Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC v. D-Link

This patent infringement litigation involved Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC (Velocity) as the plaintiff and D-Link Corp. as the defendant. Velocity is identified as a patent assertion entity (PAE) or non-practicing entity (NPE) that has amassed a portfolio of over 220 patent assets from various companies prominent in wireless communications, including Marvell, NXP, Freescale, BlackBerry, and ZTE. D-Link, a Taiwanese multinational corporation, is a globally recognized manufacturer of networking hardware and telecommunications equipment, providing solutions for digital home consumers, small offices, and enterprises. The accused products in this case were D-Link's Wi-Fi 6-compliant devices, specifically its AX1800, AX3000, AX5400, AX6000 routers, mesh extenders, access points, and cellular gateways. These products were alleged to infringe patents covering technologies incorporated into the IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) standard.

The litigation, specifically case 5:25-cv-00103, was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas before Chief Judge Robert W. Schroeder, III. The Eastern District of Texas is frequently utilized by NPE plaintiffs due to its established intellectual property docket and experienced patent judges. While the prompt mentions only patent 8644765, the case actually involved eleven U.S. patents spanning wireless communication technologies. U.S. Patent No. 8,644,765, the primary patent at issue for this specific analysis, is generally described as pertaining to wireless signal processing and more specifically to "Beamforming using predefined spatial mapping matrices". The patents asserted in this and related cases collectively address critical technical domains underlying modern Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) implementations, such as wireless signal processing, transmission protocols, mesh networking, and communication management.

This case is notable as it represents part of a broader, multi-defendant patent enforcement campaign by Velocity targeting numerous Wi-Fi 6 hardware manufacturers, including Acer, ASUSTeK, Cisco, HP, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, LG Electronics, OnePlus, and TP-Link. The dismissal of Velocity's claims against D-Link with prejudice, and D-Link's counterclaims without prejudice, suggests a negotiated settlement, the terms of which were not publicly disclosed. This pattern of NPE assertion against Wi-Fi 6 implementers highlights ongoing IP risks for networking hardware manufacturers and reinforces the prevalence of pre-trial resolutions in complex, multi-patent cases within the Eastern District of Texas.

The patent infringement litigation between Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC (Velocity) and D-Link Corp., case 5:25-cv-00103 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, involved eleven U.S. patents related to Wi-Fi 6 technologies. The case concluded with a dismissal on January 23, 2026.

Here's a chronological overview of the key legal developments and outcome:

Filing & Initial Pleadings:

• 2025-07-09: Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC filed its complaint against D-Link Corp. in the Eastern District of Texas. This was part of a broader patent enforcement campaign by Velocity against multiple Wi-Fi 6 hardware manufacturers. The complaint alleged willful infringement of eleven patents, including U.S. Patent No. 8,644,765, and accused D-Link's Wi-Fi 6-compliant devices. Velocity asserted that it had acquired a portfolio of over 220 patent assets from various companies, including NXP Semiconductors, and had notified defendants of its patent portfolio covering Wi-Fi 6 standards and invited licensing.

Pre-trial Motions of Substance:

• No specific substantive pre-trial motions (such as motions to dismiss, transfer, or stay pending IPR) were publicly disclosed as having been decided or extensively litigated prior to the dismissal. The quick resolution suggests such motions may not have been fully briefed or ruled upon.

Claim Construction (Markman) Outcomes:

• There is no indication that the case progressed to a claim construction (Markman) hearing or ruling. The dismissal occurred relatively early in the litigation lifecycle, before such a stage would typically be reached.

Discovery Milestones:

• No specific discovery milestones with strategic significance have been publicly disclosed. Given the early dismissal, it is unlikely that extensive discovery took place.

Trial Events, Verdict, and Post-trial Motions:

• The case did not proceed to trial, verdict, or post-trial motions.

Settlement, Dismissal, Judgment, or Appeal:

• 2026-01-23: Chief Judge Robert W. Schroeder, III, granted an Agreed Motion to Dismiss filed by the parties (Docket No. 25). Velocity's claims against D-Link were dismissed with prejudice, meaning Velocity cannot refile the same infringement claims against D-Link on these patents. Any counterclaims D-Link may have asserted were dismissed without prejudice, preserving D-Link's ability to pursue them separately if needed. The dismissal did not disclose any details regarding damages, royalty figures, or injunctive relief, indicating a negotiated settlement. The absence of a finding for exceptional case or fee award to either party is consistent with a good-faith resolution.

Parallel PTAB IPR/PGR Proceedings:

• There is no public information indicating that any parallel PTAB IPR or PGR proceedings were initiated against the asserted patents by D-Link in connection with this specific litigation. However, the dismissal of D-Link's counterclaims without prejudice allows D-Link to revive any challenges, including at the PTAB, if these patents are asserted against them again in the future.

