874. That is inaccurate as a description of the litigation. As Judge Illston's Pretrial Order #1 states, the MDL covered "the alleged infringement, validity, and enforceability of nine related patents owned by RAH in the field of color management technology," and the PTAB separately noted the MDL "involves ten (10) patents, six (6) of which are not the subject of these four IPR proceedings." (Pretrial Order #1, 3:18-md-02874-SI; IPR2019-00627 Paper 10 at 3.)

The '560 patent was asserted against Xerox, Heidelberger, Dalim, Quad/Graphics and Kodak — but not against Adobe. The Adobe action (No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI) asserted the '897, '008, '761 and '444 patents. So the four Adobe IPRs never touched the '560. Treat the metadata's "patent at issue" field as the database's simplification, not the scope of the case.

The MDL was also not a single case. It coordinated seven-plus actions:

Action Court of origin No.
RAH v. Xerox W.D.N.Y. (filed 2017-09-20) 6:18-cv-06746
RAH v. Adobe N.D. Ill. → N.D. Cal. (docket date 2018-06-04) 3:18-cv-03277-SI
EFI v. RAH (DJ action) N.D. Cal. → E.D. Va. → N.D. Cal. 1:18-cv-01436; 3:18-cv-07465-SI
RAH v. Dalim Software N.D. Ill. 1:19-cv-00275; 3:19-cv-00518-SI
RAH v. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen N.D. Ill. 1:19-cv-00193
RAH v. Kodak W.D.N.Y. 6:19-cv-06112
RAH v. Quad/Graphics N.D. Ill. (filed 2017-06-30) tag-along

Chronological developments

1. Filing and initial pleadings (2017 – mid-2018)

  • 2017-06-30 / 2017-09-20 — RAH sues Quad/Graphics (N.D. Ill.) and Xerox (W.D.N.Y.) on the color-management family. These are the two oldest campaigns feeding the MDL. (EFI's second amended complaint, Dkt. 63 in 3:18-cv-07465, cites both.)
  • 2018-05-07 — EFI files a declaratory judgment action in N.D. Cal. — without any prior contact from RAH — seeking declarations of non-infringement on the '870, '008, '444 and '704 patents. It alleged RAH "has accused and sued EFI's customers," pointing to the Ricoh (2015-09-17), Quad/Graphics (2017-06-30) and Xerox (2017-09-20) suits. (EFI SAC ¶¶ 5, 20, 26, 32)
  • 2018-06-04 — RAH v. Adobe docketed. Notably, the parties had already exchanged infringement and invalidity contentions twice — once under N.D. Ill. local rules and again under N.D. Cal. rules after transfer; Adobe served invalidity contentions on 2018-05-14 and supplemented 2018-08-23. (Joint Preliminary Status Report, 2019-01-07.)
  • 2018-10-24 — N.D. Cal. grants RAH's motion to dismiss EFI's DJ complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction.
  • 2018-11-14 — The EFI case is transferred to E.D. Va. rather than dismissed outright, then returns to N.D. Cal. as 3:18-cv-07465-SI.
  • 2018-12-06 — JPML orders centralization in N.D. Cal. before Judge Susan Illston as MDL No. 2874.

2. MDL formation and case management (2018-12 – 2019)

  • 2018-12-14 — Case management order (Dkt. 2) setting the initial conference.
  • 2019-01-07 — Joint Preliminary Status Report filed. It is unusually candid on damages theory: RAH represented that "over the past ten years, 27 companies have entered license agreements with RAH Color Technologies. The average amount of these licenses is less than $1 million," and that it "expects that the value of each of these cases is consistent with the licensing history." RAH also disclosed unsuccessful proposals for one-day arbitration and a stipulation on damages — an early signal that this was a licensing campaign run through litigation rather than a bet-the-company case.
  • 2019-01-15 — Initial status conference; Pretrial Order #1 governs.
  • 2019-01-25 — Conditional transfer orders bring Dalim and Heidelberger into the MDL.
  • 2019-04-04 — Initial CMC with all parties; Pretrial Order No. 2 sets EFI second-amended-complaint (2019-04-11) and RAH response (2019-04-25) deadlines.
  • 2019-04-18 — RAH moves under Rule 12(b)(1) to dismiss EFI's SAC for lack of declaratory-judgment jurisdiction, arguing (a) as to the '444 and '704 patents, EFI sought relief only on non-method claims and RAH never gave pre-expiration notice and never marked, so no damages exposure existed; and (b) as to all patents, EFI failed to plead indirect infringement adequately. (Order on motion, 3:18-cv-07465-SI)

3. Parallel PTAB proceedings — the decisive front (2019 – 2020)

Adobe filed four IPR petitions on 2019-02-01, all on the Adobe-case patents:

| IP

In the news

What the press has reported about this case, summarized with links to the source articles.

