Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple, Inc.

I'll research this case thoroughly before drafting the overview.

Let me dig into the specific patents named in the metadata and the procedural history.

Case Overview — Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-04134-VC (N.D. Cal.)

The parties. Unwired Planet, LLC is a Nevada limited liability company formed on September 13, 2012 — six days before it filed the Apple suit — whose sole member is Unwired Planet, Inc., a California corporation formerly known as Openwave Systems, Inc. Judge Lloyd of the District of Nevada later described the LLC as "created solely for the purpose of filing the lawsuit," holding the patents "for the purposes of creating venue," and noted that the operating history belonged to the parent, not the plaintiff (Unwired Planet, LLC v. Square, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-00579 (D. Nev. June 2, 2014), quoting Order, Aug. 30, 2013, ECF No. 151, Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:12-cv-505 (D. Nev.)). Unwired Planet is a classic non-practicing entity/patent assertion vehicle: Openwave was a ~400-employee mobile-Internet software company that collapsed to a patent-licensing remnant in 2012, retaining roughly 200 patents (its SEC 10-Qs describe patent acquisition from Ericsson under a Master Services Agreement plus licensing/enforcement as the business model). Apple, Inc. is the operating company whose iOS devices and cloud services are accused. So the case is NPE-versus-operating-company, not competitor-versus-competitor — Unwired Planet made no accused product.

Accused technology. The original September 2012 complaint broadly accused Apple's "Mobile App Systems and/or Services" and "Mobile Devices" — iPhone, iPad and iPod touch running iOS — and specifically identified Siri (server-based speech recognition), the App Store and iTunes Store (device provisioning and in-app purchasing), the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS), and location-based services such as Apple Maps and Find My iPhone. The patents that survived to adjudication, and a one-line technical sketch of each: U.S. 6,532,446 ('446) — a mobile device sends a user's speech over a voice channel to a remote speech-recognition server, which returns a symbolic (text) data file over a separate data channel (accused: Siri). U.S. 6,647,260 ('260) — web-based "provisioning" of a two-way mobile device with new/updated features and services, including transmission of secure "user information" (accused: App Store/iTunes purchase flow, where the "buyProduct" request carries an X-token containing a hashed password and timestamp). U.S. 6,317,831 ('831) — establishing a secure connection over a one-way data path by exchanging security information over a two-way wideband channel and then sending encrypted data over a one-way narrowband channel (accused: APNS). U.S. 6,321,092 ('092) — multiple-input data management for wireless location-based applications (accused: location services). A fifth patent was resolved by the parties' stipulation of non-infringement before trial (the '491 patent is listed in the March 10, 2014 Joint Claim Construction Statement along with the '446, '260, '831 and '092). The two patents named in the case metadata, U.S. 7,233,790 (device-capability-based discovery, packaging and provisioning of content for wireless mobile devices — a download manager that selects a product implementation based on the device's capabilities) and RE43,113 (a reissue patent), were part of the original ten-patent complaint but were among the five patents Unwired Planet dismissed without prejudice after the case moved to California; per the Federal Circuit's recitation, "the district court construed ten claim terms from the remaining five patents, and the parties stipulated to noninfringement as to the asserted claims of one patent" (No. 2015-1725 (Fed. Cir. July 22, 2016), 119 U.S.P.Q.2d 1517). I could not verify RE43,113's title or claim scope from the sources I reviewed, and I would treat any technical description of it as unsourced.

