RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Defendant not confirmed

I'll research this case to verify the parties, patents, and procedural history.

Case Overview

Parties. The plaintiff, RAH Color Technologies LLC, is not an operating company and not a university — it is a licensing vehicle built around one inventor's portfolio. Per the complaints in the related suits, RAH is a Virginia LLC (earlier New York, with a Rochester office at 261 Hollywood Ave.; later listed at 7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, VA), wholly owned and managed by Dr. Richard A. Holub, who is a named inventor on every asserted patent. Holub holds a Ph.D. in neurophysiology and spent 1983–94 in color technology roles at Eikonix/Eastman Kodak, Agfa/Bayer and SuperMac, taught at RIT, and served as president of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts. He formed Imagicolor Corp. in 1998 to commercialize an automatic display-calibration/soft-proofing prototype; that venture never raised capital and dissolved, and in 2005 he formed RAH "as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program." The Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies RAH as "individual-inventor-started," and RAH's complaints tout roughly 30–33 Holub patents plus licenses to "five of the largest manufacturers of color imaging and printing products" and 13 end-user licensees. The defendant on the verified docket for case No. 1:17-cv-04931 is Quad/Graphics, Inc., the Sussex, Wisconsin-based commercial printing giant (magazine, catalog, retail-insert and direct-mail production; now rebranded "Quad"). See RAH complaint ¶¶ 1–2, 12–20, RAH Color Techs. LLC v. Quad/Graphics, Inc., No. 1:17-cv-04931 (N.D. Ill.); Stanford NPE Database, RAH Color Technologies LLC party page.

Accused technology and patent. RAH's theory in the Quad suit was not that Quad builds infringing machines, but that Quad uses commercial color-managed prepress workflows in its printing operations. The complaint defined "QG Accused Printer Servers" (Quad's EFI Fiery print servers), "QG Accused Print Workflow Systems" (Fiery servers in combination with EFI Command Workstation and Color Profiler Suite, plus equivalent prepress/workflow management systems) and "QG Accused Color Managed Systems" (the same combination used for color-managed production). In other words, the real commercial target was EFI's Fiery platform — the print server, calibration (Command Workstation) and profiling (Color Profiler Suite) software stack — which RAH was attacking through EFI's customers rather than EFI itself. See EFI's DJ complaint ¶¶ 35–41, Elecs. for Imaging, Inc. v. RAH Color Techs. LLC, No. 1:18-cv-01436 (E.D. Va.); RAH's Quad/Fujifilm/R.R. Donnelley complaints. The asserted patent family is the "System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites" series — a network of "nodes," each with a rendering device (press, proofer, display) and a color measurement instrument, in which device characterizations, tonal transfer functions and gamut descriptors are stored and exchanged so that color output "appears substantially the same" across sites. U.S. Patent No. 7,830,546 ("System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites") is one of those continuations, issued in 2010 from the same specification as the '870 and '008 patents; its claims are directed to the networked system architecture (stored color-transformation/gamut data used to drive rendering devices at remote nodes) rather than to a method of printing. RAH's Quad complaint asserted seven patents — U.S. Nos. 6,995,870, 7,312,897, 7,729,008, 8,760,704, 7,830,546, 8,817,314 and 8,537,357 — of which the '546 was one; note that the retrieved complaint excerpt lists the patents incompletely, so I have not independently verified which claims of the '546 were charted against Quad's systems. (Claim construction in the MDL addressed "sites," "appear substantially the same" and "interactive conference" in the '870/'444 patents, Dkt. 120, No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI (N.D. Cal. Jan. 22, 2021).)

Procedural posture, venue, and why it matters. RAH filed on June 30, 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Chicago), before Judge Amy J. St. Eve, case No. 1:17-cv-04931. Quad moved to transfer and, on January 16, 2018, Judge St. Eve entered a memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 70) sending the case to the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Quad's home district; the N.D. Ill. docket closed that day and Quad refiled/answered in E.D. Wis. No. 2:18-cv-00087 (Judge J.P. Stadtmueller), where RAH filed a first amended complaint on March 15, 2018. That Wisconsin case was then swept into the JPML's MDL No. 2874, In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation (N.D. Cal., Judge Susan Illston), which centralized the Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Quad, Heidelberger, Dalim and Kodak actions (CTO-1, Jan. 17/25, 2019; CTO-2, Feb. 13/21, 2019); the MDL took a final judgment on Sept. 27, 2021 and was closed

Threshold correction: the docket number and the court

Before the chronology, one important data point. The case number 1:17-cv-04931 does not match the S.D. Ill. docket described in the existing case summary. Every source I retrieved — CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, UniCourt, RPX Insight, and govinfo's metadata package (USCOURTS-ilnd-1_17-cv-04931) — places this docket in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Chicago), before Judge Amy J. St. Eve, filed 2017-06-30, captioned RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Quad/Graphics, Inc. (Quad is a Wisconsin corporation based in Sussex, WI). S.D. Ill. uses the Rockford/East St. Louis/Benton division prefixes, and no S.D. Ill. filing under this number appears anywhere in the record.

