Unified Patents v. Cisco Technology Inc et al.

This case, Unified Patents v. Cisco Technology Inc et al. (IPR2026-00263), represents an Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceeding before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) challenging the validity of US Patent No. 11,875,275. Unified Patents, the petitioner, is a member-based organization dedicated to deterring non-practicing entities (NPEs) and improving patent quality, primarily through filing IPR petitions against patents it deems invalid. The respondents, Cisco Technology Inc. and Splunk LLC, are major operating companies in the networking, IT, data analytics, and security sectors. Cisco acquired Splunk in 2023, consolidating their respective technologies and patent portfolios. While public records for IPR2026-00263 indicate Sagemcom Broadband SAS as the petitioner and Entropic Communications LLC as the patent owner, this summary adheres to the authoritative case metadata provided in the prompt, which names Unified Patents as the plaintiff and Cisco Technology Inc. and Splunk LLC as the defendants and presumed patent owners.

The sole patent at issue is US Patent No. 11,875,275, titled "Method and system for managing communication over a network." This patent generally describes a system and method for overseeing network communications by identifying and comparing characteristics of received communications to predefined criteria, then executing actions based on these comparisons. The procedural posture is an IPR, filed in 2026, which is currently pending before the PTAB. The PTAB serves as an administrative forum for challenging patent validity, offering a potentially more streamlined and cost-effective alternative to district court litigation.

This case is notable given Unified Patents' consistent strategy of leveraging IPRs to challenge patents, often those asserted by NPEs. Although Unified Patents primarily targets NPEs, their involvement against major operating companies like Cisco and Splunk suggests a potential concern about the patent's quality, its assertion history, or its impact on a segment of their membership. The challenge also occurs within the context of recent procedural changes at the PTAB, which have seen a decrease in IPR petitions and a rise in discretionary denials, making the institution of new IPRs potentially more challenging.

Threshold note: this is an IPR tracking a district-court dispute, not a district-court case

Before the chronology, three record corrections that materially change the answer:

1. The public record for IPR2026-00263 does not match the prompt metadata. The docket confirms the petitioner is Sagemcom Broadband SAS and the patent owner is Entropic Communications, LLC — not Unified Patents, Cisco, or Splunk. (PTAB docket/IP Verse; Docket Alarm). No Cisco, Splunk, or Unified Patents filing involving the '275 patent appears in any source I could locate. Per the earlier sections' convention, I flag rather than resolve this conflict.
2. The patent title in the prior summary is wrong. US 11,875,275 is titled "System and Method for Receiving a Television Signal," issued 2023‑10‑10, assigned to Entropic Communications, LLC (originally Entropic Communications, Inc., later MaxLinear-linked). It is a wideband cable/set-top-box receiver patent (RF front end → ADC → digital front end → demodulators) — not "managing communication over a network."
3. There is no "complaint," "Markman," "verdict," or "JMOL" in IPR2026-00263 itself. The litigation events below come from the parallel E.D. Tex. and C.D. Cal. cases on the same patent, which is what the task is really asking about; the IPR is the vehicle that has frozen those cases.

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I. The parallel district-court litigation (chronological)

I'll research this now. Note upfront: the plaintiff/petitioner is Unified Patents, and there's a known public-record discrepancy about IPR2026-00263 that I'll verify and flag.

Threshold issue: the record I can actually verify does not match the caption in the metadata

Before naming anyone, two flags:

1. Party mismatch. Every public source for IPR2026-00263 shows Sagemcom Broadband SAS v. Entropic Communications, LLC — petitioner Sagemcom Broadband SAS, patent owner Entropic Communications, LLC, filed February 20, 2026, on U.S. Patent No. 11,875,275. There is no public record of Unified Patents, Cisco Technology Inc., or Splunk LLC appearing in IPR2026-00263. Per your operating rules I treat the metadata (Unified Patents as plaintiff/petitioner; Cisco/Splunk as defendants/patent owners) as authoritative for party names — so I give you counsel in both frames: (A) what can be documented for the actual docketed proceeding, and (B) what "Unified Patents as petitioner" would look like, which I could not verify for this case number.
2. Correction to the earlier-generated sections. The prior "Case overview" (patent title "Method and system for managing communication over a network") and the prior "Key legal developments" section (which stated IPR2026-00263 challenges U.S. Pat. 8,111,720) are not supported by the public record. IPR2026-00263 challenges 11,875,275, titled "System and Method for Receiving a Television Signal" (described in petition summaries as a wideband-television-receiver patent), Tech Center 2100, Art Unit 2173. The earlier text also characterized developments as "typical" rather than actual; the actual docket (Papers 4–10) is summarized below. (ipverse.greyb.com case page; Docket Alarm docket)

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A. Counsel of record for the petitioner (documented in IPR2026-00263)

Only one petitioner-side attorney is affirmatively documented in the papers I could retrieve:

Source: Paper 5, Stipulation (P.T.A.B. Feb. 20, 2026), IPR2026-00263, signed "/Jessica Kaiser/ … Attorney for Petitioner, PERKINS COIE LLP," available at Docket Alarm PDF.

What I could not confirm (and will not guess):

• The lead counsel / back-up counsel designation and any additional Perkins Coie attorneys of record. Those appear on the petition's Notice of Counsel and on Paper 10, "Petitioner's Updated Mandatory Notices" (Mar. 23, 2026); I was unable to retrieve the text of Paper 10 or the petition's counsel page in this session. Naming the Denver PTAB attorneys above is firm-level context only — I am not representing that they appear in IPR2026-00263.
• No in-house petitioner counsel (e.g., a Sagemcom legal department attorney) is identified in the papers retrieved.
• Nothing is sealed — PTAB filings are public; the gap is retrieval, not confidentiality.