Posture, venue, and why the case matters. The suit was filed in Reno in September 2012 and transferred under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) to the Northern District of California, where it was docketed as 3:13-cv-04134 and assigned to Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco (a March 2014 filing in the record bears the Oakland-division caption "4:13-cv-04134-YGR," suggesting the case was initially assigned to Judge Gonzalez Rogers before reassignment — I flag that as a record artifact rather than a confirmed reassignment). Venue is central to the story: the transfer order found the Nevada LLC existed to manufacture venue and that witnesses and evidence sat in Apple's home district, so the N.D. Cal. forum — California being the epicenter of the smartphone industry and a magnet patent venue — was where the substantive law was made. The court construed claims on November 3, 2014 (Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 13-cv-04134-VC, 2014 WL 5592990), granted Apple summary judgment of non-infringement on the '446, '260 and '831 patents and of no indirect infringement on the '092 in May 2015 (Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 106 F. Supp. 3d 1083 (N.D. Cal. 2015)), and entered final judgment for Apple on May 29, 2015 — the "terminated" date in the case metadata, though the litigation in fact continued for nearly two more years. On appeal the Federal Circuit affirmed as to the '831 but vacated as to the '446, '260 and '092, holding that the district court's reading of a "the present invention" sentence in the '446 specification as a clear and unmistakable disclaimer was error, and that the district court had wrongly required the claimed "user information" to be in a particular format. That July 22, 2016 decision became a widely cited claim-construction precedent on disclaimer (see analyses by Wiley, Lexology and Oliff), and the court expressly cautioned it was "not... any sort of hard rule." On remand, Judge Chhabria's February 14, 2017 order (Dkt. 414) denied summary judgment on the Siri patents, granted Apple judgment of no pre-suit damages on the '446 and '260 (marking/notice) and no pre-suit indirect infringement on the '092, ordered a bench trial on Apple's inequitable conduct defense to the '260, and excluded Unwired Planet's damages survey for relying on a rejected claim construction; the court also entertained an on-sale-bar dispute over whether Unwired Planet's Motorola software license covered a "future release" embodying the '092 invention (Dkt. 400). The case ended in a confidential settlement on April 17, 2017, the day opening statements were due, after Unwired Planet had sought roughly $33 million (about 7–9 cents per accused device running iOS 7 or earlier); Apple's separate bid for ~$15 million in fees for "kitchen sink" litigation was unsuccessful. Beyond the NPE-assertion-pattern significance, the case is notable as the U.S. front of the same Openwave/Ericsson portfolio that Unwired Planet litigated against Huawei, Samsung and Google in the UK and Germany — producing the UK Supreme Court's landmark FRAND decision in Unwired Planet v. Huawei [2020] UKSC 37 — and that later resurfaced under the Optis/PanOptis umbrella, where Unwired Planet, LLC and Unwired Planet International Ltd. are named co-plaintiffs in Optis Wireless Technology, LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 2:19-cv-00066 (E.D. Tex.), the case that generated the $506.2M verdict, a $300M damages retrial, and the Federal Circuit's 2025 reversal of the verdict form. On IPR linkage: my searches did not surface any PTAB inter partes review of the patents litigated to judgment in this Apple case, and I would not assert the absence of such proceedings without a direct PTAB docket check.

Verification notes: the party facts, claim constructions, summary judgment rulings, appellate holding, 2017 order and settlement are grounded in the Federal Circuit opinion, the 106 F. Supp. 3d and 2014 WL 5592990 opinions, Dkt. 400/414, the March 10, 2014 Joint Claim Construction Statement, and contemporaneous trade coverage (AppleInsider, VitalLaw/IP Law Daily, Akin Gump). The technical sketch of the '790 rests on the patent title and a secondary complaint-analysis summary rather than a primary opinion; RE43,113's subject matter and the identities of the four other originally asserted patents I have not listed (beyond '790, RE43,113, '594 and '491) are not verified. Counsel names, the exact Nevada case number for the Apple action aside from the "3:12-cv-505" citation embedded in the Square order, and any IPR history should be confirmed directly against PACER and the PTAB docket before being relied on.

I'll research this case across multiple sources. Let me start with several parallel searches.

This is a rich case with a notable discrepancy between the metadata and the opinions. Let me dig deeper.

Key Legal Developments — Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-04134-VC (N.D. Cal.)

Important framing note up front. The case metadata lists the "patents at issue" as 7,233,790 and RE43,113, but those two patents did not drive the judgment. The litigation that produced the 2015 judgment and the 2016 Federal Circuit opinion ran on the speech-recognition / mobile-data family — U.S. Patent Nos. 6,532,446 ('446), 6,647,260 ('260), 6,317,831 ('831), and 6,321,092 ('092) — which were among the original ten asserted patents. The '790 (and, apparently, RE43,113) sat in the group of patents asserted in the original complaint but dropped before the case reached judgment — hence the existing summary's statement that the '790 "did not reach final judgment." I flag the reconstruction of which patents were dropped as likely-but-not-fully-documented below.

