RAH Color Technologies LLC v. X-Rite Incorporated

I'll research this case thoroughly using web search across multiple sources.

Case Overview & Background

Parties. Plaintiff RAH Color Technologies LLC is a Virginia LLC based in Alexandria, Virginia, wholly owned and managed by Dr. Richard A. Holub, a Ph.D. neurophysiologist who spent 1983–94 in color-technology roles at Eikonix/Kodak, Agfa/Bayer and SuperMac, taught at RIT, and served as an officer and president of TAGA. Holub is the sole named inventor on the portfolio; RAHCT was formed in 2005 as a vehicle for an "on-going licensing program," and its own complaints describe prior licenses to "five of the largest manufacturers of color imaging and printing products" plus 13 end-user licensees — making it a classic inventor-owned licensing entity (an NPE, though with a genuine R&D and standards-participation backstory rather than a shell acquired from a bankrupt operating company). Defendant X-Rite Incorporated is a Michigan corporation headquartered at 4400 44th St. SE, Grand Rapids — a leading maker of spectrophotometers, colorimeters and color-management/profiling software, and the vendor behind the i1 and ColorMunki lines. (X-Rite has been part of Danaher since 2006 and, since the 2023 Veralto spin-off, sits within Veralto — widely reported corporate history, but not something I re-verified in this session.)

The accused technology. The complaint targets X-Rite's hardware-plus-software product packages rather than a single device: the i1Basic Pro 2, i1Display Pro, i1Photo Pro 2, i1Publish, i1Publish Pro 2, i1iSis, i1iSis XL, IntelliTrax ICC, ColorMunki Photo, ColorMunki Display, ColorMunki Design (and, in the exhibit charting, ColorMunki with DigitalPouch software). RAH alleged both direct infringement under § 271(a) and inducement under § 271(b), on the theory that X-Rite's manuals, user interfaces and training materials instruct customers to combine chart readers/spectrophotometers with profiling software and networked computers/printers to build ICC-style device profiles, calibrate displays, and perform gamut mapping — i.e., the everyday color-managed print workflow. Willfulness was pleaded. (Complaint as Ex. 2222 in Adobe v. RAH, IPR2019-00628)

Patents asserted. The complaint (June 16, 2014) asserted ten patents: 7,312,897; 7,710,433; 7,710,560; 7,715,052; 7,729,008; 7,791,761; 8,009,175; 8,279,236; 8,416,444; and 8,537,357. Note a discrepancy worth flagging: this platform's metadata lists seven of those (the '761, '897, '433, '008, '175, '444, '357) and omits the '560, '052 and '236. The seven in the metadata are all members of Holub's mid-1990s "Virtual Proof" family — System for Distributing and Controlling Color Reproduction at Multiple Sites — which claims priority to Holub's original 1994–95 disclosures and generally covers networked, device-independent color reproduction: storing calibration/characterization data for rendering devices at network nodes, deriving color transformations so that color appears substantially the same within each device's attainable gamut, storing settings in device-independent units, and applying gamut operations/soft-proofing. One-line sketches:

The remaining three from the complaint follow the same pattern: the '560 patent claims chart-reader/spectrophotometer-based chart measurement plus profile creation for output devices (asserted claims 16–45); the '236 patent claims determining display calibration state across at least two networked computers each with a display; the '052 patent is a further family member. Caveat: I confirmed titles/abstracts for the '761, '008, '444 and the family generally from the patent front pages and IPR exhibits; I did not independently pull the face page of the '897, '433, '175 or '357 in this session, so the sketches above are drawn from how RAH itself characterized the claims and should be treated as descriptive rather than verified verbatim.

Procedural posture. Filed June 16, 2014 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division (Grand Rapids), Case No. 1:14-cv-00638, assigned to U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell; jury demand by plaintiff. X-Rite appeared and, by October 2014, was docketed as a counter-claimant (it served prior-art disclosures and evidently counterclaimed for declaratory relief; I did not review the counterclaim itself). A Rule 16 scheduling conference was held October 1, 2014; RAH served its disclosure of asserted claims October 28, 2014. On November 18, 2014 the parties filed a joint motion to stay; Judge Bell granted it in part on November 19, 2014, staying all matters 90 days and setting a March 10, 2015 status conference if the case had not settled. On February 2, 2015 the parties filed a stipulation of dismissal, which Judge Bell granted on March 5, 2015 (Dkt. 29), and the Clerk reported the determination to the USPTO on March 9, 2015 (Dkt. 30). The case thus closed roughly nine months after filing, with no claim construction, no summary-judgment ruling and no trial. The dismissal papers do not disclose terms; whether the resolution involved a license (consistent with RAH's licensing program) is plausible but not confirmed by anything I found. (Justia docket; UniCourt docket entries)

