Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC et al. v. Hive Technology, Inc.

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

Let me dig into the docket specifics, the defendant's background, and any IPR linkage.

Case Overview

Parties. The plaintiffs are two related entities asserting the same two patents. Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC (pleaded as a Texas entity) is the plaintiff-side licensing vehicle — the Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies it as an "Acquired patents" asserter — while Pennar Software Corporation (Virginia) is described in the same database as "Individual-inventor-started" and is treated as the original owner of the patent family; its joinder as a co-plaintiff was the subject of a court-ordered explanation in the related Trello case. Hive Technology, Inc. is an ordinary operating company — a New York–based SaaS provider of the Hive project-management and collaboration platform (hive.com), founded ~2015–2016, with roughly $16–27M in disclosed venture funding from Vocap Investment Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners, and Tribeca Venture Partners, and a customer roster that has included WeWork, Samsung, Pinterest, Comcast, Toyota, and Electronic Arts (CB Insights; Mergr; hive.com). Plaintiff's counsel was Timothy Devlin of Devlin Law Firm LLC, the prolific Delaware patent-plaintiff firm that filed this entire campaign; Delaware defense counsel was Heyman Enerio Gattuso & Hirzel LLP (PatSnap litigation profile — treat counsel attribution as second-hand, since I could not pull the PACER docket image directly).

Accused technology. The complaint targeted Hive's project-management/collaboration SaaS, specifically its project workspaces and permissions (marking projects "public" or "private" and assigning "full access" or "read-only" member permissions), plus Hive Notes (real-time collaborative documents), Hive Forms, and Hive Messaging, with Hive's "Action Card History" alleged to function as the claimed approval/audit record (Compl. ¶¶20–23, 32–36). The theory was that Hive's ordinary access-control and edit-approval features practice the asserted claims.

Patents asserted. Two patents from the same lineage:

• U.S. Patent No. 6,845,448 B1 — "method and system for gathering, storing personal information on a server computer and releasing such information to authorized requesters"; claim 1 recites assigning "at least one of a plurality of security levels to each information object at any granularity" and rejecting unauthorized requests. Priority runs to application 09/478,796, filed January 2000. Asserted against a broad set of collaboration tools (Trello, Hive, Nulab, LiquidPlanner, Miro, Accelo, Workzone, Zendesk, TaskWorld).
• U.S. Patent No. 8,117,644 B2 — "online document collaboration": server-side accounts, access restrictions on a stored document, identity verification before a second user may modify, and storing identifying information of users who approved or disapproved the modifications (i.e., an auditable approval trail).

Procedural posture and venue. Filed in the District of Delaware on January 1, 2023 (D.I. 1; the case was initially lodged in the miscellaneous docket 1:99-mc-02023 and opened as civil action 23-2), assigned to Judge Maryellen Noreika (1:23-cv-00002-MN). Delaware was the campaign's chosen forum — eight-plus near-identical complaints were filed there in the same window (Accelo 23-1, Hive 23-2, LiquidPlanner 23-3, RealtimeBoard/Miro 23-4, TaskWorld 23-42, Zendesk 23-105, Trello 23-344, Workzone 23-345), with only 37signals filed elsewhere (N.D. Ill.). Venue here turned on the defendant's own connection to Delaware (commonly state of incorporation) rather than any Delaware-based infringement; I could not independently verify Hive's state of incorporation, so the precise venue hook is not well sourced. The case ended by stipulated dismissal with prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(ii), with each party bearing its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees — no claim construction, no § 101 ruling, no merits decision, and no disclosed consideration. The exact dismissal date did not surface in my searches; the stipulation names Pennar as a co-plaintiff, which places it after the October 2023 Pennar‑joinder effort referenced in Web 2.0 Techs., LLC v. Trello, Inc., D. Del. 1:23-cv-00344, D.I. 17 (letter to Judge Noreika dated Oct. 4, 2023).

Why the Case Is Notable

It was a piece of a coordinated, same-day NPE filing spree. Hive was docket entry #2 in Devlin's January 1, 2023 Delaware blitz — the kind of campaign pattern (one acquired two-patent portfolio, a dozen small-to-mid-cap SaaS defendants, low per-defendant damages exposure, quick-settlement economics) that drives PAE criticism. Hive, with a handful of dozen employees and modest venture backing, was precisely the "cost-of-defense exceeds settlement value" target profile; the plaintiffs' parallel suits against Zendesk, Miro, and Atlassian-owned Trello show the campaign was not limited to startups.

Defensive-community attention, but no IPR linkage. Unified Patents ran a PATROLL prior-art bounty on the '448 patent ($2,000 prize, opened January 20, 2023 and closed March 31, 2023), expressly citing the assertions against "Trello, Hive, Nulab, and LiquidPlanner"; the award went to Ekta Aswal and Dinesh Swamy. Notably, the challenge took the form of crowd-sourced prior art rather than a PTAB petition — I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving either the '448 or the '644 patent, so the case has no AIA-trial linkage. That absence is itself informative: no defendant in the campaign appears to have funded an IPR, consistent with fast settlements.

The patents' validity has since been seriously undermined elsewhere. In Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC v. 37signals LLC, No. 1:23-cv-00230 (N.D. Ill.), Judge John Robert Blakey granted a Rule 12(b)(6) motion and held both the '448 and '644 patents invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 (Alice step one and two), analogizing to Cellspin Soft v. Fitbit; the case was dismissed with prejudice. And in the plaintiffs' 2025 pivot to hospital defendants in W.D. Tex. (asserting related patents U.S. 9,465,913 and 8,417,594), a court likewise found the claims abstract and dismissed Pennar's claims with prejudice (Fish & Richardson, Texas Round-Up: December 2025). Those rulings are not binding on Hive or on Delaware, but they materially recalibrate how much the Hive dismissal should be read as a win for either side: Hive obtained permanent peace (res judicata as to these patents and accused conduct) without buying a merits exoneration, while the plaintiffs preserved the patents for other defendants — several of whom have now prevailed on eligibility.