Initial results are court filings and PTAB documents — no press yet. Let me try more targeted searches for news coverage and outcomes.

Still no press hits. Let me try trade-press and outlet-specific angles.

Summary of press coverage: essentially none found.

I searched multiple angles — the MDL caption, "RAH Color Technologies" paired with Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Heidelberg and Dalim, the asserted patent number (7,710,560), plus settlement/verdict/summary-judgment terms and outlet-specific queries (Reuters, Law360, Bloomberg Law, IPWatchdog) — and found no published news or analysis article from Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, Ars Technica, The Verge, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, EFF, JD Supra, or the graphic-arts trade press discussing this MDL or the '560 patent. Everything that surfaced was primary-source or litigation-database material: PTAB petitions, institution decisions and final written decisions in Adobe's IPRs (IPR2019-00627/-00628/-00629/-00646), JPML transfer orders, the court's Pretrial Orders, and docket aggregators such as UniCourt and Patexia. That is a genuinely thin press record for a five-defendant, multi-patent MDL — consistent with an NPE campaign that never went to trial and ended in a stipulated dismissal, which typically attracts little coverage. I cannot rule out paywalled Law360 or Bloomberg Law dockets items that don't surface in open web search, but I found none, so I won't characterize any.

For what it's worth, the docket material itself (not press) shows the case resolving quietly: UniCourt's docket transcription records a joint stipulation of dismissal filed 2021-09-27 in RAH Color Technologies v. Adobe, No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI and RAH v. Dalim, No. 3:19-cv-00518-SI, granted the same day by Judge Illston — with no disclosed terms and no reported damages figure. The only economically relevant numbers appear in the parties' own filings, not in journalism: RAH's January 2019 joint status report (quoted in the IPR record) states that 27 companies had licensed the portfolio at an average of "less than $1 million" per license and that RAH expected each case to be valued "consistent with the licensing history" — a plaintiff's litigation position, not a reported settlement.

The closest thing to press I located was a December 2010 item from Taiwan's Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center (STPI), which reported on RAH Color Technologies' eight-patent suit against Seiko Epson in the Western District of New York — a case that did include the '560 patent but predates and is separate from this MDL. It identifies Dr. Richard A. Holub as founder and describes RAH as a research-capable patent holder rather than an acquirer of patents, but it says nothing about Adobe or the 2018–2021 MDL. Treat it as background only, not coverage of this case.

Sources

Plaintiff representatives

Counsel of record for the plaintiff(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

Good initial data. Let me verify the MDL-specific docket appearances and local counsel details.

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record — RAH Color Technologies LLC

Bottom line: RAH was represented by a small, vertically integrated team from Global IP Law Group, LLC (Chicago) — an IP monetization boutique that ran RAH's nationwide assertion campaign — with a Bay Area local counsel in the Northern District of California. The roster below is drawn from the ECF attorney listing in the constituent N.D. Cal. case, No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI (RAH v. Adobe), which is the case that was centralized into MDL No. 2874 before Judge Illston. The docket snapshot I could access is dated May 16, 2019, so it reflects counsel as of the MDL's early pretrial phase, not necessarily the final judgment date.

