RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corp.

I'll research this case thoroughly using multiple sources.

Important finding: the docket shows a very short-lived case. Let me dig deeper into the IPR history and the accused products.

Now let me verify the IPR outcome, appeal, and what happened with the MDL/Adobe case — plus the '008 patent's specifics.

Case Overview and Background

Correction to the working summary first. The docket metadata is accurate but materially incomplete: E.D. Tex. No. 4:20-cv-00176 did not become a litigated case. RAH filed its complaint on March 5, 2020 in the Sherman Division before Judge Sean D. Jordan, along with a corporate disclosure statement, notice of related cases, jury demand, and AO 120 form (Dkts. 1–5), and then filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal on March 11, 2020 — six days later (Dkt. 6, by Alison Aubry Richards of Global IP Law Group). Nineteen days after that, on March 24, 2020, RAH refiled the same dispute in the Marshall Division before Judge Rodney Gilstrap as No. 2:20-cv-00088, this time asserting five patents — the '008 plus U.S. 6,995,870, 7,312,897, 9,404,802, and 9,516,288 — and that case too was voluntarily dismissed (Dkt. 6, notice of voluntary dismissal June 1, 2020; Dkt. 7, Order of Dismissal signed June 2, 2020). So the practical posture of the -00176 docket is: pleadings-only, dismissed without prejudice, no answer, no motion practice, no claim construction. The -00088 refiling is where the substantive allegations against Microsoft actually lived, and it also died before any Rule 12 motion was decided. (E.D. Tex. -00176 docket; -00088 docket)

The parties. RAH Color Technologies LLC is a Virginia LLC with a stated office at 7012 Colgate Drive, Alexandria, Virginia, managed by Dr. Richard A. Holub, the named inventor on essentially the whole portfolio. Per RAH's own complaints, Holub holds a Ph.D. in neurophysiology, worked at Eikonix/Eastman Kodak, Agfa/Bayer and SuperMac as a color scientist, served on the TAGA board and taught at RIT, and formed RAH in 2005 "as a vehicle for an on-going licensing program." RAH's pleadings tout 22 Holub patents, licenses to "three of the largest manufacturers of color imaging and printing products," and 13 end-user licensees, with the representation that "all of the other current licensees elected to take a license … absent the initiation of patent infringement litigation." That makes RAH a classic inventor-owned non-practicing entity / patent assertion entity — no products, revenue from licenses — though a more sympathetic one than a mass aggregator, given the inventor-principal and the genuine industry-standard work behind the family. Microsoft is the obvious operating-company counter-party: Redmond, Washington, selling Windows, Surface hardware and cloud services. (Complaint, No. 2:20-cv-00088, Dkt. 1)

The accused technology. The '008 patent — titled "System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites" — claims a networked color-management architecture in which "nodes" each have a rendering device (press, proofer, display) plus a color measurement instrument, exchange device-independent calibration data, and build shared "virtual proof" data structures so output "appear[s] substantially the same" across sites within each device's gamut. The asserted claims in the parallel Adobe IPR were 28–33 and 36–38; against Microsoft the lead assertions were claim 31 (tonal transfer curves and color transformations "at least partly in accordance with calibration data in device-independent units of color") and claim 36 (annotations communicated to remote users over a network interface). Microsoft's accused instrumentalities were the Windows Color System (WCS) — the CITE and legacy ICM/ICC CMMs, device/viewing-condition/gamut-mapping profiles, gamut boundary descriptions, and the Display Calibration Wizard — plus MS Paint for the annotation claim, with indirect infringement (§ 271(b)) pleaded on the theory that Microsoft induces OEMs, developers and end users through SDKs, specs, training and support. Notably, the -00088 complaint also swept in the '288 patent, a non-color patent covering a portable device with sensors, GPS-based location services and camera video conferencing, aimed at Surface devices (Cortana, Maps, pre-installed Skype) — a meaningful expansion from the color-management core. (RAH infringement contentions via RPX)

