Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Adobe Systems Inc.

I'll research this case against public sources before writing the overview.

Let me dig into the PTAB/Federal Circuit side and the case's disposition.

Case Overview — Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Adobe Systems Inc., No. 2:18-cv-09344-GW-JC (C.D. Cal.)

The parties. Plaintiff Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC is a non-practicing patent-assertion entity — Unified Patents classifies it as an "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" in the high-tech sector — that appears in court filings as part of the same corporate family as Realtime Data LLC (which litigates as "IXO") and holds the so-called "Fallon patents" naming James J. Fallon as first inventor. Realtime's counsel of record in this matter was the Los Angeles monetization boutique Russ, August & Kabat (Marc A. Fenster, Reza Mirzaie, Brian D. Ledahl, C. Jay Chung, Philip X. Wang, later Kent N. Shum and Neil A. Rubin). Defendant Adobe Systems Inc. — renamed Adobe Inc. by a name-change order in this case in early 2019 — is the San Jose–based software company. In other words, this is a classic operating-company-versus-PAE suit over video compression, not a competitor dispute. (Unified Patents case page; D. Mass. docket via Justia; IPR2019-00712 institution decision)

Accused technology and patents. The accused instrumentalities are Adobe's H.264-era media and streaming products: Adobe Media Encoder (CS4–CS6 and CC), Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash / Flash Player, Flash Media Server and Flash Media Encoding Server, and Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS), alleged to practice the claims through H.264 (and H.264/SVC) encoding and adaptive-bitrate delivery. The case metadata identifies U.S. Patent No. 8,934,535 ("Systems and Methods for Video and Audio Data Storage and Distribution," issued January 2015) as the patent at issue: a continuation that claims priority back through the '046 patent to a February 13, 2001 provisional, generally covering selecting among compression routines/codecs based on a measured parameter or "access profile" of the data and on channel throughput. Realtime asserted claims 1 and 15 of the '535 against Adobe — claim 1 a method of determining a parameter of an audio/video data block, selecting an access profile from a plurality of profiles, and compressing with asymmetric compression using that profile; claim 15 a method of determining a parameter, selecting asymmetric compressors based on it, compressing, and storing. One caveat worth flagging: the pleadings and the Court's July 25, 2019 claim construction order show that Realtime actually asserted seven Fallon-family patents against Adobe — the '046, '535, '298, '477, RE46,777, '907 and '442 patents — with the '535 among the five also asserted against Google in the companion C.D. Cal. case. The cover metadata's single-patent framing therefore understates the original scope. (Claim construction order, Doc. 92; complaint excerpts)

Procedural posture and significance. Realtime filed against Adobe in the District of Massachusetts on February 23, 2018 (No. 1:18-cv-10355, Judge William G. Young) as part of a twelve-case, five-district campaign; after the JPML refused to centralize the cases (In re Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC Patent Litig., MDL No. 2845, denied Aug. 1, 2018), the parties jointly moved the case to California and it was transferred on October 31, 2018, landing before Judge George H. Wu (Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian) as No. 2:18-cv-09344. The case ran through fact and expert discovery and consolidated claim construction with the parallel Google action; the Court held a Markman hearing on July 18, 2019 and issued a 37-page construction order on July 25, 2019 (Doc.

I'll research this case systematically, starting with the docket and working through outcomes and parallel PTAB proceedings.

Good foundation. Now let me dig into later docket events and the parallel IPRs specific to Adobe.

Now I need the final disposition. Let me check the full docket and later events.

Bottom line first

This was not a one-patent case, and it did not stay in C.D. Cal. — both facts matter for the chronology. Realtime asserted seven patents against Adobe and filed in D. Mass., only landing in C.D. Cal. after a venue fight collapsed into a joint transfer motion. The case then ran a full Markman and a heavy summary-judgment/Daubert cycle in late 2019–early 2020, while PTAB proceedings — mostly filed by other defendants — wiped out the asserted claims of two of the seven patents. I could not verify a public final disposition (dismissal order, settlement announcement, or judgment); the docket aggregators list the case as closed but without a termination document I could source. That gap is flagged in §6.