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1. Filing and the venue fight (2012–2013)

• Original complaint (D. Nev., Sept. 2012). Per the Federal Circuit, "Unwired brought a patent infringement suit against Apple on ten patents in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada in September 2012." The asserted set mixed speech-recognition patents with location/content-delivery patents (the complaint's accused products included Siri, the App Store/iTunes, APNS, Maps, iAds/Location Services, and iOS devices). Sources: Fed. Cir. opinion, Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 829 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (https://law.shu.edu/documents/13-unwired-planet-llc-v-apple-inc.pdf).
• The N.D. Cal. "2013-09-06" filing date in the metadata is the transferee docket's opening date, not the original filing. The Fed. Cir. states the Nevada suit was filed in Sept. 2012 and "a year later[] the case was transferred to the Northern District of California." The N.D. Cal. docket (3:13-cv-04134) is dated 09/06/13 and shows Nevada Magistrate Judge Valerie P. Cooke among the referred judges, corroborating the Nevada origin.
• Transfer granted (Aug. 30, 2013). The Nevada court granted Apple's §1404(a) motion to transfer (Order, Aug. 30, 2013, ECF No. 151 in the Nevada case). The court found Unwired Planet, LLC had been created in Nevada on September 13, 2012 — six days before filing — with an "empty room" for an office, solely to manufacture venue, while the witnesses and evidence were in California. Quoted in the court's later order in Unwired Planet, LLC v. Square, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-00579 (D. Nev.) (https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/nevada/nvdce/3:2013cv00579/97725/58/0.pdf). (In the parallel Square case the court refused to transfer, because by then the Nevada LLC had a genuine 16-employee Reno presence.)
• Answer/counterclaims. Apple answered and asserted counterclaims for declaratory judgment of non-infringement and invalidity; the docket's listed cause of action is willful patent infringement. I did not find a granted Rule 12 motion to dismiss in the Apple case (the motion-to-dismiss activity I could verify was in the Square case). Treat this as a gap.

2. Case narrowing after transfer

• After transfer, Unwired dismissed without prejudice five of the ten patents it had asserted (Fed. Cir. opinion).
• Of the remaining five, the parties stipulated to non-infringement as to the asserted claims of one patent.
• Net result: the case proceeded on the speech-recognition/mobile-data family ('446, '260, '831, '092), with the '790 (and apparently RE43,113) falling out of the case. Caveat: the precise line-up of the five dismissed patents is not documented in the sources I could retrieve; the metadata's '790 and RE43,113 are most plausibly in that dismissed group.

3. Markman / claim construction (Nov. 3, 2014)

• The court construed ten claim terms across the five remaining patents: Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 13-cv-04134-VC, 2014 WL 5592990 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 3, 2014).
• The pivotal construction was for the '446 patent: "voice input" = "speech provided over a voice channel," based on the summary-of-the-invention language describing "establishing a voice communication channel." That construction is what Apple then leveraged on summary judgment. Sources: 2014 WL 5592990; Fed. Cir. opinion.

4. Summary judgment and final judgment — first round (May 2015)

• Decision (May 22, 2015): Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 106 F. Supp. 3d 1083 (N.D. Cal. 2015), 2015 WL 3396409 (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[7313678](/patent/7313678)/unwired-planet-llc-v-apple-inc/).
  • '831 (APNS): SJ of non-infringement — no evidence APNS uses a separate "narrowband channel."
  • '446 (Siri): SJ of non-infringement — Siri transmits voice over TCP/IP, not a "voice channel."
  • '260 (App Store/iTunes X-token): SJ of non-infringement on the "user information" limitation.
  • '092 (location): SJ of no indirect infringement (induced/contributory); Unwired then dismissed its direct-infringement claim on the '092 with prejudice.
  • Validity: Unwired won SJ that Apple's anticipation defense (Yamakita) failed; both sides' on-sale-bar motions were denied. The court ordered further briefing on the Motorola agreement's "future releases" language (Order re Further Briefing on On-Sale Bar, ECF No. 400, https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2013cv04134/[269925/400](https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/search/patent/reelFrameDetail?reelFrame=269925-0400)/0.pdf).
• Final judgment for Apple: May 29, 2015 (matching the metadata termination date).
• Fee demand (2015): Apple sought roughly $15 million in attorney's fees, arguing Unwired pressed "abusive" claims across four years, fifteen patents, and four jurisdictions (Law360, via heise.de, https://www.heise.de/news/Apple-fordert-von-Patentverwerter-Millionen-fuer-Anwaltsgebuehren-[2725980](/patent/2725980).html). I could not verify the resolution of the fee motion.