Consequently, the defendant is Quad/Graphics, Inc. — not "not confirmed." I've proceeded on the verified N.D. Ill. docket, because the S.D. Ill. attribution is almost certainly a metadata error in the Google Patents-derived summary (a common artifact when a patent's "litigation" field is scraped without the court field). Everything below is drawn from the actual docket and the resulting E.D. Wis. transferee case.

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Chronology

1. Filing and initial pleadings

2017-06-30 — Complaint filed (N.D. Ill., No. 1:17-cv-04931, Dkt. 1). RAH Color Technologies LLC (a Virginia LLC, Alexandria, VA; sole member Dr. Richard A. Holub, an inventor of all the asserted patents) sued Quad/Graphics for willful infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271. The complaint described the action as relating to seven U.S. patents, listing U.S. Patent Nos. 6,995,870; 7,312,897; 7,729,008; 8,760,704; 7,830,546; and 8,537,357 (the "Patents-in-Suit"). The '546 patent was thus one of the originally asserted patents in this docket.

The theory was use-based rather than product-sales-based: RAH alleged that Quad's commercial printing and photography operations used color measurement/management hardware and software — including EFI Fiery print servers with Command Workstation and Color Profiler Suite, and "QG Accused Print Workflow Systems" / "QG Accused Color Managed Systems" — that practiced the claimed methods. Jurisdiction and venue were predicated in part on Quad's facility at 1000 Remington Blvd., Bolingbrook, Illinois (N.D. Ill.). Jury demand by plaintiff.

This case was one of a burst of RAH filings in N.D. Ill. in 2017: R.R. Donnelley (1:17-cv-00894, filed 2017-02-02), Agfa Gevaert (1:17-cv-02145), Fujifilm (1:17-cv-02924), Samsung (1:17-cv-05430), and Quad. The parallel case against R.R. Donnelley asserted the '546 patent as well, making the '546 the subject of at least two 2017 complaints in the same district.

Answer/counterclaims: I could not retrieve a filed answer or counterclaims. The case was decided on a venue motion roughly six months after filing, so any Rule 12(b) response was subsumed in that motion practice; I have no sourced record of counterclaims in 1:17-cv-04931.

2. Dispositive pre-trial motion: venue/transfer

Quad moved to dismiss for improper venue under Rule 12(b)(3) (and, alternatively, to transfer under § 1404(a)), squarely invoking TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, 137 S. Ct. 1514 (2017) — decided five weeks before RAH filed.

2018-01-16 — Memorandum Opinion and Order, Dkt. 70 (Hon. Amy J. St. Eve). This is the only substantive opinion in the case. Its reasoning, as reflected in the opinion text:

• Quad is undisputed to "reside" in Wisconsin, so the first clause of 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) was unavailable, and the court turned to the second clause — "committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business" — applying Federal Circuit law under In re Cray Inc., 871 F.3d 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2017), and In re Micron Technologies, Inc., 875 F.3d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (venue objections not waived by pre-TC Heartland filings).
• The court applied Rule 12(b)(3) procedure: plaintiff bears the burden but factual conflicts resolve in plaintiff's favor; the court may consider evidence outside the pleadings without converting to summary judgment (citing Deb v. SIRVA, 832 F.3d 800 (7th Cir. 2016); Faulkenberg v. CB Tax Franchise Sys., 637 F.3d 801 (7th Cir. 2011)).
• In the alternative the court analyzed § 1404(a) under Coffey v. Van Dorn Iron Works, 796 F.2d 217 (7th Cir. 1986), and Research Automation v. Schrader-Bridgeport, 626 F.3d 973 (7th Cir. 2010).
• Notably, the court rejected RAH's "judicial economy / try them together" argument, observing that RAH had only one other case still pending in the district (Samsung, 17-cv-05430, which was already stayed on an agreement-in-principle to settle), and noting the earlier dismissals in R.R. Donnelley (17-cv-00894, Dkt. 23, 2017-06-05), Agfa (17-cv-02145, Dkt. 40, 2017-09-06), and Fujifilm (17-cv-02924, Dkt. 17, 2017-09-19).