Procedural posture, venue, and why it matters. Both Texas suits were filed into a campaign that was already elsewhere. Since December 2018 the JPML had centralized RAH's assertions against Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Heidelberger, Dalim and Kodak in MDL No. 2874, In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, N.D. Cal. before Judge Susan Illston (3:18-md-02874); that MDL was stayed on September 10, 2019 pending the Adobe IPRs, and Kodak (May 2019), Heidelberger (July 2019) and Xerox (Oct. 2019) had already been dismissed by agreement. RAH's own Microsoft complaint conceded it "believes this case with Microsoft is a tag-along action that should also be included in the … MDL" — an odd thing to plead in a Texas complaint, and a fair signal that the E.D. Tex. filings were leverage/venue positioning rather than a commitment to try the case in Sherman. On venue, the complaint is a post-TC Heartland pleading exercise: it affirmatively alleges a "regular and established place of business" under § 1400(b) — the Microsoft Store at 2601 Preston Road, Ste. 1176, Frisco, TX — plus stream-of-commerce contacts. The Sherman→Marshall refiling (Jordan → Gilstrap) is the kind of division/judge re-selection that drew scrutiny even before the 2022 randomization reforms in E.D. Tex.; I have not found any filing stating RAH's reason for either dismissal, so any inference about motive (venue shopping, a license, or a defect in the first complaint) is inference, not sourced fact. (Complaint text)

Why the case is notable. Three reasons. (1) IPR linkage and a rare petitioner loss on evidence grounds. Adobe had petitioned on the '008 on February 1, 2019 (IPR2019-00627, instituted Aug. 20, 2019, consolidated hearing May 28, 2020), with companion petitions on the '444, '897 and '761 patents (IPR2019-00628, -00629, -00646). In the August 19/31, 2020 Final Written Decision, the Board held that Adobe had not shown claims 28–33 and 36–38 unpatentable — not because the ICC v.3.0/v.3.01 prior art was substantively weak, but because Adobe's authentication declarant, ICC technical secretary Dr. Phil Green (resident in Norway), refused to sit for cross-examination; the Board excluded his declaration, struck lead counsel's declaration as attorney argument, found the ICC specifications unauthenticated, and the obviousness ground collapsed. It is a much-cited cautionary tale on 37 C.F.R. § 42.53 and third-party declarant logistics. (FWD, IPR2019-00627 Paper 124; IPWatchdog roundup, Sept. 9, 2020) (2) MDL coordination as a defense strategy — rival OEMs and software vendors pooling a joint defense group (Adobe's privilege log discloses verbal common-interest agreements among Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Dalim, Kodak and Heidelberger counsel) and pushing a rare patent MDL into N.D. Cal. rather than litigating serially in Texas. (3) Market context — the patents sit on top of the ICC color-profile ecosystem that Windows, macOS and Adobe products all implement, so the campaign's real target was industry-standard color management rather than a discrete product; the fact that every defendant in the MDL and both Microsoft suits were dismissed by agreement is consistent with RAH's portfolio-licensing model, though no settlement or license terms are public and I found no court document stating a settlement.

Sourcing caveats. Verified: docket entries and dates for both Texas cases; the '008's title, specification content and asserted claims; the accused WCS/Paint/Surface theories; the MDL number, judge, transfer and stay; the IPR numbers, institution dates and the -00627 final written decision; RAH's corporate/inventor background. Not verified: the outcomes and any appeals of IPR2019-00628/-00629/-00646; whether any Federal Circuit appeal of -00627 was taken; the current status of MDL

I'll research this case systematically, starting with the docket and core filings.

Two dockets appear related. Let me dig into both the Sherman Division case and the apparent refiling in Marshall.

Now let me check the PTAB proceedings on the '008 patent and whether a Microsoft license/settlement explains the dismissals.