5. Appeal — Federal Circuit (decided July 22, 2016)

• No. 2015-1725, Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 829 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. July 22, 2016) (Moore, Bryson, Reyna) — affirmed-in-part, vacated-in-part, remanded.
  • '446: The district court's "voice input" construction was error. A "present invention" sentence in the summary is not a clear and unmistakable disclaimer; all-embodiments reasoning can't import limits. Vacated.
  • '260: The lower court "essentially required the claimed 'user information' to be in a particular format"; a jury could find the hashed X-token meets the limitation. Vacated.
  • '092 (indirect infringement): The court erred by resting SJ of no indirect infringement on the objective strength of Apple's non-infringement defense; the inquiry turns on Apple's subjective knowledge / willful blindness. Vacated as to pre-suit period.
  • '831: Affirmed (no "narrowband channel" under the agreed construction).
  • Notably, because Apple did not cross-appeal, the panel declined to reach invalidity as an alternative ground.

6. Remand proceedings (2016–2017)

• Second summary-judgment order (Feb. 14, 2017) (Judge Chhabria) (https://www.vitallaw.com/news/patent-n-d-cal-unwired-planet-s-infringement-claims-against-apple-narrowed-for-trial/...; https://www.casetext.com/case/unwired-planet-llc-v-apple-inc-6):
  • Denied SJ of non-infringement on the three revived patents ('446, '260, '092) — Siri/App Store claims headed to a jury.
  • '092: SJ of no pre-suit indirect infringement (no evidence of pre-suit knowledge); post-suit claims survived.
  • Damages/marking: Unwired precluded from pre-suit damages on two patents (marking).
  • Inequitable conduct ('260): Unwired's SJ motion denied; the court ordered a bench trial on Apple's inequitable-conduct defense (undisclosed UP.Link prior art).
  • Laches: SJ for Unwired on Apple's laches defense for the '446 and '260.
  • Anticipation ('446, Yamakita): SJ denied.
  • On-sale bar ('092): denied both ways.
• Discovery sanctions (April 15, 2017): The court held that the parties' agreement limiting post-remand discovery "did not absolve" Unwired of its duty to supplement; because Unwired failed to produce newly discovered license agreements, it was barred from presenting evidence about those licenses in its case-in-chief (may address them only on cross/redirect and in closing). Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 13-cv-04134 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 15, 2017) (https://patentlaw.jeffer.com/2017/04/unwired-v-apple-district-court.html).

7. Final disposition / present posture

The last verified activity I could retrieve is the April 2017 sanctions order, with the case set for a jury trial on infringement and a bench trial on inequitable conduct. The docket metadata shows the case closed (the "Terminated 2015-05-29" flag reflects the May 2015 judgment; PACER-style summaries list closure in Sept. 2015). I could not locate a publicly indexed trial verdict, post-trial JMOL/new-trial ruling, or a documented settlement in this N.D. Cal. docket. Given the subsequent PanOptis/Optis reorganization and the separate E.D. Tex. and UK FRAND campaigns against Apple, the practical resolution of this specific case should be treated as unverified in this report rather than assumed.

8. Parallel PTAB proceedings

• No PTAB IPR/PGR on the asserted judgments' patents was verified in this docket. I found no IPR on the '790 or RE43,113 tied to this case, and no stay-pending-IPR motion.
• The Unwired Planet / Optis portfolio was heavily involved at the PTAB, but in sibling cases — e.g., Google's IPR/CBM challenges to Unwired Planet location-based-search patents (Unwired Planet v. Google, Fed. Cir.), and Apple's later IPR2020-00642 on the '774 patent (institution denied under NHK/Fintiv) in the separate Optis v. Apple E.D. Tex. litigation (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2020-00642/). Those are not proceedings on the patents in this case, and I note them only to avoid conflating the dockets.