Attorney Role Firm / Office Notes
David Powers Berten Lead counsel of record (entered 01/31/2018; flagged "LEAD ATTORNEY — to be noticed") Global IP Law Group, LLC, 55 W. Monroe St., Suite 3400, Chicago, IL Founder and partner of GIPLG; the architect of RAH's multi-defendant campaign against Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Quad/Graphics, Dalim, Heidelberg and Kodak. Also RAH's lead PTAB counsel (e.g., IPR2019-00628, -00646) and its affiant/spokesperson in discovery disputes against Adobe.
Alison Aubry Richards Of counsel / plaintiff's trial-team attorney; admitted pro hac vice (entered 01/31/2018) Global IP Law Group, LLC, Chicago, IL Handled RAH's PTAB and district-court work in tandem with Berten (co-signed the April 12, 2019 discovery stipulation in the Adobe matter).
Irwin Park (Dr. Irwin Park) Of counsel; "attorney to be noticed" (entered 01/31/2018) Global IP Law Group, LLC, Chicago, IL Technically trained (referred to as "Dr. Irwin Park" in RAH's own PTAB correspondence, where Berten notes Park "has already filed an appearance on behalf of RAH Color Technologies"). The technical/patent-prosecution-side member of the team.
Randall G. Block Local counsel (N.D. Cal.) (entered 08/13/2018) Burke, Williams & Sorensen, LLP, 101 Howard Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA California-licensed counsel supplying the in-district appearance required by N.D. Cal. Local Rule 3-2/11-3 — the exact expense RAH complained about when opposing transfer. Standard local-counsel arrangement; not a patent specialist of record on the substantive briefing.
Meagan C. Leslie Of counsel (appeared for RAH in the parallel N.D. Ill. Dalim action, ECF No. 11, 01/16/2019) Global IP Law Group, LLC, Chicago, IL (later Sisvel U.S.) Her appearance is documented in a constituent RAH case, not confirmed on the 3:18-cv-03277-SI listing; treat her MDL-level appearance as probable but not verified. Now counsel for legal & licensing at Sisvel U.S. in Chicago.

Points that are well sourced

  • David Berten is designated "LEAD ATTORNEY" for RAH on the N.D. Cal. docket, and Global IP Law Group is listed as counsel for "RAH Color Technologies LLC … (Plaintiff)." (ECF attorney listing reproduced in PTAB IPR2019-00628, Ex. 2024-65.)
  • The N.D. Ill. transfer opinion is explicit that RAH's choice of forum was driven by counsel location: "The likelihood is that the case was filed here largely because RAH's primary attorneys are here," and "the Northern District of California requires litigants to have local counsel, meaning that it will face additional expense if the case is transferred there." (RAH Color Techs. LLC v. Adobe Systems, Inc., N.D. Ill. 2018 — the transfer that produced 3:18-cv-03277-SI.) This corroborates the Chicago-lead / SF-local structure.
  • Berten and Richards both prosecuted RAH's side of the parallel IPRs (Adobe, Xerox, EFI petitions) and are named in Patent Owner filings throughout 2019–2020.

Explicit caveats — what I could not verify

  • The MDL master docket itself (3:18-md-02874) was not directly retrievable. The roster above comes from the constituent case docket embedded in the MDL. Because the master docket governs consolidated pretrial proceedings, an attorney could in principle appear only on the master docket without a corresponding entry on 3:18-cv-03277; I could not rule that out.
  • The Unicourt docket index shows "9 More Attorneys Available" beyond the 19 named, and it does not cleanly separate plaintiff from defendant counsel. Some of that suppressed list may include additional RAH-side appearances. I did not confirm them and have not named any attorney I could not source.
  • No in-house counsel appears. RAH is a single-member Virginia LLC; its principal, Dr. Richard A. Holub, is the inventor/owner and a client representative — he is not an attorney and did not appear as counsel.
  • Appellate counsel not determined. After final judgment (Sept. 27, 2021) and the MDL's closure (July 26, 2022), any Federal Circuit representation would be a separate appearance; I found no reliable record of it and will not speculate.
  • Names, phone numbers and emails above are as reported on the 2019 ECF listing; several individuals have since moved (Leslie to Sisvel; GIPLG's current roster may differ).

Sources: ECF attorney listing for RAH Color Techs. LLC v. Adobe Inc., No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI (reproduced as Ex. 2024-65 in IPR2019-00628); IPR2019-00628 Patent Owner filings (Berten/Richards signature blocks, Global IP Law Group letterhead); USPTO PTAB affidavit and correspondence referencing "Dr. Irwin Park"; RAH Color Techs. LLC v. Adobe Systems, Inc. (N.D. Ill. 2018) transfer opinion (Google Scholar); In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, No. 18-md-02874-SI (N.D. Cal.) docket excerpts via Unicourt; IAM speaker bio (Meagan Leslie); Docket Alarm / PTAB docket pages for the co-pending IPRs.

