Sterling Computers Corporation v. Microsoft Corporation

I'll research this case thoroughly using web search.

Let me dig deeper into the parties, the patent's provenance, and parallel proceedings.

Let me verify the IPR institution decision and current district court status.

I'll research the docket, filings, and any parallel PTAB proceedings for this case.

Strong leads so far. Let me dig into the W.D. Tex. docket in detail, plus the parallel IPR and any related litigation.

Sterling Computers Corp. v. Microsoft Corp., No. 1:24-cv-00406-RP (W.D. Tex.) — Key Legal Developments and Outcome

Bottom line: The case is a live, single-patent (§101-sensitive) infringement action over the Microsoft Exchange Online messaging platform. There is no verdict, judgment, settlement, or appeal. The two events that define the case's trajectory to date are (1) Judge Pitman's 2025-02-12 denial of Microsoft's Alice/§101 motion to dismiss without prejudice — a deferral, not a merits win for Sterling — and (2) the PTAB's institution of Microsoft's IPR on the '911 patent on 2025-09-23. Beyond those two anchors, several expected milestones (answer/counterclaims, Markman order, stay ruling, any settlement or dismissal) are not corroborated by the sources retrievable in this session, and I flag each gap rather than fill it. Note one continuing metadata conflict: an aggregator status field still lists this case as "Closed," which the docket does not support (see Caveats).

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1. Chronology of verified developments

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2. Pre-trial motions of substance

• Motion to dismiss (§101/Alice) — filed 2024-06-13 (Dkt. 19), denied 2025-02-12 (Dkt. 48). Microsoft argued claims 1 and 10 are directed to "the abstract idea of tracking related communications (e.g., emails) and applying rules based on information about those communications," and that the claims lack an inventive concept. Sterling countered with the Enfish/McRO-style "specific improvement in computer functioning" framing and urged deferral. The court sided with Sterling on sequencing only: the denial is expressly non-merits and invite-a-refiling. This order is not a §101 victory for Sterling, and eligibility remains the single largest case-ending risk.
• Motion to transfer: none found. Consistent with the pleading that Microsoft has Austin and San Antonio offices and with the case remaining in the Austin Division before Judge Pitman.
• Motion to stay pending IPR: none found in any source retrieved. That is notable given (i) the IPR petition was filed 2025-01-17 and (ii) institution followed on 2025-09-23 — a point at which a stay motion would ordinarily be expected. Microsoft's Sotera stipulation (limiting district-court invalidity grounds to those not raised or reasonably raisable in the IPR) is a factor courts in this district weigh heavily against a stay, so it is plausible no stay was sought or one was denied — but I cannot confirm either way from the sources available.
• Summary judgment / dispositive motions in this case: none found. (The summary-judgment, Daubert/motions-to-exclude, and sanctions activity dated 2026-03-03 that surfaces in searches belongs to the separate Sterling v. IBM D.S.D. docket — see §5 — not to this case.)

3. Claim construction, discovery, and trial posture

• The scheduling order (Dkt. 39) placed claim construction beginning February 2025, and the court referenced the dispute over the meaning and scope of the '911 claims as the reason to defer §101. The two terms that will control the case, per the pleadings, are "message container containing relational references pointing to a plurality of sent submessages stored externally to the message container" and "governance module."
• I could not verify a Markman hearing date, a claim construction order, or a jury trial date for this case in the sources retrieved. This is a genuine evidence gap, not a negative finding.
• Fact discovery milestones: the 2025-01-17 IPR petition states discovery had not yet opened, and the 2025-02-12 order likewise states fact discovery had not begun. That is the last confirmed discovery posture. No discovery-dispute orders (motions to compel, protective-order fights) surfaced for this docket — again, a gap.
• Trial/verdict/post-trial: none. No JMOL, new-trial, or fee motion exists for this case in anything retrieved.