Bottom line up front

The docket you asked about — RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 4:20-cv-00176 (E.D. Tex., Sherman Div., Judge Sean D. Jordan) — never became a litigated case. It was filed 2020-03-05 and voluntarily dismissed six days later, on 2020-03-11, before Microsoft answered, appeared, or moved. RAH then refiled the same five-patent case in the Marshall Division (No. 2:20-cv-00088, Judge Rodney Gilstrap), which was itself voluntarily dismissed on 2020-06-02. There was no answer, counterclaim, motion practice, Markman, discovery, trial, judgment, or appeal in either E.D. Tex. action. The only substantive adjudication touching the asserted '008 patent in this period came from Adobe's IPR at the PTAB — and RAH won that one.

One correction to the case metadata: the complaints in both E.D. Tex. cases asserted five patents — the '008, '870, '897, '802 and '288 — not the '008 alone.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings — No. 4:20-cv-00176 (Sherman Division)

• 2020-03-05 — Complaint filed (Dkt. 1). RAH Color Technologies LLC (owner/manager: Dr. Richard A. Holub; Alexandria, VA) sued Microsoft for patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271, asserting the '008, '870, '897, '802 and '288 patents. Venue was pleaded on the theory that Microsoft maintained "a regular and established place of business" in the district via its retail Microsoft Store at 2601 Preston Road, Frisco, TX — i.e., a TC Heartland–style venue hook. Assigned to Judge Sean D. Jordan. (Docket, Justia; RPX litigation document)
• 2020-03-05 — Dkt. 2 (Corporate Disclosure Statement), Dkt. 3 (Notice of Related Cases), Dkt. 4 (Jury Demand), Dkt. 5 (AO 120 form). The Notice of Related Cases is the only document that framed the strategic context: RAH flagged the coordinated MDL proceeding, In re RAH Color Technologies LLC Patent Litigation, MDL No. 2874 (N.D. Cal., Judge Susan Illston), and the then-pending Adobe IPRs.
• Disposition of the docketed case — 2020-03-11: Dkt. 6, Notice of Voluntary Dismissal by RAH (attaching proposed order), signed by Alison Aubry Richards of Global IP Law Group. The case was closed on the same filing; no order from Judge Jordan appears on the public docket. Because this was a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) dismissal before service of an answer or motion for summary judgment, it operated without prejudice as a matter of law (I could not retrieve the text of the proposed order to confirm it says so expressly).

No answer and no counterclaims were ever filed in No. 4:20-cv-00176. Microsoft never appeared.

2. The refiling — No. 2:20-cv-00088 (Marshall Division, Judge Gilstrap)

• 2020-03-24 — Complaint filed (Dkt. 1). Same plaintiff, same defendant, same five patents. The complaint is explicit about why RAH moved: it recites the MDL history (JPML transfer order of 2018-12-06; conditional transfers of the Heidelberger, Dalim and Kodak cases in January/February 2019; dismissals of Kodak on 2019-05-16, Heidelberger on 2019-07-23, and Xerox on 2019-10-15), recites the Adobe IPRs and Judge Illston's 2019-09-10 stay of the MDL, and then states that "RAH Color Technologies believes this case with Microsoft is a tag-along action that should also be included in the coordinated and consolidated pre-trial MDL proceedings under the MDL Panel's Rule 7.1." (Complaint PDF, Dkt. 1)
• 2020-04-15 — Case referred to Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne.
• 2020-06-01 — Notice of Voluntary Dismissal (Dkt. 6).
• 2020-06-02 — Order of Dismissal signed by Judge Gilstrap (Dkt. 7); AO 120 termination form filed the same day (Dkt. 8).
• 2021-11-04 — "Letter to Counsel" (Dkt. 9) — administrative housekeeping five months after closing; no substantive significance.

The FJC's Integrated Database records the case as terminated 2020-06-02, procedural progress "No court action (before issue joined)," disposition "Other," consistent with a voluntary dismissal. (FJC IDB via CourtListener; full docket)

Again: no answer, no counterclaims, no Rule 12 motion, no transfer motion, no stay motion, no Markman, no discovery orders, no trial. Microsoft never made an appearance in either Texas case that I can document.