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Sourcing caveats

• Party names, court, case number, and the May 29, 2015 judgment are consistent across sources.
• The docket's 2013-09-06 "filing" date and the Sept. 2012 Nevada filing are reconciled by treating 2013-09-06 as the transferee-court docket date; the underlying complaint year is documented by the Federal Circuit.
• The identity of the five dismissed patents (and therefore the exact litigating posture of the '790 and RE43,113) is reconstructed, not directly sourced.
• The post-April-2017 resolution and any fee award are not verified in the materials retrieved.

I'll research press and analyst coverage of this case across multiple angles.

Let me search for mainstream press coverage, the settlement, and damages figures.

Let me search for additional coverage of the 2015 ruling, Federal Circuit decision, and any Patently-O/IPWatchdog analysis.

Press and trade coverage — Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-04134-VC

Filing and early framing (Sept. 2012–2013). The original complaint drew immediate mainstream business coverage because Unwired Planet sued Apple and Google simultaneously in Reno. Forbes reported on 2012-09-20 that the company "filed patent infringement complaints against both Apple and Google in federal court in Nevada," asserting ten patents against Apple covering "smart mobile devices, cloud computing, digital content stores, push notification technologies and location-based services such as mapping and advertising," and quoted CEO Mike Mulica's statement that "Apple and Google generate substantial revenues from devices and services that rely on the intellectual property that Unwired Planet developed and patented over the last 15 years." The same day, the company's own Businesswire release — reproduced by MacTech — itemized the ten asserted patents, confirming that U.S. 7,233,790 ("Device capability based discovery, packaging and provisioning of content for wireless mobile devices") was asserted against "digital stores with content and Apps for devices with different capabilities, for example the App Store," and that the '446 Siri patent, the '831 push-notification patent and the '092 location patent were in the mix. Lexology (Amanda Foong) on 2012-09-24 framed the suits as raising eyebrows for "patent trolling" and noted the parallel 2011 ITC complaint against Apple and RIM, which Unwired Planet announced on 2012-10-15 it was terminating in favor of its Delaware district-court case (per the company's investor press release).

The 2015 summary-judgment loss and the company's public reaction. The decisive first-round ruling was covered as a defense win. The Recorder (Law.com) reported on 2015-05-27 that "U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria granted summary judgment to Apple on Tuesday, a week before jury selection was scheduled, on all but one of Unwired Planet's claims," that the company "elected to waive that claim and prepare for an appeal," and that it attributed the result to what it called "the current uncertain and adverse climate in the U.S. that we perceive exists regarding patent holders' rights." The Recorder quoted Chhabria's line that "[a] voice channel must be an actual, identifiable type of channel, not something that can be labeled a voice channel merely because it transports voice," and identified Apple's counsel as Gibson Dunn (Ernest Shin, Mark Lyon, Stuart Rosenberg, with associate Brooke Wallace and in-house counsel David Melaugh) against McKool Smith's Theodore Stevenson and John Campbell — a counsel account consistent with the defendant-representatives section above. Note one tension with the case metadata: The Recorder describes the ruling as disposing of "all but one" claim, and the docket shows final judgment entered 2015-05-29, yet the case plainly continued — so the metadata's "Terminated: 2015-05-29" date should be read as the judgment date, not the end of the litigation.