---

1. Filing and initial pleadings

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

Found one blog analysis. Let me broaden to news outlets and Federal Circuit coverage.

Let me search more angles specific to Adobe and for trade-press coverage.

Press coverage — what exists, and what doesn't

Bottom line: the Adobe action itself generated almost no news coverage. Across searches on the caption, the case number, the party names, the '535 patent, and the string "Realtime Adaptive Streaming" generally, I found no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, Ars Technica, The Verge, IPWatchdog, or Patently-O article about Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Adobe. The single piece of published commentary squarely about this case is a law-firm blog post: PTAB Litigation Blog (reposted by Jones Day in June 2019) analyzed Judge Wu's denial of Adobe's stay motion — Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Adobe Sys. Inc., No. 2:18-cv-09344, ECF No. 75 (C.D. Cal. May 14, 2019). The post framed the ruling as a practitioner lesson rather than as Adobe-specific news: it reported that Realtime asserted seven patents, that five were in IPR but Adobe petitioned on only one, and that the court denied the stay because Adobe would accept only "limited estoppel" barring grounds actually raised in the third-party IPRs, not full § 315(e)(2) estoppel. It also noted the court's point that Adobe could have joined the third-party IPRs as an "understudy." That account is consistent with the court record described in the earlier sections, and I found no outlet disputing it.

The '535 patent — the patent in the case metadata — does get substantial coverage, but through the sibling cases against Netflix, Sling/DISH and Google, not Adobe. Schwabe summarized the Federal Circuit's August 23, 2024 decision in Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Sling TV, No. 2023-1035, and is the most useful press recitation of the '535's fate: the C.D. Cal. Google action found claims 15–30 of the '535 ineligible under § 101 while finding claims 1–14 eligible, the Delaware Netflix action found claim 15 (as a representative claim) ineligible, and the PTAB invalidated claims 1–14 on obviousness. Alston & Bird and the National Law Review (Katherine Pappas) covered the companion July 27, 2022 precedential fee decision, Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Netflix, Nos. 2021-1484 et al., which affirmed a § 285/inherent-power fee award for what the court called "blatant gamesmanship" and "impermissible forum shopping" — the National Law Review headline was "Fee Award Appropriate for Trying to Refresh and Replay Case." McDermott, via Lexology and the National Law Review covered the August 2024 vacatur of the DISH/Sling fee award, and the Fed Circuit Blog ran the standard opinion summary. None of these mentions Adobe or the '535 claim-construction order in No. 2:18-cv-09344.

Where accounts differ or go beyond the record. The divergence is one of emphasis, not fact: Schwabe presents the Google and Netflix § 101 rulings as legitimate "red flags" supporting exceptionality (the Federal Circuit agreed on that one flag), while the National Law Review and Lexology stress that the Federal Circuit rejected the other five flags — including the PTAB's '535 invalidation, because it was a prior-art ruling rather than a § 101 ruling. That distinction matters analytically for the Adobe case: the same PTAB outcomes that gutted the '535 were, per these accounts, not treated as notice-giving for fee purposes. No outlet I found reports a damages figure, settlement term, or judgment in Realtime v. Adobe; the only monetary numbers in the coverage are the DISH/Sling fee figures (a $3.9 million award referenced in a Law360 UK docket-roundup snippet reporting a February 5, 2025 ruling denying fees on remand, and Fish's ~$4.97 million fee affidavit in the Colorado action).

Reporting gaps to flag. (1) I found no press coverage of Adobe's own IPR, Adobe Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming, IPR2019-00712, whose final written decision of August 17, 2020 held all challenged claims of the '442 patent unpatentable — that appears only in PTAB databases (ipVerse/GreyB), not in any article. (2) I found no press coverage of the July 25, 2019 Markman ruling in the Adobe case, the late-2019 summary-judgment/Daubert activity, or the case's closure; the "closed" status appears only on docket aggregators such as Unified Patents, consistent with the unverified disposition noted in the earlier sections. (3) Treat the absence of coverage as a finding about searchable public web sources, not proof that no trade-press item exists behind a Law360/Bloomberg paywall — Law360 in particular is largely unindexed for article text, so a targeted Law360 search on "Adobe" + "Realtime Adaptive" would be worth running if subscription access is available.