4. Parallel PTAB proceeding: IPR2025-00270 (the decisive parallel event)

• Microsoft Corp. v. Sterling Computers Corp., IPR2025-00270, petition filed 2025-01-17; challenged claims 1–13, 15, 18, 20–21, 27 of the '911 patent; §103 grounds only:
  • Ground 1 — claims 1–8, 10–13, 15, 18, 20–21 obvious over Rohall (US 2003/0163537) in view of Schiavone (US 2002/0120600). Rohall's "shadow documents"/parent-child threading is mapped to the "message container/relational references" limitation; Schiavone's "recipient compliance engine"/"rule base" is mapped to the "governance module"/"governance policy database."
  • Ground 2 — claims 9 and 27 obvious over Rohall + Schiavone + Gomes (US 8,375,008), with Gomes's de-duplication engine mapped to claim 27's "stored exactly once" limitation and its search-rule teachings mapped to claim 9.
• Discretionary-denial posture: Microsoft argued the references were never before the Examiner (no §325(d) basis for denial) and argued Fintiv factor 4 (no stay; minimal district-court investment), factor 5 (same petitioner/patent), and a Sotera stipulation against denial, while noting the district trial date was more than 18 months out — which it argued would yield a Final Written Decision months before trial.
• Institution granted 2025-09-23 (IPR2025-00270 Dkt. 12), following a Director/panel referral (Dkt. 8, 2025-05-28). Effect on the litigation: the IPR and the district court case are running in parallel (no stay confirmed), so Microsoft now has two shots at the '911 patent (PTAB §103; district court §101/§103/§112), while its Sotera stipulation cabins the district-court invalidity case.
• Status of the FWD: institution on 2025-09-23 puts the §316(a)(11) one-year Final Written Decision deadline at approximately 2026-09-23 — i.e., today — extendable up to six months for good cause, and the 2026-03-10 Amended Scheduling Order (Dkt. 19) indicates the Board adjusted dates. I could not retrieve the Final Written Decision, the Patent Owner Response, or the outcome, and I therefore do not assert one. Any FWD cancelling or upholding claims 1–13/15/18/20–21/27 would directly reshape the district case (compare the Proxense‑style consequence of a PTAB cancellation forcing dismissal of the corresponding district-court claims). This is the top item to verify next.
• No second petition (e.g., a companion IPR against the '911 patent) was found; treat that as unverified rather than confirmed absent.

5. Related Sterling litigation (context, not the same docket)

Sterling Computers Corp. also has an active patent case against IBM, No. 4:23-cv-04150 (D.S.D.), filed 2023-09-28 before Judge Camela C. Theeler (a recusal occurred 2023-10-11; the case was reassigned 2024-06-12). That docket shows a Rule 12(b)(6) denial on 2024-11-05, a granted-in-part leave to amend and an amended complaint in May 2025, and a heavy dispositive-motion wave on 2026-03-03 (summary judgment, two motions to exclude, a sanctions motion, statements of material fact). I did not confirm which patent(s) are at issue in the IBM case — do not assume it is the '911 patent on the basis of these results alone. If it is the same patent, the D.S.D. case is a materially similar "email compliance architecture" assertion and the two dockets should be tracked together.

6. Final disposition / present posture

• No final disposition. No settlement, stipulated dismissal, consent judgment, default, or appeal appears in any source retrieved for 1:24-cv-00406.
• Present posture (as of the last verifiable events): active W.D. Tex. action before Judge Pitman; §101 deferred and refilable after claim construction and fact discovery; IPR2025-00270 instituted and proceeding in parallel, with an amended PTAB schedule entered 2026-03-10 and a statutory FWD deadline around late September 2026 (potentially extended).
• Contradiction to flag: an aggregator case-status field lists 1:24-cv-00406 as "Closed" (AI docket page). The Docket Alarm and CourtListener records show no termination entry, and the Feb. 2025 order contemplates further proceedings. The "Closed" tag is most likely a stale or auto-populated field error (possibly bleed-through from the D.S.D. IBM docket, which does show a 2026-03-03 summary-judgment filing on a trial track). Treat the case as active unless a PACER termination entry says otherwise.

7. Open questions / highest-value verification steps

1. IPR2025-00270 Final Written Decision — outcome and claim-by-claim result (due ~2026-09-23, possibly extended); the single most consequential unknown.
2. District-court docket entries 49–present (post-Feb. 2025) — Microsoft's answer and counterclaims (non-infringement/invalidity/unenforceability?) after the MTD denial; any renewed §101 motion; any stay motion and ruling; a Markman order/hearing transcript; the trial setting.
3. Whether Sterling ever amended to add indirect-infringement counts or additional patents — the operative complaint as analyzed pleads direct infringement only, plus willfulness.
4. Patent ownership/provenance of the '911 patent (original assignee and chain to Sterling) and any pre-suit licensing activity — relevant to both standing and enhanced-damages equities, and not established by the sources reviewed.