Venue significance. This was a defendant's-home-town case: X-Rite's principal place of business is in the district, which made personal jurisdiction and venue essentially unassailable in the pre-TC Heartland (2017) era, and it was filed in the Southern Division where X-Rite sits. The W.D. Mich. docket is a low-volume patent venue with a then-long-tenured judge (Bell, appointed 1987) — a forum that favors a quick, business-like resolution over a rocket-docket trial, which is exactly what happened.

Why it matters. The X-Rite suit is the **opening move in RAH's broader

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

The docket shows a short-lived case. Let me pull the full docket and the answer/counterclaims.

Now let me find the full docket entries (answer, counterclaims, any motions) and the license/consent judgment details.

Bottom line

This was a short, early-round suit in RAH Color Technologies' broader licensing campaign. Filed 2014-06-16 in the Western District of Michigan (X-Rite's home court, before Judge Robert Holmes Bell), the case never reached a Markman hearing, summary judgment, or trial. It was stayed for settlement talks in November 2014 and dismissed on a stipulated dismissal in early 2015 — roughly nine months after filing — consistent with a license/resolution rather than a merits ruling. The only later PTAB activity on these patents came in 2019–2020 in the Adobe IPRs, which did not involve X-Rite.

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1. Filing and initial pleadings

2014-06-16 — Complaint filed. Case No. 1:14-cv-00638, W.D. Mich. (Southern Division), assigned to Judge Robert Holmes Bell. Venue was essentially unchallengeable: X-Rite is a Michigan corporation headquartered at 4400 44th St. SE, Grand Rapids. Jury demand by plaintiff. (Justia docket)

The complaint asserted ten Holub patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,312,897; 7,710,433; 7,710,560; 7,715,052; 7,729,008; 7,791,761; 8,009,175; 8,279,236; 8,416,444; and 8,537,357. Accused products were X-Rite's i1 family, ColorMunki line, and IntelliTrax instruments, with both direct infringement (§ 271(a)) and inducement (§ 271(b)) theories — e.g., the '444 claim chart targeted i1Basic Pro 2, iDisplay Pro, i1Photo Pro 2, i1Publish, ColorMunki Photo/Display/Design; the '560 count targeted i1iSis/i1iSis XL and IntelliTrax in combination with iProfiler software. Willfulness was pleaded. (The complaint is reproduced in full as Ex. 2222 in Adobe v. RAH Color Techs., IPR2019-00628, available via Docket Alarm.)

Note on the patent list. The case metadata for this matter lists seven patents ('761, '897, '433, '008, '175, '444, '357) — that is the ten-patent complaint minus the '560, '052, and '236. I could not confirm from available sources whether the '560/'052/'236 were dropped by the amended complaint or simply fell out of the tracking data. Flagging as an unresolved discrepancy rather than asserting a narrowing.

2014-07-03 — First Amended Complaint (Dkt. 8), served 2014-07-09 (Dkt. 9). Filed just 17 days after the original — the likely motivation (correcting party/patent identification) is not confirmed.

2014-07-18 — Stipulation by X-Rite (Dkt. 10). Almost certainly an extension of X-Rite's responsive deadline; the text was not publicly available and I don't state its terms.

Answer and counterclaims. X-Rite's answer with counterclaims is not individually visible in the free docket abstract, but it is confirmed circumstantially: the 2014-10-30 entry (Dkt. 25) is a "Proof of Service by counter-claimant X-Rite, Inc. ... regarding Prior Art Disclosures," which necessarily follows an answer asserting at least declaratory-judgment counterclaims of non-infringement and invalidity. X-Rite's filings were made by Thomas Hubbard. RAH was represented on the docket by Nicholas Michael Dudziak and Irwin Inkee Park (Global IP Law Group was RAH's licensing counsel and the entity corresponding with targets in this period).

2014-10-01 — Rule 16 scheduling conference before Judge Bell; transcript filed 2014-10-15 (Dkt. 21).