The 2016 Federal Circuit reversal. The appellate decision was covered chiefly by legal-trade outlets rather than general press. VitalLaw / IP Law Daily ran a "TOP STORY" on 2016-07-22 headlined "Apple must face infringement claims related to Siri speech technology and iTunes purchasing technology," explaining the "voice input" construction error and the X-token/"user information" holding. Law-firm bulletins carried the analysis: Wiley quoted the panel's caveat that the "present invention" language "should not be interpreted as any sort of hard rule regarding claim construction"; Oliff PLC summarized the holding as vacating the non-infringement judgment; and a Knobbe Martens Lexology note (2016-08-31) explained that the phrase "the present invention" "does not necessarily lead to a disclaimer of claim scope." The remand order of February 2017 was also covered by VitalLaw / IP Law Daily (Cheryl Beise), which reported that the Siri claims "were not amenable to resolution on summary judgment," that Unwired was "precluded from obtaining pre-suit damages with regard to two patents," that it "could not pursue a claim for pre-suit indirect infringement of the third patent," and that a bench trial on inequitable conduct and a jury trial on the rest would follow.

The eve-of-trial settlement (April 2017). The most widely reported event was the April 2017 settlement, which generated significant mainstream and tech coverage. Ars Technica (Joe Mullin) reported that the companies settled at 1:00 a.m. on the Monday of trial, after a jury had been selected and was then dismissed by Judge Chhabria; it noted that Unwired Planet "is the patent-holding remains of early mobile company Openwave, which acquired several hundred US patents from Ericsson in early 2013, with Ericsson getting 20 percent of any patent settlements," that its "stock jumped 20 percent after it beat Samsung and Huawei in the UK," and that an SEC filing showed Microsoft settled for a one-time $8.75 million. BBC News reported that "Unwired Planet had sought $33m (£25.7m) and a cut of iPhone and iPad sales," that Apple "had previously described the case … as being 'frivolous,'" that the Ericsson deal gave Ericsson future-revenue sharing, and that terms were not disclosed; it also carried a PanOptis Patent Management spokeswoman's statement that PanOptis had "actively resolved a majority of the existing litigation that had been initiated by Unwired Planet, including suits involving Samsung, LG and Apple." Law360 — which Ars credits as first reporting the settlement — ran both "Unwired Planet Says Apple Owes $33M As IP Trial Looms" (2017-04-05, noting the company sought the sum for "three of its wireless, location and voice recognition patents" and compared it to Apple's $400 million demand against Samsung) and "Apple Settles Unwired Planet's IP Suit On Eve Of Trial" (2017-04-17). The settlement was picked up across the tech and general-interest press, including General Counsel News, Mac Observer, the French outlet [Mac4ever](https://www.mac4ever.com/divers/120310-apple-se-negocie-un petit-arrangement-avec-unwired-planet-pour-un-montant-inconnu), and Chinese-language outlets IPRdaily and NXTT.

Where reporting goes beyond the record, and where accounts diverge. Several reported facts are journalistic or party-sourced rather than adjudicated. Mac Observer stated Unwired sought "$33 million and a $0.07 to $0.09 royalty" per accused device and characterized Apple's response as accusing Unwired of a "'kitchen sink' strategy" and demanding "$15 million to cover legal expenses"; it also speculated that Apple settled because it "likely felt UP had a good chance of winning," which is the outlet's inference, not a court finding. Ars Technica quoted Unwired's general counsel Noah Mesel's Bloomberg interview response to the "patent troll" label ("You can call us anything you like… what's left is a patent portfolio"), while IPRdaily added biographical color — that Unwired's CEO Boris Teksler was formerly Apple's patent-licensing director — details not in the docket. A discrepancy worth flagging: the Chinese coverage describes the defendant's patents as being "acquir[ed] from Ericsson" and frames the April 2017 event as "Unwired Planet 起诉了苹果" in 2017, whereas the U.S. record places the suit in Sept. 2012; the 2017 date reflects the settlement/trial, indicating some overseas accounts conflated the filing and resolution years.

Coverage gaps. I did not find press coverage specifically addressing RE43,113, and apart from the 2012 Businesswire patent list (which does not name RE43,113 among the asserted ten), no outlet I located discussed that reissue patent — consistent with it having been dropped before adjudication. I also found no Patently-O post dedicated to this case, no coverage of Apple's fee motion's resolution (the $15 million figure appears only in secondary summaries), and no reporting on the April 2017 discovery-sanctions order; those gaps should be treated as unverified rather than as evidence that nothing happened.