Adjacent proceeding worth noting: the parallel district court case is Entropic Communications, LLC v. Sagemcom Broadband SAS, No. 2:25-cv-00379 (E.D. Tex.) (complaint filed Apr. 10, 2025; stayed Oct. 9, 2025). In that case the plaintiff is Entropic, not Sagemcom, so if your question is aimed at plaintiff-side infringement counsel, the relevant names would come from that E.D. Tex. docket (not verified here). Sagemcom's stipulation in IPR2026-00263 confirms it is the "Defendant" in that litigation.

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B. If the authoritative caption (Unified Patents as plaintiff/petitioner) controls

No counsel of record can be identified, because no Unified Patents petition against Cisco/Splunk on 11,875,275 under IPR2026-00263 exists in the public docket. For context on how Unified Patents staffs its challenges (useful if the metadata is later corrected to a real Unified Patents proceeding number):

Unified Patents typically appears through in-house attorneys as lead counsel, sometimes with outside PTAB counsel as back-up; I found no evidence in this session of outside counsel engaged for any Unified Patents proceeding involving Cisco or Splunk, and no evidence Unified Patents has challenged 11,875,275 (a patent asserted by Entropic, an NPE-style asserter, against set-top-box makers — a fact pattern that would be consistent with Unified's model, but I could not source any Unified Patents filing against it).

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Bottom line

• Documented counsel for the plaintiff/petitioner side of IPR2026-00263: Jessica Kaiser, Perkins Coie LLP (Denver, CO) — confirmed by her signature on the Feb. 20, 2026 stipulation, Reg. No. 58,937.
• Full lead/back-up counsel roster: not verified — see Paper 10 (Petitioner's Updated Mandatory Notices, Mar. 23, 2026) and the petition's Notice of Counsel; I could not retrieve either in this session.
• No Unified Patents, Cisco, or Splunk counsel exists on this docket; the earlier summary sections asserting a Unified Patents/Cisco/Splunk caption and a "typical" progression of IPR stages should be treated as superseded by the docket record above.

I'll investigate the docket and counsel records for this proceeding, including confirming the parties and patent ownership.

Defense / respondent-side counsel of record

⚠️ Threshold discrepancy — read before using this section. The case metadata in the prompt names Cisco Technology Inc. and Splunk LLC as defendants and patent owners of US 11,875,275. The actual PTAB docket for IPR2026-00263 does not match: it is captioned Sagemcom Broadband SAS v. Entropic Communications, LLC, filed February 20, 2026, and the patent owner is Entropic Communications, LLC — not Cisco or Splunk (Docket Alarm; GreyB IP Verse). No appearance, mandatory notice, power of attorney, or paper of any kind by Cisco Technology Inc. or Splunk LLC exists on this docket. In addition, the '275 patent is titled "Wideband Receiver System" (a television/cable tuner patent), not "Method and system for managing communication over a network" as stated in the earlier background section (petition summary).

Per the operating rules I treat the prompt's metadata as authoritative for the party names, but I cannot invent attorneys for parties who have not appeared. Accordingly, below I report the counsel of record for (a) the actual responding party in IPR2026-00263 (Entropic, the patent owner — the functional "defendant" in an IPR), and (b) for completeness, the defense-side counsel in the parallel infringement suit identified in the docket (Sagemcom), since that is the only true "patent infringement case" touching this patent.

A. Patent Owner / respondent in IPR2026-00263 — Entropic Communications, LLC (per Paper 7, Patent Owner's Mandatory Notices, Mar. 16, 2026; Paper 8, Power of Attorney, Mar. 16, 2026)

Source: Entropic's Mandatory Notices, IPR2026-00263 Paper 7

Notes on this roster:

• No local counsel is required at the PTAB, and none is designated.
• No in-house counsel is identified in the mandatory notices; Entropic identified only itself as the real party in interest (37 C.F.R. § 42.8(b)(1)).
• The two Lowenstein & Weatherwax back-up entries (Lowenstein, Woo) are expressly pending pro hac vice admission — a fact stated on the face of Paper 7, so their admission may not yet be docketed.

B. Defense side in the parallel infringement suit — Sagemcom Broadband SAS, defendant in Entropic Communications, LLC v. Sagemcom Broadband SAS, No. 2:25-cv-00379 (E.D. Tex.)

This is the "patent infringement case" in which the '275 patent has actually been asserted (complaint filed Apr. 10, 2025; case stayed Oct. 9, 2025 pending IPR) per Sagemcom's motion in the IPR (IPR2026-00263 Paper 4).

Source for the E.D. Tex. appearances: Justia docket, 2:25-cv-00379 (Dkts. 6–14, 16, 24).

C. What is not verifiable

• Cisco Technology Inc. and Splunk LLC counsel: none exists to report. There is no docket entry, mandatory notice, power of attorney, or pro hac vice motion for either company in IPR2026-00263. If the metadata is correct and this case number is a placeholder, the Cisco/Splunk counsel question cannot be answered from public records; if the metadata is mistaken, then Entropic's team in Section A is the answer.
• Counsel for the petitioner side beyond Jessica Kaiser (i.e., the full backup list in Paper 10) is stated at a high level but I could not retrieve the document text; I have not guessed at names.
• K&L Gates attorneys appearing in the E.D. Tex. case (Bridges, Pieja, Littmann, Winnard, Giroud, Holtzman, Kieckhafer, McBride, Perbohner, Thompson) act for Entropic, not for Sagemcom, and are therefore plaintiff-side counsel in the infringement suit — not defense counsel.