2. Discovery milestones of strategic significance

• 2014-10-28 — RAH's "Disclosure of Claims Alleged to be Infringed" (Dkt. 24). This is the Local Patent Rule claim-identification disclosure — RAH had to commit to specific asserted claims across ten patents within roughly four months of filing.
• 2014-10-30 — X-Rite's Prior Art Disclosures, served with proof of service (Dkt. 25). This is the mirror-image invalidity disclosure. Sequencing matters here: X-Rite's prior art contentions landed within two days of RAH's claim disclosures, meaning the parties were into substantive patent-L.R. contention practice but had not yet begun claim-construction briefing.
• 2014-10-17 — Clerk letters (Dkts. 22, 23) to attorneys Sherry Lee Rollo and Steven Eric Feldman regarding mandatory electronic filing — a housekeeping matter reflecting out-of-district/admitted counsel appearing in the case.

No depositions, expert reports, or document-production disputes appear on the visible docket before the stay.

3. Pre-trial motions of substance

There were none of the classic dispositive type. No Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, no § 1404(a) transfer motion (unsurprising given X-Rite's Michigan HQ), and no summary judgment motion. The only substantive motion was:

2014-11-18 — Joint motion to stay (Dkt. 26), filed by RAH with X-Rite's concurrence.

2014-11-19 — Order (Dkt. 27) granting in part and denying in part the joint motion. All pending matters stayed 90 days; if the case had not "settled completely" by the end of that period, the parties were to appear before the Court on 2015-03-10 for rescheduling. The partial denial presumably left a carve-out (e.g., requiring a status report or preserving a dismissal mechanism), but the order's full text was not available to me.

Strategic read: a joint stay motion filed four months after the complaint, framed around "settled completely," is the signature of an in-progress license negotiation, not motion practice. It also tells you the parties were already talking before the Rule 16 conference.

4. Claim construction

None. The case was stayed before a Markman hearing and no claim-construction order or opinion issued. This matters for how the case is cited: it produced no claim-construction precedent and no intrinsic-record gloss on the Holub claims. (Contrast the later MDL 2874 proceedings in N.D. Cal., where construction issues in the Holub family were actually litigated.)

5. Trial, verdict, post-trial motions

None. No trial date was ever set beyond the scheduling order, no verdict, and no JMOL/new-trial/fee motions under §§ 285 or 1927.

6. Final disposition

2015-02-02 — Stipulation of dismissal filed by RAH (Dkt. 28).

2015-03-05 — Order granting the stipulation and dismissing the matter, signed by Judge Robert Holmes Bell (Dkt. 29).

2015-03-09 — Clerk's report to the USPTO Director on the determination of a patent action, with the dismissal order attached (Dkt. 30), as required by 35 U.S.C. § 290.

No appeal. The case is fully disposed; there is no present posture to monitor.

Whether dismissal was with or without prejudice is not disclosed in the docket abstract I could access — a real gap, since a without-prejudice dismissal after a stay is the usual signature of a covenant/license rather than a merits capitulation.

Was it a license? Strong circumstantial evidence says yes. In his declaration filed in Adobe v. RAH Color Technologies, IPR2019-00628 (Ex. 2121, filed 2020-05-08), Dr. Holub identifies, as Ex. 2204, a "license agreement RAH Color Technologies entered with [redacted]," describing the counterparty as "a large manufacturer of color calibration and testing equipment," and states that "[t]he agreement was reached after RAH Color Technologies filed patent infringement litigation against [redacted]. The lawsuit alleged infringement of 10 patents." (Holub Decl., IPR2019-00628) The description matches this case exactly: a color-measurement company, sued on ten patents, with a license following suit. The party name is redacted in the public version, so I am identifying X-Rite as the probable counterparty by inference, not by a named source. RAH's later complaints corroborate the pattern, describing licenses to "two additional manufacturers with extensive experience in the color measurement and management space."

7. Parallel PTAB proceedings and their effect

No IPR or PGR was filed against these patents while the X-Rite case was pending (2014–2015). The case therefore was not affected by PTAB activity at all — no § 315(b) bar issues, no stay-for-IPR motion, no estoppel.