The order resulted in transfer of the action to the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The case was closed on the N.D. Ill. docket on 2018-01-23 (last docket entry), roughly 201 days after filing.

Strategic significance: this was an early, clean application of TC Heartland/Cray to a non-practicing-entity "user venue" theory in the Seventh Circuit, and it killed RAH's preferred Northern District of Illinois forum for this defendant. Because venue was contested at the threshold, the case never reached claim construction, fact discovery of substance, or summary judgment in the '546 patent. No Markman, no expert reports, no JMOL/new-trial/fee motion in this docket.

3. Post-transfer proceedings in E.D. Wis.

2018-01-17 — Transferee case opened: RAH Color Techs. LLC v. Quad Graphics Inc., No. 2:18-cv-00087 (E.D. Wis.), assigned to Magistrate Judge William E. Duffin; on 2018-02-08 reassigned to Judge J.P. Stadtmueller after non-consent.

2018-03-15 — First Amended Complaint (Dkt. 89). RAH repleaded against five patents: 6,995,870; 7,312,897; 7,729,008; 8,760,704; and 8,537,357. The '546 patent was dropped and was not re-asserted. That is the key fact for your patent-specific question: the '546 patent survived only the original N.D. Ill. complaint (June 2017 – January 2018) and was voluntarily removed at the first amended pleading after transfer. (The first amended complaint text also still recited Illinois long-arm/venue language from the original, an artifact of the transfer.)

2018 — case closed. Third-party docket aggregators (Ex Parte/PACER-derived) show the E.D. Wis. case as "Closed," with docket activity running 2018-01-18 to 2018-12-10. I was unable to retrieve the actual dismissal order or settlement papers, so I cannot state with sourcing whether closure was by stipulated dismissal with prejudice, a license/settlement, or a dismissal on the merits. Given RAH's pattern in the parallel 2017 cases (Samsung: stay on "agreement-in-principle to settle"; R.R. Donnelley, Agfa, Fujifilm: stipulated dismissals), a negotiated resolution is the most likely explanation, but treat that as inference, not verified fact. No judgment, verdict, JMOL, new-trial, or § 285 fee decision in this line of the case is documented in anything I retrieved.

4. Parallel PTAB proceedings — and the '546's absence from them

• No IPR or PGR on U.S. Patent No. 7,830,546 appears in the record I retrieved. RAH's PTAB exposure came from Adobe and targeted the other RAH patents.
• 2019-02-01 — Adobe Inc. (Perkins Coie: Christopher L. Kelley, James F. Valentine) filed four IPR petitions: IPR2019-00627 ('008 patent, claims 28–33, 36–38), IPR2019-00628 ('444 patent), IPR2019-00629 ('897 patent, claims 32, 33, 37), and IPR2019-00646 ('761 patent, claims 7–11, 13, 15). All four were instituted (e.g., '761 institution decision entered 2019-09-04, Paper 34).
• The petitions describe the broader RAH campaign that the Quad case belonged to: RAH v. Adobe, No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI (N.D. Cal.); RAH v. Xerox, No. 6:18-cv-06746 (W.D.N.Y.); EFI v. RAH, No. 1:18-cv-01436 (E.D. Va.); RAH v. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, No. 1:19-cv-00193 (N.D. Ill.); RAH v. Dalim Software, No. 1:19-cv-00275 (N.D. Ill.); RAH v. Kodak, No. 6:19-cv-06112 (W.D.N.Y.).
• MDL No. 2874 — the JPML centralized the Adobe, Xerox, and EFI cases for coordinated pretrial proceedings as In re: RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, No. 3:18-md-02874-SI (N.D. Cal., Judge Susan Illston); a conditional transfer order covering Heidelberger and Dalim issued 2019-01-25. The Quad case was not made part of the MDL — it was already over.
• PTAB discovery ruling (2019-12-12) — in the consolidated Adobe IPRs the Board granted RAH's motion to compel deposition testimony from Adobe's expert about prior art he reviewed but did not rely on, rejecting work-product and Rule 26 objections. This is the most-cited procedural ruling from the RAH-IPR family and is unrelated to the '546 but part of the same portfolio war. (See also the Board's work-product decision noted in JD Supra/Akin Gump commentary.)
• Final written decisions, Sept. 2020 — in IPR2019-00627 the Board held that Adobe had not shown by a preponderance that claims 28–33 and 36–38 of the '008 patent were unpatentable (public version at Paper 124). The consolidated oral hearing was 2020-05-28. I have not verified the dispositions of -00628, -00629, and -00646 line-by-line, and I will not characterize them; note that the N.D. Cal. MDL later referenced a "’761 Patent Final Written Decision with regard to the finding about claim 15," indicating at least a partial adverse claim-15 finding on the '761 patent.
• Effect on this litigation: essentially none. The IPRs post-date the close of 1:17-cv-04931 and the E.D. Wis. case, so there was no stay-pending-IPR motion in either. Conversely, the '546 patent's removal from the amended complaint meant it was never exposed to PTAB challenge and never construed by any court in this line.