Defendant representatives

Counsel of record for the defendant(s): attorneys, firms, and roles (lead counsel, of counsel, local counsel).

Good initial hits. Now let me pull the actual docket sheet and identify counsel per defendant.

Let me identify the individual defense attorneys' firms and which defendant each represents.

Bottom line

I was able to verify with confidence only part of the defense-side roster — principally Adobe's Perkins Coie team — before hitting my search-step limit. Twelve additional attorney names appear in the MDL's aggregated docket listing, but I could not reliably map most of them to a specific defendant. I have segregated verified from unverified below rather than guess.

Sourcing caveat: The case is closed (final judgment 9/27/2021), so there is no "counsel hasn't appeared yet" issue; the operative roster is the final one. My best sources were PACER-derived docket extracts republished in PTAB exhibits (RAH's own Ex. 2024 PACER printouts, filed in IPR2019-00628) and the JPML/MDL docket extracts — not a live PACER pull of 3:18-md-02874 itself.

Verified defense counsel

Adobe Inc. — Perkins Coie LLP

Attorney Role Firm / office Note
James F. Valentine Lead counsel (docket role: "LEAD ATTORNEY," pro hac vice; assigned 4/2/2018) Perkins Coie LLP, 3150 Porter Drive, Palo Alto, CA Also Adobe's IPR counsel in Adobe v. RAH, IPR2019-00627/628/629/646 (USPTO Reg. No. 39,053). A JPML/MDL docket entry (No. 51) shows him designated liaison counsel in MDL 2874.
Andrew Nicholas Klein Of counsel / trial team (assigned 6/6/2018) Perkins Coie, Palo Alto, CA Per RAH's sworn PTAB declaration, Klein also appeared for Dalim Software in RAH v. Dalim, No. 3:19-cv-00518-SI, and for Quad/Graphics in the E.D. Wis. case.
Wing H. Liang Of counsel / trial team (assigned 6/6/2018) Perkins Coie, Palo Alto, CA Same cross-appearances (Dalim; Quad/Graphics) per the same declaration.
Christopher G. Hanewicz Of counsel (assigned 3/20/2018) Perkins Coie LLP, 33 East Main Street, Suite 201, Madison, WI Per RAH's declaration, Hanewicz also represented Quad/Graphics in RAH v. Quad/Graphics, No. 2:18-cv-00087-JPS (E.D. Wis.) — i.e., Adobe's team had prior adverse-side history with a co-defendant.
Christopher L. Kelley PTAB counsel (not the district-court appearance) Perkins Coie LLP, Palo Alto, CA (Reg. No. 42,714) Listed as Petitioner Adobe's counsel of record for service in the four Adobe IPRs.

Support: PACER attorney listings for RAH Color Techs. LLC v. Adobe Inc., No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI (the lead MDL member case), reproduced as RAHCT Ex. 2024 in IPR2019-00628; and the Declaration of Irwin I. Park (May 21, 2019) ¶¶13–15 in the same IPR, which lists "Christopher Hanewicz, Andrew Klein, Wing Liang, and James Valentine, all of Perkins Coie," as Adobe's counsel.

Quad/Graphics, Inc. and Dalim Software GmbH — likely Perkins Coie (inference, not docket-confirmed)

Hanewicz, Klein and Liang are identified in RAH's PTAB declaration as having appeared for Quad/Graphics; Klein and Liang for Dalim. I did not independently confirm a Perkins Coie appearance in 3:19-cv-00518-SI (Dalim) or 2:18-cv-00087-JPS (Quad). Treat as strong but second-hand.

Attorneys on the MDL docket whose party assignment I could NOT verify

The aggregated docket listing for 3:18-md-02874 shows these additional names, but the source does not map them to a party, and I could not confirm any of them:

  • Meagan C. Leslie
  • Randall G. Block — Burke, Williams & Sorensen, LLP, 101 Howard St., Suite 400, San Francisco (assigned 8/13/2018 in 3:18-cv-03277). Party ambiguous: his entry sits adjacent to the plaintiff block in the scraped listing, and I could not determine whether