Sources: Dkt. 48 (2025-02-12 §101 denial) via CourtListener and RECAP PDF (docket truncated at 2024-06-14); Justia docket; IPR2025-00270 petition summary and Docket Alarm event list; Stanford NPE database; Sterling v. IBM, No. 4:23-cv-04150 (D.S.D.) via CourtListener docket. Aggregator-forwarded document content (petition summaries, complaint analyses) is secondary and is labeled as such throughout.

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

I found one trade-press item. Let me search more angles for additional coverage.

Let me identify the source publication of that trade-press item and probe additional angles.

Bottom line: coverage of this specific case is thin. The only press/trade item I found that discusses Sterling Computers Corp. v. Microsoft Corp. by name is a patent-risk-analytics piece by RPX Corporation (republished on Mondaq, dated 2024-07-17), headlined "Turn Of Sterling Computers To Patent Litigation No Fluke." I found no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Ars Technica, The Verge, IPWatchdog, Patently-O, EFF Deeplinks, JD Supra, or general-interest coverage of this docket, and no article reporting a verdict, award, settlement, or market impact. For a suit against Microsoft over Exchange Online — a flagship cloud product — that silence is itself notable, though it is consistent with NPE-campaign suits that generate only specialist coverage.

RPX Corporation framed the Microsoft suit as one leg of a three-case filing campaign, reporting on 2024-07-17 that "Sterling Computers Corporation has followed up an April 2024 case against Microsoft with a pair of suits in May, one against Meta Platforms (1:24-cv-00551) and the other against X (f/k/a Twitter) (1:24-cv-00552), both also filed in the Western District of Texas." The same piece supplies the patent-provenance detail that our earlier sections flagged as an open question: RPX reported that "the 2014 transfer from Bluespace to Sterling involved four issued US patents, another of which (8,073,911) Sterling asserted against Microsoft," that the related '217 patent's named inventors are Justin and Paul Marston and Andrew S. Hatch, that Sterling was formed in California in 1996, and that "DiNovo Price LLP represents Sterling" — all consistent with the docket-derived counsel section. RPX also noted "the Microsoft suit has been assigned to District Judge Robert L. Pitman," matching the case metadata, and cross-referenced its own earlier piece, "Email Storage Suit Targets Microsoft" (April 2024), which I could not retrieve directly and therefore cannot quote or characterize beyond that citation.

Two caveats on what has and hasn't been reported. First, a Law360 case page dated 2025-02-14 reports on a different docket — Sterling Computers Corporation v. X Corp. — noting that "A Texas federal judge has granted X Corp.'s request to stay an infringement lawsuit from Sterling Computers Corp. over Sterling's content filtering patent while the Patent Trial and Appeal Board decides whether to initiate a review of the patent." That item concerns Sterling's content-filtering/'217 assertion against X, not the '911 patent or Microsoft, and it should not be read as coverage of this case (it does, however, corroborate the earlier sections' warning against conflating Sterling's separate assertions). Second, the RPX reporting goes beyond the court record only in the direction of corporate/inventor background and case-strategy color — e.g., its observation that Sterling's California registration lists its business type as "RESALE IT EQUIPMENT" while its website describes an IT sales-and-services firm — which is analyst commentary, not court findings.

What I could not find any press account of: the 2025-02-12 §101/Alice motion-to-dismiss denial, Microsoft's IPR2025-00270 petition or its 2025-09-23 institution, any damages figure or royalty demand, any executive statement from either party, or any settlement/dismissal reporting. Anyone relying on press coverage alone would have no awareness of the two events that define this case's trajectory. A practical suggestion: because specialist outlets track Sterling's campaign rather than this docket individually, the most reliable ongoing signal will remain PTAB and PACER filings (per the earlier sections), not news. I should also disclose that my searches were cut short by a tool-step limit before I could exhaust additional angles (e.g., Bloomberg Law and Docket Alarm news feeds, trade newsletters covering W.D. Tex. patent filings), so it remains possible that paywalled Law360 or Bloomberg items about the Microsoft case exist that I did not surface; I would treat that as unverified rather than as a confirmed absence.