5. Claim construction in the related RAH litigation (context, not '546)

2021-01-22 — Claim construction order, RAH Color Techs. v. Adobe, No. 3:18-cv-03277-SI (N.D. Cal.), Dkt. 120. The MDL court construed three terms in the '870 and '444 patents — "sites," "appear substantially the same," and "interactive conference" — expressly noting that none of the PTAB decisions had construed them. This is the closest thing to a Markman outcome in RAH's portfolio litigation, and it does not touch the '546.

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Where the '546 patent stands

Case-identification flag (read first)

The metadata's court designation appears to be wrong, and it matters for identifying counsel. Docket number 1:17-cv-04931 is RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Quad/Graphics, Inc., filed June 30, 2017 in the Northern District of Illinois (Judge Amy J. St. Eve; N.D. Ill. short cite "17 C 4931"), and closed January 16, 2018 when Judge St. Eve granted Quad's motion to transfer to the Eastern District of Wisconsin (where it became No. 2:18-cv-00087-JPS). See RPX Insight docket summary (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/ilndce-[341768](/patent/341768)-rah-color-technologies-v-quad-graphics) and the govinfo docket metadata for USCOURTS-ilnd-1_17-cv-04931 (https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-ilnd-1_17-cv-04931). S.D. Ill. cases are docketed as 3:xx-cv-xxxxx, so a "1:17-cv-04931" S.D. Ill. case does not exist. I found no S.D. Ill. RAH Color case and therefore no S.D. Ill. local counsel. The '546 patent was indeed one of the seven patents asserted in the Quad complaint (with the '870, '897, '008, '704, '357 and, per the complaint's list, the '546), which is presumably why Google Patents tagged it here.

Plaintiff's counsel of record

All three identified attorneys are from Global IP Law Group, LLC, 55 W. Monroe Street, Suite 3400, Chicago, IL 60603 (312-241-1500) — RAH Color's long-standing outside counsel in its color-management patent campaign (and the reason RAH filed in N.D. Ill.).

Sources for the role designations: the attorney/service list reproduced in RAH's PTAB exhibits (e.g., Exhibit 2024, https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00628/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8416444/docs/05-21-2019-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2024-65-Exhibit_2024_Adobe_Quad_Dalim_Attorneys.pdf), the MDL joint status report signature block (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00646/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7791761/docs/04-12-2019-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2012-46-Exhibit_2012_Jan_7_MDL_Report.pdf), Berten's pro hac vice declaration in IPR2019-00629 (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1523317](/patent/1523317)/download-documents), and the UniCourt party/attorney listing for this case (https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db1-rah-color-technologies-llc-v-quadgraphics-inc-[477707](/patent/477707)), which lists Berten, Park and Richards as plaintiff attorneys.

Caveats and verification items

• Not independently verified on PACER for this docket. The N.D. Ill. docket sheet itself (CourtListener docket 341768) was not retrievable in my searches, so the per-attorney appearance entries and dates for 1:17-cv-04931 come from docket aggregators and parallel-case filings rather than the raw docket. The lead/backup characterization is well supported; Richards's exact appearance date in this case is not.
• Possible additional appearances. In contemporaneous RAH suits (e.g., RAH v. Ricoh, E.D. Pa. 2:15-cv-05203), GIPLG's Nicholas Dudziak also appeared with Berten and Park. I found no confirmation he entered an appearance in 1:17-cv-04931, so I am not listing him as counsel of record here.
• No local counsel identified. Because the case sat in N.D. Ill. (where GIPLG is based), RAH used no separate local-counsel firm; after the January 16, 2018 transfer to E.D. Wis., Wisconsin counsel would have been added in No. 2:18-cv-00087, which I could not verify.
• Dr. Richard A. Holub (RAH's principal, Alexandria, VA) is the party's manager/inventor and frequently the corporate witness — he is not an attorney of record.
• Sealing: no indication that the complaint or the attorney appearances were sealed; the January 16, 2018 transfer opinion is public.