Sources

• Apple moved for summary judgment of noninfringement based on the construction, arguing that Siri transmits a user's speech to th...
• CLAIM CONSTRUCTION
• UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
• Unwired Planet, LLC v
• UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
• PATENT—N.D. Cal.: Unwired Planet’s infringement claims against Apple narrowed for trial
• Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 829 F.3d 1353 - From Casetext: Smarter Legal Research
• Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc. - From Casetext: Smarter Legal Research
• Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 106 F. Supp. 3d 1083, 2015 WL 3396409, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 67928 – CourtListener.com - Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 106 F. Supp. 3d 1083 (N.D. Cal. 2015)
• TOP STORY—Fed. Cir.: Apple must face infringement claims related to Siri speech technology and iTunes purchasing technology
• Resources
• wiley

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

Let me dig deeper on specific counsel, the original complaint, and any changes in representation.

Let me verify the D. Nevada origins and any in-house counsel, plus confirm the McKool Smith team's details.

Plaintiff's Counsel of Record — Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-04134-VC (N.D. Cal.)

Bottom line: Unwired Planet's lead/litigation counsel throughout the N.D. Cal. case was McKool Smith (appearing as "McKool Smith Hennigan, P.C." in California filings), working primarily out of its Dallas and Austin offices, with a Silicon Valley partner serving as the N.D. Cal.-admitted (local) counsel of record. Unwired Planet appears to have had no in-house attorney enter an appearance on the public docket; enforcement was outsourced to McKool Smith under a partial flat-fee/partial contingency retention agreement disclosed in an SEC Form 8-K (Sept. 23, 2013), which named McKool Smith as the company's counsel for the Google, Apple, and RIM patent-enforcement matters.

McKool Smith — lead counsel

Key docket context for the two patents you flagged

• The '790 and RE43,113 were pleaded in Unwired Planet's First Amended Complaint but were dismissed without prejudice by stipulation, approved by Judge Chhabria on October 20, 2014 (Dkt. 259/260). That stipulation — signed by Reichman and Stevenson for Unwired Planet — dismissed U.S. Patent Nos. 6,317,594; 7,020,685; 7,233,790; RE43,113; and 7,522,927, with each side bearing its own fees and costs. So the two patents in your metadata were never adjudicated; the patent that reached Final Judgment/Judgment (Dkt. 418, May 29, 2015) were the '446, '260, '831, and '092 patents.
• The Final Judgment (Dkt. 418) and the April 2015 joint administrative motions are signed for plaintiff by the McKool Smith Hennigan pairing of Courtland L. Reichman (Redwood Shores) and Theodore Stevenson III (Dallas) — confirming that pairing as plaintiff's operative counsel of record through termination.

Sourcing and limitations

• Sources: Federal Circuit opinion, Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 829 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (counsel listing: "JOHN BRUCE CAMPBELL, McKool Smith, PC, Austin, TX, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by KEVIN LEE BURGESS, KATHY HSINJUNG LI, JOEL LANCE THOLLANDER; THEODORE STEVENSON, III, DOUGLAS AARON CAWLEY, Dallas, TX."); district court filings posted on Justia/RECAP (Dkt. 259, 273, 343, 418); VitalLaw/IP Law Daily case report (May 27, 2015) listing "Courtland Lewis Reichman (McKool Smith Hennigan PC) for Unwired Planet, LLC"; Unwired Planet, Inc. Form 8-K dated Sept. 23, 2013 (McKool Smith retention agreement).
• Caveats: I did not retrieve a live PACER docket sheet, so the above reflects counsel appearing on the substantive public filings surfaced through RECAP/Justia and the appellate opinion rather than a complete appearances list. Some early pro hac vice motions and any withdrawn appearances may not be captured. I found no evidence that an in-house Unwired Planet attorney entered an appearance; one Nov. 2014 stipulation references concurrence obtained from a "Steven Kalogeras," but the public record does not identify his affiliation, so I do not attribute him to plaintiff (or to Apple) as counsel of record. Attorney names, bar numbers, and addresses above are quoted directly from filed documents; I have not verified current firm affiliations, and at least two of these attorneys (Reichman, and possibly others) have since changed firms.

I'll research the counsel of record for Apple in this case. Let me search the docket and related sources.