The PTAB work came four years later, in a different litigation cluster:

• Adobe Inc. v. RAH Color Technologies, LLC — IPR2019-00627 ('008), IPR2019-00628 ('444), IPR2019-00629 ('897), and IPR2019-00646 ('761). Adobe filed the '761 petition on 2019-01-31; institution was granted 2019-09-04 (Paper 34, "Decision Granting Institution of Inter Partes Review," 35 U.S.C. § 314).
• A consolidated oral hearing across the four proceedings was held 2020-05-28.
• 2020-10-08 — Final Written Decision in IPR2019-00646 (Paper 119): the Board determined that claims 7, 8, 10, 11, and 13 of the '761 patent are unpatentable by a preponderance of the evidence, while denying both parties' motions to exclude and RAH's motion to strike. ([FWD, IPR2019-00646](https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00646/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7791761/docs/10-08-2020-Board/Notice-119-PUBLIC_VERSIONJUDGMENTFinal_Written_DecisionDetermining_Some_Challenged_Claims_UnpatentableDenying_Patent_Owner%C2%BF%C2%BF%C2%BFs_Motions_to_ExcludeDenying_Patent_Owner%C2%BF%C2%BF%C2%BFs_Motion_to_StrikeDenying_P

I'll research the docket and counsel appearances for this case.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff RAH Color Technologies LLC

Bottom line: The docket records I could retrieve show plaintiff was represented by two Chicago lawyers from Global IP Law Group, LLC — Irwin Inkee Park and Nicholas M. Dudziak — both of whom are corroborated by their own CM/ECF filer logins on the docket. No Michigan-based local counsel for the plaintiff is identifiable in the accessible docket data. The case was short-lived: filed June 16, 2014, stayed for settlement on Nov. 19, 2014 (Dkt. 27), and dismissed by stipulation (Dkt. 28, filed Feb. 2, 2015; dismissal order Dkt. 29, Mar. 5, 2015).

Sourcing: The Justia docket for No. 1:14-cv-00638 lists the plaintiff as "Represented By: Nicholas Michael Dudziak" and "Represented By: Irwin Inkee Park" (https://dockets.justia.com/docket/michigan/miwdce/1:2014cv00638/78154). The UniCourt docket mirror confirms the ECF filer attributions on Dkts. 8, 9, 24, 26 and 28 ("Dudziak, Nicholas"; "Park, Irwin") (https://unicourt.com/case/rc-db1-rah-color-technologies-llc-v-x-rite-inc-[512978](/patent/512978)). The Global IP Law Group Chicago address and Park's role as RAH's lead counsel are confirmed in RAH's own PTAB filings and exhibits (e.g., GIPLG pro hac vice affidavit, IPR2019-00616/-627 family, and the MDL joint status report signed by David Berten, "Attorney for Plaintiff, RAH Color Technologies LLC").

Attorneys who likely worked the file but whose appearance here is unconfirmed

• David Powers Berten (Global IP Law Group, Chicago) — the firm's founder and RAH Color's lead attorney in the parallel Adobe, Xerox, Quad/Graphics and MDL matters, and a signatory on RAH's MDL filings. I could not verify a notice of appearance by him in this W.D. Mich. docket; he is a probable but unconfirmed participant.
• Alison Aubry Richards (Global IP Law Group, Chicago) — RAH's pro hac vice counsel in the 2018–19 matters; no evidence of an appearance in the 2014 X-Rite case.
• Steven E. Feldman and Sherry L. Rollo (then Husch Blackwell LLP, Chicago) — the Clerk sent both attorneys "mandatory electronic filing" letters in October 2014 (Dkt. 22, 23), which means they had appeared or attempted to file in the case. The docket excerpts available to me do not state which party they represented, and Law360's attorney page for Husch Blackwell's Walter J. Kawula, Jr. (Chicago) also lists this case among his matters. I have not included any of these three as plaintiff counsel because their party affiliation is not established by the sources I could access — on the available evidence they are at least as likely to have been defense-side (X-Rite's filings in this docket were made by Thomas Hubbard, who is not from Global IP Law Group).

Caveats

• No document in this case appears to have been sealed, and counsel did appear, so the ordinary "sealed/no appearance" caveat does not apply — the limitation here is source coverage: PACER itself was not directly queried, and Justia/UniCourt/RECAP mirrors can truncate the attorney list.
• The docket closed in March 2015, well before RAH Color's later campaign (2018–2019) in which Global IP Law Group's full team (Berten, Park, Dudziak, Richards, Ragnar Olson) became visible; do not retroactively attribute those later appearances to this 2014 case.
• Plaintiff's principal, Dr. Richard A. Holub, is the client/owner of RAH Color (Alexandria, Va.), not counsel of record.