Sources

• Case 1:24-cv-00406-RP Document 48 Filed 02/12/25 Page 1 of 7
• Sterling Computers Corporation v. Microsoft Corporation – CourtListener.com - Trial Court Document
• Ex. 1016 | IPR2025-00270 | Microsoft Corp v. Sterling Computers Corp | Ex Parte
• Petition analysis | IPR2025-00270 | Microsoft Corp v. Sterling Computers Corp | Ex Parte
• Docket Alarm | Litigation Outcomes, Delivered
• 8073911 | NPE Litigation Database
• Sterling Computers Corporation
• Sterling Computers Corporation v. Microsoft Corporation
• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• Microsoft Corporation vs Sterling Computers Corporation (2025) | US PTAB | Patent | Arctic Invent Case Law Database
• Turn Of Sterling Computers To Patent Litigation No Fluke - ARTICLE
• IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS AUSTIN DIVISION

I'll research the plaintiff's counsel of record in this case.

Let me dig into the docket and the plaintiff's firm.

Let me get the full docket and confirm all plaintiff-side appearances.

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record — Sterling Computers Corporation

Party represented: Sterling Computers Corporation (plaintiff/patent owner). All appearances on the plaintiff side are from DiNovo Price LLP, an Austin, Texas IP-litigation boutique. That firm is itself Austin-based, so it functions as both lead and local counsel — no separate W.D. Tex. local-counsel firm is docketed, which is typical in Judge Pitman's Austin Division.

Confirmed appearances (docket entries, all filed 2024-04-17 — the date the complaint was filed)

Source: Justia docket sheet for W.D. Tex. 1:24-cv-00406 (https://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txwdce/1:2024cv00406/1172783609), which lists Filings 4–7 as "NOTICE of Attorney Appearance … on behalf of Sterling Computers Corporation."

Attorney notes

• Christopher V. Goodpastor — Partner, DiNovo Price; Texas Bar No. 00791991; dual-licensed in Texas and California (Cal. Bar No. 199350) and admitted in the E./S./W.D. Tex. and the Federal Circuit. he is the firm's principal patent-trial lawyer and is the attorney who argued Sterling's opposition to Microsoft's § 101 motion to dismiss (the brief the court cited as Dkt. 31 in its February 12, 2025 opinion deferring eligibility). Firm bio credits him with the Papst Licensing v. Apple smartphone data-transfer litigation in E.D. Tex. (including a noted jury verdict against Samsung), Bandspeed, Inc. v. Broadcom, Inc. and related Bluetooth cases in the W.D. Tex. (over $40M in royalties claimed), and he was named the 5th-best-performing attorney representing patent owners in Patexia's 2018 IPR Intelligence Report. Source: https://www.dinovoprice.com/Christopher-Goodpastor and https://profiles.superlawyers.com/texas/austin/lawyer/christopher-v-goodpastor/d257b2b5-db5d-4817-b4fb-5a2be79667f0.html
• Adam G. Price — DiNovo Price partner (aprice@dinovoprice.com); appears with Goodpastor and Gervey on the firm's W.D. Tex. patent filings (e.g., the Bandspeed v. Realtek signature block on the same Austin docket). Firm namesake.
• Gabriel R. Gervey — DiNovo Price attorney; has served as PTAB backup counsel for patent owners alongside Goodpastor (e.g., the KOM Software IPRs concerning U.S. Pat. 6,654,864, where the Board granted pro hac vice admission and directed a power of attorney listing Goodpastor and Gervey as backup counsel).
• Michael Damian French — DiNovo Price attorney, Austin; recognized in Best Lawyers since 2024 for Intellectual Property Law and Litigation–Intellectual Property (https://www.bestlawyers.com/firms/dinovo-price-llp/46709/US).

Co-counsel — flag with caution

• The aggregator listing for this case shows a "Sri K." among the plaintiff's "Represented By" entries (docket-mirror page). This is consistent with Sri K. Sankaran, who works with Devan V. Padmanabhan at Padmanabhan & Dawson, PLLC (Minneapolis, MN). I can confirm Sankaran's* *plaintiff-side appearance in the related Sterling case — Sterling Computers Corp. v. X Corp., 1:24-cv-00552 (W.D. Tex.), where the Nov. 1, 2024 hearing transcript records: "MR. GOODPASTOR: … Chris Goodpastor, DiNovo Price, for Plaintiff Sterling Computers Corporation. I'm joined by Sri Sankaran of Padmanabhan Group." — and Padmanabhan & Dawson filed a Patent Owner's Power of Attorney for Sterling in IPR2025-01248 (lead counsel Devan V. Padmanabhan, Reg. No. 38,262; backup Michelle E. Dawson, Reg. No. 62,319). However, I could not verify a Sankaran/Padmanabhan & Dawson appearance in this Microsoft docket (1:24-cv-00406), and the IPR2025-01248 power of attorney is expressly for a different patent, U.S. Pat. No. 7,716,217, not the '911 patent asserted here. Treat Sankaran's role in the Microsoft case as unconfirmed.
• Do not assume the PTAB "Sterling" filings map onto this case: the IPR POA above names a different patent, and the earlier Sterling IPR materials I found involve yet other patents. The '911 patent and its IPR posture should be verified separately.