I'll research defendant-side counsel for Quad/Graphics in this case.

Good leads. Let me pull the full attorney/service list and confirm who appeared in the N.D. Ill. docket itself.

Let me pull the actual dockets and confirm which firm filed the venue motion.

Defendant's counsel of record — Quad/Graphics, Inc.

Bottom line. Quad was represented throughout by Foley & Lardner LLP, with a Milwaukee-based patent litigator (Costakos) leading and a Chicago Foley partner (Gross) as the N.D. Ill. local/notice attorney; two Milwaukee lawyers were admitted pro hac vice. In mid-2018, after the case moved to the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Perkins Coie LLP also appeared for Quad (a plausible indemnity-driven arrangement — Quad's accused stack included Adobe Photoshop, and the MDL joint status report states that "present counsel for Adobe was also counsel to Quad in the Quad litigation"). Foley remained active as late as October 2018, when Costakos filed Quad's MDL 2874 motion. See the PACER-derived consolidated attorney/service list, Exhibit 2024 in IPR2019-00628 (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00628/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._8416444/docs/05-21-2019-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2024-65-Exhibit_2024_Adobe_Quad_Dalim_Attorneys.pdf) and UniCourt's defendant-attorney list for No. 2:18-cv-00087 (https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db1-rah-color-technologies-llc-v-quad-graphics-inc-[657433](/patent/657433)).

A. Foley & Lardner LLP — N.D. Ill. phase (1:17-cv-04931) and continuing post-transfer

B. Perkins Coie LLP — E.D. Wis. phase (2:18-cv-00087), mid-to-late 2018

C. Verification notes and caveats

• Docket-sheet access. I could not retrieve the raw N.D. Ill. docket sheet (CourtListener docket 341768; Justia/RPX) with per-attorney appearance entries for 1:17-cv-04931 specifically. The Justia party block for that docket displays plaintiff representation only (Berten, Park, Richards) and does not list defendant counsel in the retrievable text. The defense names and dates above come from (i) the PACER-derived attorney/service list compiled in RAH's PTAB Exhibit 2024, which reproduces the E.D. Wis. 2:18-cv-00087 docket with "Assigned" dates in 2017, and (ii) UniCourt's defendant-attorney list for that transferee case. Because a 2017 assignment date predates the E.D. Wis. filing (2018-01-17), those entries necessarily originated as appearances in the N.D. Ill. case and carried over on transfer — the same pattern visible for RAH's own counsel (Berten, "Assigned: 07/06/2017").
• Nothing sealed. The transfer opinion (Dkt. 70), the venue-motion record (including the Sands declaration, R. 26) and the attorney lists are public. There is no indication of sealed defense filings or of any appearance that remains under seal.
• No in-house counsel of record. Quad personnel appear only as declarants/witnesses (e.g., Tim Sands, Vice President of Press Operations, whose declaration supported the Rule 12(b)(3)/§ 1404(a) motion, R. 26). I found no Quad in-house attorney entering an appearance.
• Firm-role inference flagged. The record does not contain a substitution order or a notice of withdrawal explaining the Perkins Coie appearances. Whether Perkins replaced Foley or joined as indemnity/co-counsel is an inference: Costakos (Foley) was still filing for Quad in the JPML on 2018-10-01, months after Perkins entered, which argues for concurrent representation rather than substitution.
• Corroborating correction to the existing summary. The PACER-derived list shows the E.D. Wis. case "Date terminated: 11/29/2018" — a precise closure date I had earlier only bounded as "activity running to 2018-12-10." Quad's own JPML motion (2018-10-01) confirms the case settled pre-consolidation ("now settled and not part of this MDL," MDL No. 2874 JSR at 4–5), consistent with the negotiated-resolution inference.
• No S.D. Ill. counsel exists to identify — for the reasons flagged in the two preceding sections, this docket is N.D. Ill. (Chicago), where Foley's Chicago office supplied the notice attorney, so no separate local-counsel firm was retained.