If you need an authoritative confirmation, the single best check is the "Attorneys" tab of the PACER docket for 1:14-cv-00638 and Dkt. 1 (complaint signature block), Dkt. 8 (First Amended Complaint), and any "Appearance" entries between June and October 2014, none of which I could open directly here.

I'll research defendant X-Rite's counsel of record using the docket and firm sources.

Now let me identify the other defense attorneys — the Clerk's October 2014 letters to Sherry Rollo and Steven Feldman suggest additional defense-side counsel.

Bottom line

Only one defense attorney's appearance is affirmatively documented on the docket as counsel for X-Rite: Thomas V. Hubbard of Drew, Cooper & Anding, P.C. in Grand Rapids — X-Rite's local, Michigan-based counsel, who carried the ECF filer login for both defense filings that survive in the public docket (Dkt. 10, the July 18, 2014 stipulation; Dkt. 25, the Oct. 30, 2014 proof of service regarding prior-art disclosures, captioned "by counter-claimant X-Rite, Inc., defendant X-Rite, Inc."). (UniCourt docket; Justia docket)

Two additional IP litigators — Sherry L. Rollo and Steven E. Feldman, then both partners at Husch Blackwell LLP, Chicago — almost certainly appeared on X-Rite's side, based on the Clerk's Oct. 17, 2014 mandatory-e-filing letters directed to them (Dkts. 22, 23), but the public docket abstract does not state which party they represented, and I could not confirm it. I flag them as probable-but-unverified rather than listing them as counsel of record.

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Confirmed counsel of record

Reading the role correctly. Hubbard is best characterized as local/regional trial counsel and the attorney of record — the person physically before Judge Bell in Grand Rapids, handling the responsive pleading, the prior-art disclosures, and the Rule 16 conference. He is not a patent specialist in the Global IP Law Group mold, and the pattern (a Grand Rapids general-commercial litigator as local counsel, with specialized IP counsel behind him) is the standard defense alignment in a defendant's-home-town patent case. Note that the docket shows no pro hac vice motions and no admitted out-of-state IP trial counsel — either they were admitted without a formal PHV motion appearing in the abstract, or the substantive IP work was done by counsel who never entered an appearance in the nine months the case was live.

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Probable defense-side counsel (party affiliation unverified)

Both attorneys received Clerk letters dated Oct. 17, 2014 "regarding mandatory electronic filing" (Dkts. 22, 23). In W.D. Mich. practice those letters issue to attorneys who have appeared or attempted to file but are not yet registered ECF users — i.e., they were acting as counsel in the case as of mid-October 2014. Neither was at Global IP Law Group (RAH's firm), and no third party was in the case, so the inference is that both were on X-Rite's side. That inference is not confirmed by any source I could access.

Also worth noting: the prior section flagged that Law360's attorney page for Walter J. Kawula, Jr. (then of SmithAmundsen, Chicago) lists this case among his matters. I could not reach that page in this session to confirm the party alignment or his role; treat him as a third possible (unverified) defense-side name rather than counsel of record.

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Gaps and how to close them

• No X-Rite in-house counsel is identified in any source I could access. Nothing suggests an in-house lawyer entered an appearance — X-Rite's filings were made through outside counsel.
• No lead trial counsel with a formal appearance is confirmed. The absence of any PHV motion or notice of appearance for a national IP firm in the docket abstract means the visible record shows Hubbard as the sole defense attorney of record, which is almost certainly an artifact of a nine-month case resolved before contention practice matured.
• Nothing is sealed — the limitation is source coverage, not confidentiality. PACER itself was not queried; Justia/UniCourt/RECAP mirrors can truncate attorney lists (Justia, for instance, lists only the two plaintiff-side attorneys).
• Best verification path: the "Attorneys" tab of the PACER docket for No. 1:14-cv-00638, plus the signature blocks of Dkt. 11 (X-Rite's answer/counterclaims — the key missing document, which would definitively name lead counsel) and Dkts. 22–23 (which would show the address of record and thus the party for Rollo and Feldman). The Rule 16 scheduling-conference transcript (Dkt. 21) would also identify who appeared for X-Rite on Oct. 1, 2014.

Cross-check against the case metadata: no contradiction. The metadata is silent on defense counsel; my findings are consistent with the previously generated "Plaintiff representatives" section, which likewise identified Hubbard as X-Rite's filer on Dkts. 10 and 25 without being able to identify a full defense team.