In-house counsel

No in-house counsel (e.g., a Sterling Computers legal-department attorney) appears on the plaintiff side of this docket in the records I retrieved.

Gaps / caveats

• Docket retrieval is stale. The Justia docket mirror I could access was last retrieved June 14, 2024, so it does not show any 2025 activity — including any pro hac vice motions, substitutions, or additional appearances. The CourtListener opinion (Feb. 12, 2025 § 101 order) confirms the case was active and contested into 2025 but does not itself list counsel. I could not pull a current PACER docket sheet.
• The aggregator page for this case (ai-lab) shows only party/attorney placeholders and marks the case "Closed" — a discrepancy already noted in the case summary; it should not be read as evidence that no counsel remains of record.
• Because the docket mirror predates the February 2025 order, I cannot rule out that plaintiff-side counsel has been supplemented since June 2024 (e.g., a pro hac vice admission for out-of-state co-counsel). A current PACER pull (or the Dkt. 29/31 briefing signature blocks) would settle this definitively.

I'll research counsel of record for Microsoft in this case.

Let me dig into the docket entries and IPR filings for Microsoft's counsel.

Let me get the full docket and verify the attorneys' firms.

Counsel of record for Defendant Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft is the sole defendant, and its defense team in this case comes from Winston & Strawn LLP. The appearances below are drawn from the W.D. Tex. docket as reflected on Justia's docket sheet for 1:24-cv-00406, which was last retrieved from PACER on June 14, 2024 (docket sheet).

What I could and could not confirm

• Verified: Microsoft filed its Rule 7 disclosure statement (Dkt. 20) and its motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim (Dkt. 19) on June 13, 2024, the same day Hunsaker, Reig-Plessis, and the two pro hac vice motions appeared — so Hunsaker's team is the team of record that briefed the § 101 motion that Judge Pitman denied on February 12, 2025 (Dkt. 48). The opinion in that motion does not list counsel.
• No local counsel identified. W.D. Tex. practice ordinarily contemplates a member of this court's bar as local counsel, and the two PHV applications imply out-of-state admission for Border and Yaquian. I found no separate notice of appearance for a Texas-bar local counsel. If one exists, it may post-date the June 14, 2024 docket snapshot I could retrieve.
• Coverage gap / staleness flag. The docket copy I could reach was last retrieved June 14, 2024, and I could not pull a current CourtListener docket sheet for this case (the CourtListener hit I obtained was the text of the Feb. 12, 2025 opinion, not the docket). Consequently I cannot confirm (a) the orders granting the Border and Yaquian PHV motions, (b) any subsequent appearances, withdrawals, or substitutions — including any change to the Reig-Plessis appearance — or (c) whether in-house Microsoft counsel (e.g., a Deputy General Counsel–level attorney who signs Microsoft's PTAB powers of attorney) has entered an appearance here. Nothing in the record I reviewed shows in-house counsel appearing in the district court case.
• Caution on conflation. Earlier search results surfaced Perkins Coie LLP (Jessica Kaiser, Sarah Fowler) as petitioner-side counsel on an IPR directed to U.S. Patent No. 7,716,217 (IPR2025-01248). That is not this case and not this patent — the '217 patent belongs to Sterling's parallel assertion against X Corp. (1:24-cv-00552), and Sterling's own PTAB powers of attorney in those proceedings name Devan V. Padmanabhan and Michelle E. Dawson of Padmanabhan & Dawson, PLLC for the patent-owner side (power of attorney). Perkins Coie should not be listed as Microsoft's counsel in the '911 dispute.

Practical read

For this case, Microsoft's counsel of record is a Winston & Strawn team centered on Kelly C. Hunsaker out of Redwood City, with Scott M. Border as the bridge to the co-pending IPR, and Border, Tathagata Goswami, and Joe Netikosol of the same firm handling the PTAB side of IPR2025-00270 — a single-firm, district-court-plus-IPR coordination structure that is characteristic of Microsoft's recent W.D. Tex. patent defense practice before Judge Pitman.