I'll research plaintiff-side counsel for Velocity Communication Technologies in this case and its related campaign.

Good leads. Let me verify the plaintiff's counsel roster for this specific docket and get firm/role details.

Let me pull the specific docket entries for this case and details on the remaining plaintiff-side attorneys.

Plaintiff representatives

Overview

Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC (VCT) is a Delaware NPE/PAE shell entity with no in-house legal department, so all appearances in this matter were by outside counsel. The plaintiff-side team in Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC v. D-Link Corp., No. 5:25-cv-00103 (E.D. Tex.) followed the same two-firm structure VCT used across its entire 2025 Wi-Fi 6 campaign: a California IP boutique serving as lead trial counsel, paired with an East Texas firm serving as local counsel. RPX and Mondaq both described this arrangement as "typical for Borchers-linked entities": "Berger & Hipskind LLP provides representation, as does Capshaw Derieux LLP in Texas." (Mondaq, "Velocity Communication Technologies Bursts Out Of The Litigation Blocks," July 29, 2025; RPX, July 13, 2025.)

Counsel of record (as listed on the docket)

The public dockets.justia.com docket sheet for 5:25-cv-00103 (last retrieved July 28, 2025) lists the plaintiff as "Represented By: Elizabeth L DeRieux; Daniel P. Hipskind; Erin Elizabeth McCracken," and records that on the filing date:

July 9, 2025 — Filing 2: NOTICE of Attorney Appearance by Elizabeth L DeRieux on behalf of Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC

There is no in-house counsel of record for Velocity; consistent with its structure as a non-practicing holding entity, the plaintiff relied entirely on outside counsel.

Sourcing caveats

• The attorney roster above is drawn from the dockets.justia.com party listing and Filing 2 for 5:25-cv-00103, not from a first-hand PACER pull of the full docket. I did not independently retrieve the underlying Notice of Designation of Attorney in Charge or any pro hac vice applications for the D-Link docket specifically, so the precise titles of each appearance document in this particular case are inferred from the parallel VCT cases on the identical template.
• Because the docket snapshot I could reach was last retrieved July 28, 2025 — before the January 23, 2026 dismissal — later filings (pro hac vice admissions, additional appearances, or withdrawals) could not be verified and are not reflected here. If any such filings are sealed or were made after that snapshot, they are not captured.
• Flag on the prior section: the previously generated "Defendant representatives" section is not usable — it contains no verified names and appears to be built on an unexecuted search rather than docket evidence. I did not rely on it. For completeness, the defense-side firms that actually appear in the VCT campaign (e.g., Sheppard Mullin for LG, per the Feb. 2, 2026 Notice of Appearance in 5:25-cv-00098) are a separate research task and should be re-verified against the D-Link docket before use.
• Flag on case metadata: as noted in the overview, the case metadata's single patent (8,644,765) understates the pleadings — the complaint asserted eleven patents in this campaign. That does not affect the counsel identification above.

I'll research the defendant's counsel of record in this case using multiple sources.

Important discovery already: the docket as retrieved shows plaintiff's actual counsel differs from what the earlier section stated. Let me now hunt for defense counsel and post-July 2025 docket activity.

The public docket is stale (last retrieved July 28, 2025). Let me pull the CourtListener/RECAP docket and the dismissal filing, which would carry counsel signature blocks.

Defendant's Counsel of Record — What I Could and Could Not Establish

Bottom line: I was unable to verify, from any citable public source, the identity of the attorney(s) who appeared for D-Link Corporation in Velocity Communication Technologies, LLC v. D-Link Corp., No. 5:25-cv-00103 (E.D. Tex.). I am not going to name anyone as counsel of record for D-Link, because the public record available to me does not support it. Below is exactly what the record does and does not show, plus the specific steps that would resolve it.

What the public docket actually shows

The most complete free docket snapshot I could retrieve is the Justia/Free Law Project mirror of PACER for this case (dockets.justia.com, 5:2025cv00103), last retrieved July 28, 2025. Every attorney appearance in that snapshot is for the plaintiff:

So: no defense-side appearance, answer, or Rule 12 motion appears in the publicly mirrored docket through July 28, 2025. The waiver at Dkt. 11 was filed by plaintiff's counsel, not by a D-Link attorney, so it does not identify defense counsel.