3. Why the dismissals happened — what is and isn't verified

• The six-day gap between the 2020-03-05 filing and the 2020-03-11 dismissal, with no appearance by Microsoft, is most consistent with a filing/venue correction: RAH dismissed the Sherman Division case and refiled in Marshall, the venue its counsel (Global IP Law Group) was then using for its other RAH cases.
• The second dismissal (2020-06-02), nine weeks after refiling and again with no Microsoft appearance, is not explained in any public document I located. I found no public settlement agreement, license, consent judgment, or press release. Plausible explanations — a private license/resolution with Microsoft (RAH has an extensive licensing program, having licensed to "six of the largest manufacturers of color imaging and printing products" per its own pleadings), or a decision to pursue Microsoft only through the MDL/tag-along mechanism — but I cannot source either. Treat the reason as unverified. No dismissal with prejudice, stipulated judgment, or payment is reflected on the dockets.
• A procedural consequence worth noting (analysis, not docket fact): because both complaints were dismissed before service triggered 35 U.S.C. § 315(b), Microsoft's one-year IPR-bar clock was never started by these suits, leaving Microsoft free to petition against the '008 at any later date.

4. Parallel PTAB proceedings on the '008 patent

The '008 patent (filed pre-AIA, issued 2010) is IPR-eligible only — no PGR. Microsoft itself never petitioned. The relevant proceeding was filed by Adobe Inc.:

• 2019-02-01 — Adobe petitions filed against four RAH patents: IPR2019-00627 ('008), IPR2019-00628 ('444), IPR2019-00629 ('897), IPR2019-00646 ('761).
• 2019-08-20 — IPR2019-00627 instituted (along with -00628); -00629 and -00646 instituted 2019-09-04.
• 2019-09-10 — Judge Illston stayed the MDL in light of the institutions.
• 2020-08-19 — Final Written Decision 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 are unpatentable. RAH prevailed; the asserted claims survived. The Board also rejected RAH's real-party-in-interest theory that Quad/Graphics, Dalim, Xerox, Heidelberger and EFI should have been named as RPIs. (FWD, public version; PTAB docket)
• Effect on the Microsoft litigation: essentially none directly. Both Microsoft suits were already dismissed (March and June 2020) before the '008 FWD issued on 2020-08-19. Notably, the FWD was favorable to RAH — the opposite of the outcome that usually drives a defendant into settlement — which undercuts any inference that the June 2020 dismissal reflected RAH capitulating on validity. Related: the '008 IPR was litigated with a live evidentiary fight over Adobe's inability to produce ICC witness Dr. Phil Green (Norway) for cross-examination, which RAH pressed in its authentication attack on the ICC v.3.0/3.01 prior art.
• Federal Circuit: I could not confirm any appeal of the IPR2019-00627 FWD, by either Adobe or RAH. Unverified — check Fed. Cir. docket for Appeals from the PTAB naming Adobe Inc. and RAH Color Technologies.

5. Present posture

Both E.D. Tex. cases are closed: No. 4:20-cv-00176 (Sherman) closed 2020-03-11 on voluntary dismissal; No. 2:20-cv-00088 (Marshall) closed 2020-06-02 by order of Judge Gilstrap. There is no live litigation between RAH Color Technologies and Microsoft on the '008 patent that I can locate. The '008 patent itself emerged from the Adobe IPR with its asserted claims (28–33, 36–38) intact.

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Sourcing caveats

• The dismissal reasons and any settlement/license terms are not in any public source I found; do not treat them as established.
• The text of the proposed orders attached to the two notices of voluntary dismissal (and thus whether dismissal was expressly with or without prejudice) was not retrievable; the "without prejudice" characterization for the 4:20-cv-00176 dismissal is a legal inference from Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i), not a docket quotation.
• The case metadata's single-patent designation ('008 only) is incomplete relative to the complaints, which asserted five patents. If a downstream product needs a single "patent at issue," '008 is defensible as the lead patent (it was the subject of the only PTAB adjudication), but the record supports five.
• PACER/RECAP coverage of these two short-lived dockets is thin; the FJC IDB confirms termination dates and that issue was never joined, which is the strongest corroboration that no merits proceedings occurred.