Good initial results. Let me dig deeper into the docket appearances and verify all defense counsel.

Let me verify the docket history and full defense team, including whether this was a transferred case.

Counsel of Record for Defendant Apple Inc. — Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:13-cv-04134-VC (N.D. Cal.)

Bottom line: Apple was represented throughout by a single firm — Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Gibson Dunn's Palo Alto office served as the California/local counsel of record, with partners from the New York and Dallas offices appearing pro hac vice and a Los Angeles associate on the papers. The same firm also defended Apple in the related earlier Nevada action (No. 3:12-cv-00505-RCJ-VPC, D. Nev.).

Sourcing note: I was not able to pull the PACER attorney-appearance list directly (docket sheet attorney entries are not in the free sources I could reach). The roster below is reconstructed from signed court filings in this case — the operative complaint-stage and dispositive-stage documents bearing the "Attorneys for Defendant Apple Inc." block — plus Law360 and Ex Parte attorney/case profiles. Where a role assignment is inference rather than an express docket designation, I flag it.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP — counsel for Apple Inc.

Supporting documents (via Justia's copies of the N.D. Cal. filings):

• Doc. 259 and Doc. 343 — Apple's briefs, signature block: "Josh Krevitt … New York, NY; H. Mark Lyon … Y. Ernest Hsin … Stuart M. Rosenberg … Palo Alto, CA — Attorneys for Defendant Apple Inc."
• Doc. 273 — Stipulation of Resolution of Unwired Planet's Motion to Compel (Dkt. 262), dated Nov. 6, 2014, signed by Y. Ernest Hsin for "Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP … Attorneys for Defendant Apple Inc."
• Doc. 418 — Final Judgment (Judge Vince Chhabria, May 29, 2015), Apple signature block: Lyon, Hsin, Rosenberg (Palo Alto); Tracey B. Davies (Dallas); Brooke Myers Wallace (Los Angeles).

Roles and what I could / could not confirm

• Lead trial counsel: The record shows Lyon and Krevitt as the senior names on Apple's papers, with Krevitt (NY) named first on briefs and Lyon anchoring the Palo Alto office. I did not find a document formally designating a single "lead trial counsel," so treat the lead/of-counsel split as an inference from signature-block ordering and office roles, not a docket designation.
• Local counsel: Gibson Dunn's Palo Alto office functioned as Apple's California counsel of record; the New York and Dallas lawyers appeared pro hac vice. (Apple is a California corporation, so no separate local-counsel firm was required.)
• In-house counsel: I found no Apple in-house attorney named in the public filings I reviewed. If an in-house lawyer was involved, the appearance is not reflected in the documents I could access.
• Sealed material: Several filings in this case were filed under seal (e.g., the administrative motions to seal at Docs. 292–303 and the redacted/sealed stipulation at Doc. 273), but attorney signature blocks are generally carried on the public versions, so the roster above is unlikely to be affected by sealing.
• Appellate counsel: After the May 2015 judgment, Unwired Planet appealed (Fed. Cir. No. 15-1725, Unwired Planet, LLC v. Apple Inc., 829 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016) — aff'd in part, vacated in part, remanded). I could not verify the specific Gibson Dunn attorneys on the Federal Circuit briefs from the sources available, so I am not naming appellate counsel.

For contrast — plaintiff's counsel (not defendant)

Unwired Planet was represented by McKool Smith Hennigan, P.C. (Courtland L. Reichman, Redwood Shores/San Jose) and McKool Smith, P.C. (Theodore Stevenson III, Kevin Burgess, John B. Campbell — Dallas/Austin), with Nevada counsel Michael D. Rounds (Watson Rounds) in the related D. Nev. action. Included only to distinguish the sides in the signature blocks.

Caveats: Party names, case number, court, and patents are taken from the case metadata as authoritative. Attorney SBN numbers, offices, and email domains are quoted from the signature blocks in Docs. 259, 273, 343, and 418. Kalogeras's and Kogan's participation is sourced to Law360 and Ex Parte attorney profiles rather than to a document I reviewed directly, so those two entries are lower-confidence than the six attorneys appearing on the case's own signature blocks.