The case metadata says it terminated on January 23, 2026 on an agreed motion to dismiss (per the earlier-generated summary, Dkt. 25). An agreed dismissal necessarily means D-Link was represented by that point — a corporate defendant cannot sign a stipulated dismissal without counsel. But the identity of that counsel is not in any source I could retrieve. The Justia mirror was never refreshed past July 2025; RPX Empower's litigation page (litigation.rpxcorp.com, txedce-239054) is paywalled for docket detail; and my searches targeting a defense-side appearance or the signature block of the Agreed Motion to Dismiss returned nothing usable. I also searched for D-Link's counsel in its other concurrent patent cases — Atlas Global Technologies v. D-Link (2:22-cv-00103), CommPlex Systems v. D-Link (2:25-cv-00343), Estelgia v. D-Link (D. Del. 1:25-cv-00615), all per the Stanford NPE Litigation Database — and did not surface a firm name I can attribute to this docket.

Accordingly: no name, firm, role, or office location for D-Link's counsel is reported here. Fabricating one would be worse than an empty field.

One historical data point (clearly labeled as not this case)

The only D-Link patent-defense counsel I found named in any public document is from a 2012 case: in Fujitsu Ltd. v. Belkin Int'l, D-Link Corp., NetGear, Inc., Zyxel Comm. Corp. (N.D. Cal., tried Nov.–Dec. 2012), D-Link and Zyxel were represented by the Law Offices of S.J. Charles Yang, LLP (per a testifying expert's CV reproduced in a PTAB petition exhibit). This is over a decade old, was in a different court, and carries no inference about who appeared in the 2025–26 E.D. Tex. matter. I mention it only as the sole attributable D-Link patent-counsel reference my search returned.

Contradiction with the earlier-generated sections — flagged

Your existing case summary and "Plaintiff representatives" section are inconsistent with the docket and with the trade press, and the defendant question is downstream of that:

1. Plaintiff's counsel is wrong in the earlier section. That section lists Jason W. Cook and David F. Johnson (Ward, Smith & Hill PLLC, Longview) and Jonathan E. Ruddy / Matthew C. Van Eman (Aziz & Bhatti LLC). I found no source for any of those attorneys in this case. The actual recorded counsel are:

   • Daniel P. Hipskind — designated attorney in charge (Dkt. 6), Berger & Hipskind LLP (Dallas)
   • Dorian S. Berger — Berger & Hipskind LLP
   • Erin E. McCracken — Berger & Hipskind LLP (Dkt. 8)
   • Elizabeth L. DeRieux — Capshaw DeRieux LLP (Longview, TX), local Texas counsel (Dkt. 2)

   Sources: the Justia docket above; IP Fray's campaign report ("Velocity is being represented by Berger & Hipskind LLP's Daniel P. Hipskind, Dorian S. Berger, and Erin E. McCracken, as well as Elizabeth L. DeRieux at Capshaw DeRieux LLP"); and RPX's reporting on the Borchers-linked campaigns, which notes that "Berger & Hipskind LLP provides representation, as does Capshaw Derieux LLP in Texas." The prior section should be corrected, not treated as authoritative.

2. The patent count is unresolved. The case metadata lists only U.S. Patent No. 8,644,765. The existing summary asserts eleven patents. The record supports the higher number: RPX lists the same eleven patents asserted against every defendant in the campaign (8,213,870; 8,238,832; 8,238,859; 8,260,213; 8,265,573; 8,270,343; 8,644,765; 8,675,570; 9,083,401; 9,596,648; 10,200,096), and the complaint (Dkt. 1) attaches 24 exhibits, consistent with a multi-patent, multi-chart filing. Per your operating rules, the metadata governs for the patent-at-issue field, but the eleven-patent scope should be treated as the accurate litigation fact.

How to close this gap definitively

The information is behind PACER, not unavailable — the free mirrors simply stopped updating:

1. PACER / ECF for 5:25-cv-00103, docket entries 12–25. Defense counsel would appear via a Notice of Appearance or the Answer/Corporate Disclosure Statement. The Agreed Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. 24 or 25) is the single best document — it will carry the complete signature block for both sides.
2. CourtListener RECAP — search the docket ID gov.uscourts.txed.239054 directly; the RECAP archive sometimes holds documents (including the dismissal) that Justia does not.
3. Bloomberg Law / Lex Machina / Docket Navigator docket sheets, which include full attorney-appearance tables and are refreshed.
4. D-Link's Taiwan corporate disclosures — D-Link Corp. is a TWSE-listed company; a settlement of a material multi-patent case could surface in an investor filing, though a single-defendant settlement of this size likely would not.

If you can supply the docket entries past Dkt. 11, or the Agreed Motion to Dismiss PDF, I can produce the complete defense roster — name, role, firm, office, and experience note — in the same format as the plaintiff sections. I'd rather return a verified blank than an invented name.