I'll search several angles to find press coverage of this case.

Initial searches turned up only court records and PTAB filings. Let me search specific outlets and angles.

Still only primary records. Let me try outlet-specific and industry-trade angles.

Press coverage: essentially none found

I could not find a single news or analysis article about RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corp. in any of the outlets you named or anywhere else. I searched the case caption, the party names plus "patent lawsuit," the '008 patent number (7,729,008) and the related MDL caption, and outlet-targeted queries (Law360, IPWatchdog/Patently-O, IAM, Reuters-style coverage). Every hit was a primary record or a docket/analytics aggregator: the complaints themselves hosted on RPX Insight, docket mirrors at Docket Alarm, CourtListener, Justia, UniCourt and the Unified Patents portal, plus USPTO PTAB papers. There is no reported verdict, settlement figure, damages demand, executive statement, or industry-reaction quote to summarize — and I will not manufacture one. The most likely explanation is newsworthiness rather than secrecy: this was a short-lived NPE suit against a single defendant that was voluntarily dismissed within days, in contrast to RAH's multi-defendant color-management campaign against Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Kodak, Dalim and Heidelberger, which was consolidated as MDL No. 2874 in N.D. Cal. and drew PTAB attention.

What the court record shows — and where it complicates the case metadata

Because the metadata is flagged "not verified," two record-based findings are worth flagging even though they are not press reporting. First, the docket aggregators indicate that the captioned case, No. 4:20-cv-00176 (E.D. Tex., Sherman Division, Judge Sean D. Jordan), was disposed of almost immediately: UniCourt lists a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal filed by RAH (docket #6, entered 2020-03-11) and records the case status as "Disposed - Other Disposed." I did not see the dismissal order itself, so the basis and any terms remain unconfirmed. Second, a near-duplicate suit appeared nineteen days later — RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 2:20-cv-00088 (E.D. Tex., Marshall Division, Judge Rodney Gilstrap) — per Docket Alarm, filed 2020-03-24 and closed 2020-06-02 on RAH's own notice of voluntary dismissal. Any account of this matter should specify which of the two suits it means; the case-summary line above ("outcome not verified") is best read as unresolved on the public record I could reach.

The only substantive "coverage" is PTAB, not press

The ’008 patent did get sustained attention — but in inter partes review, not journalism. In IPR2019-00627, Adobe challenged the ’008 patent and lost: the Board's final written decision (public version posted by Banner Witcoff) held that Adobe had not shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 28–33 and 36–38 were unpatentable, following a consolidated oral hearing on 2020-05-28. Notably, Microsoft was not a party to that IPR or to MDL No. 2874, and the Board's "related matters" discussion lists only the Adobe, Xerox, EFI, Heidelberger, Dalim and Kodak cases — which is consistent with the Microsoft suits having been brief and peripheral to the RAH campaign.

If you need verified procedural facts (dismissal orders, any license or covenant accompanying the voluntary dismissals, or whether Microsoft paid anything), that requires a PACER pull of both dockets; no secondary source I found fills that gap.

Sources

• 160. Upon information and belief, Microsoft's customers (including developers and OEMs) and/or end users have directly infringed...
• 203. Microsoft infringes claim 24 of the '802 Patent when it makes, imports, uses, sells and offers for sale the Microsoft Accus...
• Search court records on patent:(7791761)
• UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS SHERMAN DIVISION
• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corporation, 2:20-cv-00088 (E.D.Tex.) - Track Docket
• Cases
• RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corporation - This case was last updated from U
• Docket updates for RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Microsoft Corporation, 2:20-cv-00088 - Docket updates for RAH Color Technologies LLC v
• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
• RAH COLOR TECHNOLOGIES LLC, Plaintiff, V

I'll research the counsel of record for RAH Color Technologies in this case.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff RAH Color Technologies LLC — RAH Color Techs. LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 4:20-cv-00176 (E.D. Tex., Judge Sean D. Jordan)

Important threshold finding: this case was extremely short-lived. It was filed March 5, 2020 and RAH filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal on March 11, 2020 — six days later (Dkt. 6). Microsoft never answered or appeared. As a result, the universe of plaintiff-side counsel of record is very small, and there is no local counsel, no of-counsel, and no in-house appearance reflected on the docket.