Sources

• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD

• DOCKET NO

• STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
• * 7 Petition for Inter Partes Review of U
• * 39 Memorandum Opinion and Order, filed in _Realtime Data LLC v
• Litigation Case List - Applied Filters: Source: DCPlaintiff: Realtime Adaptive Streaming, LLC,Realtime Adaptive
• UNITED STATES JUDICIAL PANEL on MULTIDISTRICT LITIGATION
• Case 2:18-cv-09344-GW-JC Document 92 Filed 07/25/19 Page 1 of 37 Page ID #:3633
• IN THE UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA WESTERN DIVISION
• separate litigations against other defendants across the country: Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v

Counsel of record for Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC — Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Adobe Sys./Adobe Inc., No. 2:18-cv-09344-GW-JC (C.D. Cal.)

Bottom line: Realtime's representation was a two-firm structure that survived the case's transfer. The case began in D. Mass. (No. 1:18-cv-10355-WGY), filed 2/23/2018, with Birnbaum & Godkin, LLP (Boston) as local counsel of record and the Russ August & Kabat (Los Angeles) patent team admitted pro hac vice. After the joint motion to transfer was granted (D. Mass. ECF 29, 30, 31; case transferred 11/1/2018 and opened in C.D. Cal. as 2:18-cv-09344-GW-JC), the RAK team carried the case in Los Angeles — which also satisfied C.D. Cal.'s local-counsel requirement, since RAK is LA-based. There was no separate C.D. Cal. local counsel.

Note on the caption: the metadata caption reads "Adobe Systems Inc."; the C.D. Cal. docket and later papers use "Adobe Inc." (Adobe converted to a Delaware corporation/renamed in 2018). Same party.

Russ August & Kabat — primary counsel (Los Angeles, 12424 Wilshire Blvd., 12th Fl., Los Angeles, CA 90025; (310) 826-7474)

Pre-transfer Massachusetts local counsel (appear on the D. Mass. docket only)

A distinct (and easy to conflate) set: PTAB counsel

In the parallel inter partes reviews, Realtime's mandatory notices changed in August 2019 to designate Joel P.N. Stonedale (Reg. No. 76,924) of Noroozi PC (Austin, TX) as lead PTAB counsel, with Kayvan B. Noroozi (Noroozi PC, Los Angeles) as first back-up, and RAK's Rubin and Shum remaining as back-up (IPR2018-01187 updated mandatory notices, 8/23/2019). I did not find Noroozi PC appearing in the C.D. Cal. Adobe docket, so I would treat that as PTAB-side representation only unless a C.D. Cal. notice of appearance surfaces. Flagging because the earlier "in the news" section relies on PTAB records that name these counsel interchangeably with the litigation team.

Verification limits

• I did not pull PACER directly; the attorney list above is reconstructed from the Justia docket for 2:18-cv-09344 (including the transferred D. Mass. entries), the Unified Patents litigation portal docket text, PTAB filings (which expressly identify the C.D. Cal. Adobe case and its handling attorneys), and the Federal Circuit Rule 47.4(a)(1) certificate listing firms/attorneys who appeared for Realtime.
• Do not assume every 2019 filing was signed by RAK. Realtime's damages-related filings were sealed (e.g., its applications for leave to file under seal, ECF 131, 133, 135; orders at ECF 156, 157), and I could not verify from a public source the individual e-filer on those sealed papers or on the eventual dismissal/settlement papers. If you need the exact ECF-by-ECF filer, a PACER docket-report pull for 2:18-cv-09344 is required.
• No attorney listed here is inferred or invented; every name is tied to a docket entry, a PTAB paper naming the C.D. Cal. case, or a court filing.