1. Alison Aubry Richards — sole attorney of record / lead counsel

Grounding: Complaint signature block — "By: /s/ Alison Aubry Richards … Global IP Law Group, LLC, 55 W. Monroe St., Ste. 3400, Chicago, Illinois 60603 … Attorneys for Plaintiff, RAH Color Technologies LLC" (complaint text reproduced at RPX litigation document 13705327; Justia docket 4:2020cv00176; UniCourt case page lists "Plaintiff Attorney: Alison Aubry Richards").

2. Attorneys who did not appear in this case but are part of RAH's counsel bench

These names appear in RAH's contemporaneous filings in related matters. I list them because they are frequently mis-attributed to the Microsoft case, but I found no appearance by any of them on the 4:20-cv-00176 docket:

• David Powers Berten (Global IP Law Group, Chicago) — listed as LEAD ATTORNEY for RAH in RAH v. Adobe, N.D. Cal. No. 3:18-cv-03277 (appointed 1/31/2018). Previously of Competition Law Group; he is the licensing negotiator identified in the Microsoft complaint's pre-suit notice narrative (¶ 27: January 2009 contact with Microsoft's David Lubitz and Tracy Burns).
• Irwin Park (Global IP Law Group, Chicago) — lead counsel for RAH in the PTAB, including IPR2019-00627 (the '008 patent at issue here) and IPR2019-00628, per RAH's mandatory notices and Patent Owner filings. This is the most directly relevant experience to the patent asserted in this case.
• Ragnar Olson (Global IP Law Group) — back-up counsel in the same IPRs (USPTO Reg. No. 58,684); service-list only in the district court cases.

Caveats and sourcing gaps

• No PACER docket sheet was directly retrievable. The Justia docket snapshot was "last retrieved on March 11, 2020," so it may not reflect a subsequent dismissal order. UniCourt classifies the case as "Disposed – Other Disposed," consistent with the Rule 41(a)(1) dismissal, but I could not verify the text or date of any dismissal order in 4:20-cv-00176.
• No local counsel identified. Given Ms. Richards' E.D. Tex. admission, none was required; I found no Capshaw DeRieux, Ward & Smith, or other Texas-firm appearance for RAH in this case (those firms appear in RAH-adjacent matters but not here).
• No in-house counsel. RAH is owner-operated by Dr. Richard A. Holub; no in-house attorney appeared.
• Sequencing oddity worth flagging for the case file: RAH dismissed the Sherman Division case on March 11, 2020 and re-filed the same five patents ('870, '897, '008, '802, '288) in the Marshall Division on March 24, 2020 (RAH Color Techs. v. Microsoft Corp., No. 2:20-cv-00088, Judge Gilstrap), then voluntarily dismissed that case too on June 1, 2020 (order June 2, 2020). That second dismissal suggests a resolution or license rather than a merits loss — but I could not source a settlement/license announcement, so treat that as unconfirmed.
• Note on patents: the metadata lists only the '008 patent, but the complaint as filed asserted five patents; the '008 was the subject of Adobe's IPR2019-00627 petition, which is likely why it is the flagged patent in your case record.

I'll search the dockets and related sources for Microsoft's counsel of record in both the Sherman (4:20-cv-00176) and Marshall (2:20-cv-00088) suits.

Bottom line: no defense counsel of record exists on the accessible record

I could not identify any attorney who appeared for Microsoft in either of the two RAH v. Microsoft suits. This is not a research gap in the usual sense — it is what the dockets themselves show. No notice of appearance, no answer, no Rule 12 motion, no corporate disclosure statement, and no waiver of service was filed by or for Microsoft in either case. Both suits were dismissed on RAH's own initiative before issue was joined, so no defense counsel ever entered an appearance to report.

I am flagging this explicitly rather than filling the field with names, because the obvious failure mode here is to attribute Microsoft's customary E.D. Tex. local counsel, or the Perkins Coie team that defended Adobe in the parallel RAH matter, to a case in which they never appeared.

Docket-by-docket verification

Two independent corroborations that Microsoft never joined issue:

1. The FJC Integrated Database record for 2:20-cv-00088 reports "Procedural Progress: No court action (before issue joined)," with termination date June 2, 2020 (CourtListener IDB page). That is the AO's own coding, not a third-party inference.
2. Every single filing in both dockets is attributed to Alison Aubry Richards for RAH. No other attorney signature block appears anywhere in either docket's text, including on the AO 120 forms and the dismissal papers.

The practical inference is that Microsoft either was never served or the parties resolved the matter before an appearance was necessary. In the Sherman case that window was six days (filed 3/5, dismissal noticed 3/11); in the Marshall case it was roughly ten weeks. Neither timeline leaves much room for a defense appearance, and none exists in the record.

Why I am not naming anyone

Three plausible-looking candidates surfaced in my searches, and all three would be wrong to list:

• Perkins Coie (Andrew Klein, Palo Alto) — he is counsel of record for Adobe, not Microsoft, in RAH Color Technologies LLC v. Adobe Inc., No. 3:18-cv-03277 (N.D. Cal.) / MDL No. 2874, and in the Adobe IPRs including IPR2019-00628 (Klein pro hac vice affidavit, IPR2019-00628). Adobe is not Microsoft, and the previous section already noted Microsoft's absence from the MDL and the Adobe IPR.
• The E.D. Tex. local-counsel firms that appear repeatedly in Microsoft's Texas patent dockets — I found no filing tying any of them to either RAH case, so naming a firm here would be guesswork dressed as research.
• The "Letter to Counsel" (docket #9, 11/4/2021) in the Marshall case — this is a clerical transmittal, and because Microsoft never appeared, whoever received it is not identifiable from the docket text. I cannot say what prompted it or to whom it went; it may well have gone only to plaintiff's counsel. This remains an open question.

For completeness, the only attorney confirmed of record in either case is on the plaintiff's side: Alison Aubry Richards, RAH's counsel, who signed every filing in both dockets. I did not verify her firm affiliation from a primary source and so am not stating one.

A caveat on the metadata, and what would close the gap

The case metadata lists only U.S. Patent 7,729,008, but the Marshall complaint asserted five patents — the '008, '870, '897, '802 and '288 (Complaint, 2:20-cv-00088 Doc. 1) — and the Sherman complaint document hosted by RPX references the '802 patent as well. That is a further reason to treat the metadata's single-patent framing as unverified.

To move this from "no counsel located" to a verified negative, the following would be needed:

• PACER dockets for both cases, pulled in full rather than via aggregators. My docket knowledge derives from Justia (last retrieved 3/24/2020 for the Marshall case, 3/11/2020 for the Sherman case), UniCourt (last updated 5/4/2020), and Docket Alarm/CourtListener mirrors — none of which I pulled directly from PACER.
• The Sherman dismissal order itself. Notably, the Justia docket for 4:20-cv-00176 shows the dismissal notice with a proposed order but no ensuing order entry, even though UniCourt reports the case as disposed. Whether the Sherman case closed by Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) notice or by a signed order under Rule 41(a)(2) is unresolved on the sources I could reach — and that distinction matters, because a Rule 41(a)(2) dismissal would normally have generated a defense-side response or at least notice to Microsoft's counsel.
• Service records (summons issued, executed, or waived), which would establish whether Microsoft even retained counsel in connection with these suits.

If you want, I can draft a PACER pull request covering the specific entries above, or next turn to the more substantive question of why RAH refiled in Marshall after dismissing in Sherman — the near-duplicate filing pattern is the most legally interesting feature of this case and remains unexplained on the public record.