Sources

• Justia docket, Realtime Adaptive Streaming v. Adobe Systems Inc., No. 2:18-cv-09344 (C.D. Cal.) — https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/cacdce/2:2018cv09344/[727522](/patent/727522)
• Unified Patents litigation portal, case 2:18-cv-09344 (docket text including D. Mass. entries: complaint filed by Godkin; ECF 7 PHV motion by Kruzer adding Fenster, Mirzaie, Ledahl, Chung, Wang, Hsieh; ECF 29/30/31 transfer) — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/California%20Central%20District%20Court/case/2:18-cv-09344
• Declaration of James S. Tsuei ISO PHV (RAK associate responsible for the Adobe C.D. Cal. litigation; RAK address/contact) — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1527081](/patent/1527081)/download-documents?artifactId=hc0qjZq5yoAukgCcUhP8v4-MhB6tJrZqadThd5g8GiJZnwSr49tDEwA
• Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC Updated Mandatory Notices, IPR2018-01187 (8/23/2019) — Stonedale/Noroozi lead; RAK back-up; identifies Realtime v. Adobe Systems Inc., No. 2:18-cv-09344 — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2018-01187/Hulu_LLC_v._Realtime_Adaptive_Streaming_LLC/docs/08-23-2019-Patent_Owner/Other_Not_for_motions-31-Patent_Owners_Updated_Mandatory_Notice.pdf
• Realtime Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC Mandatory Notices, IPR (5/28/2019) —

I'll research the docket and firm records for Adobe's counsel in this matter.

Key lead: Adobe's district court counsel appears to be Fish & Richardson. Let me confirm names, offices, and roles.

Now let me pin down the specific appearances in the C.D. Cal. docket and local counsel.

Counsel of Record for Adobe — 2:18-cv-09344 (C.D. Cal.)

Bottom line: Adobe was represented throughout by Fish & Richardson P.C., not by the Weil, Gotshal team that represents Adobe in other patent matters (e.g., the E.D. Tex. Adobe cases). The Adobe team was a Boston-centric F&R group with a Los Angeles/San Diego F&R principal serving as local counsel. The case began life in D. Mass. as Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Adobe Systems Incorporated, No. 1:18-cv-10355 (filed Feb. 23, 2018), and the same F&R attorneys carried over when the case was transferred to C.D. Cal. on November 1, 2018 and reassigned to Judge George H. Wu.

Table of counsel

Verification status and gaps

• Sourcing. The D. Mass. appearance entries (ECF Nos. 13, 14, 21) are confirmed through the Justia and Unified Patents docket mirrors, and the C.D. Cal. pro hac vice filings (Marchese/Ranks, Marchese/Mukherji) through the Unified Patents litigation portal. The PTAB designations come from Adobe's own IPR2019-00712 petition and the ARRIS IPR2019-01586 institution decision.
• Not verified against PACER directly. I did not pull the raw C.D. Cal. docket to confirm (a) the pro hac vice orders granting Ranks and Mukherji in C.D. Cal., (b) whether Scherkenbach formally re-appeared after transfer or simply continued under the transferred appearances, or (c) any withdrawals/substitutions between the late-2019 summary judgment and Daubert filings (many of which were sealed — e.g., Adobe's damages-focused MSJ and Daubert motion at Docs. 131–156) and the case's administrative closure. Any withdrawal would not be visible in the aggregators I could reach.
• No in-house counsel identified. I found no Adobe corporate counsel on the docket; the appearance record is entirely F&R.
• Caption note / minor contradiction to flag. The docket caption mutated from "Adobe Systems Inc." (as filed in D. Mass. in Feb. 2018 and as used in the case metadata here) to "Adobe Inc." in later C.D. Cal. filings (e.g., the Mukherji PHV application is "on behalf of Defendant Adobe Inc."). This is a party-name update, not a change in representation.
• Consistency with prior sections. This does not conflict with the earlier "no press coverage" finding; counsel identification comes entirely from docket/PTAB records, which is exactly why the F&R team — including the same Lamberson who was Adobe's IPR back-up — never surfaced in trade press coverage of this case.

One analytical point worth carrying forward: Adobe staffed this defense with the same firm on both fronts (district court and IPR2019-00712), yet, per the earlier section, Adobe petitioned on only one of the seven asserted patents and declined full § 315(e)(2) estoppel across the third-party IPRs — the posture that cost it the stay before Judge Wu. The F&R team list above is the human link between those two tracks.