Sourcing caveats. Docket-event granularity for 1:23-cv-00002 (entry numbers for the stipulation, exact dismissal date, and whether an amended complaint adding Pennar was ever filed in this case) could not be confirmed from PACER or RECAP in my searches; the quoted stipulation language and counsel roster come from third-party litigation-intelligence profiles (PatSnap/Ex Parte-style summaries) rather than a primary document

I'll research this case systematically using web search.

Let me get the docket details and related case information.

Let me dig into the specific docket entries for the Hive case.

I hit the search-step ceiling, so here is the timeline assembled from what the searches returned. I've flagged confidence levels — this docket is thin, and several entries are drawn from third‑party litigation databases (PatSnap, Ex Parte, CourtListener/UniCourt) rather than PACER directly.

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Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC et al. v. Hive Technology, Inc.

D. Del. No. 1:23-cv-00002-MN (Judge Maryellen Noreika) — dismissed with prejudice

Bottom line

This case never matured into contested litigation. It was one of a January 2023 wave of near-identical complaints filed by an inventor-controlled NPE and its license-holding affiliate in the District of Delaware, all before Judge Noreika, all asserting the same two expired-era software patents against online collaboration/project-management SaaS platforms. The Hive case ended in a stipulated Rule 41(a)(1)(ii) dismissal with prejudice, each party bearing its own costs — i.e., a clean, commercially silent exit consistent with a low-value, cost-of-defense settlement rather than any merits ruling.

Chronology

1. Filing & initial pleadings (early January 2023)

• Complaint filed: D. Del. docket reports the filing date as 2023-01-01 (case assigned No. 23-cv-00002, i.e., the second new civil case of the year). The complaint is captioned WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES, LLC v. HIVE TECHNOLOGY, INC., asserts patent infringement with a jury demand, and attaches Exhibit 1, Exhibit 2, a Civil Cover Sheet, a Patent/Trademark Report, a Corporate Disclosure Statement, and Summons. Plaintiff's counsel of record on the filing was Timothy Devlin (Devlin Law Firm LLC). (CourtListener/UniCourt renderings of the docket; receipt number ADEDC-4034502.) CourtListener's copy bears the annotation "(SEE CIVIL ACTION 23-2)," confirming the assignment.
• Patents asserted: U.S. Patent No. 6,845,448 B1 ("Online repository for personal information") and U.S. Patent No. 8,117,644 B2 ("Method and system for online document collaboration"). The '644 patent is a later-issued relative of the '448.
• Accused instrumentality: Hive's project-management/collaboration SaaS — specifically project permissions, Hive Notes, Hive Forms, Hive Messaging, and an "Action Card History" audit-log feature. The infringement theory mapped Hive's "public/private" project settings and "full access/read-only" permission levels onto the '448 claim's "security levels … at any granularity" limitation and onto the '644 claim's access-restriction/approval-tracking limitations. (Complaint analysis, Ex Parte AI Lab — a third-party analytical source, not a primary document.)
• Counsel for defendant (per PatSnap's litigation database, not independently verified against PACER): Marc J. Rachman, Samuel Taylor Hirzel II, and Sarah Benowich (recorded as Heyman Enerio Gattuso & Hirzel, LLP). I could not confirm an answer, counterclaims, or any Rule 12 motion in this case from available sources — the public-facing record suggests the case closed before such pleadings were docketed or before they matured.

2. The related-case wave (context)

Hive was not an isolated suit. The same plaintiffs filed a cluster in D. Del. in January 2023, all assigned to Judge Noreika — including Accelo (23-cv-00001), TaskWorld (23-cv-00042), Zendesk (23-cv-00105), Freshworks (23-cv-00108) — plus Trello (23-cv-00344), Nulab, LiquidPlanner, and Formagrid, and a separate N.D. Ill. action against 37signals/Basecamp (1:23-cv-00230). The Zendesk docket's "associated cases" line (2023-02-01) lists 1:23-cv-00104-MN, -00105-MN, -00107-MN and -00108-MN, confirming the coordinated filing strategy. (Dockets.Justia; UniCourt; CourtListener.)

3. Plaintiff-identity discrepancy — October 2023 (the one substantive procedural episode touching this case)

• 2023-10-02: Judge Noreika issued Oral Orders across the related cases requiring plaintiff to explain why Pennar Software Corporation appeared as a plaintiff in some cases but not others, and whether Pennar was a required plaintiff in all of them. (Trello docket, D.I. 17.)
• 2023-10-04: Devlin filed a letter (D.I. 17 in 1:23-cv-00344) responding, expressly listing "Hive Technology, Inc., 1:23-cv-00002-MN" among the related cases and indicating plaintiffs would file amended complaints in the coming weeks to add Pennar Software Corporation as a plaintiff.
• Effect: In the Hive case, Pennar Software Corporation was ultimately named as a co-plaintiff — the final dismissal stipulation is captioned in the names of both Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC and Pennar Software Corporation. This standing/copending-ownership issue (the '448 appears to be owned/licensed in a chain involving the inventor-affiliated Pennar entity) was the only contested issue the court actively pressed in this matter.

4. No Markman, no discovery fights, no trial, no JMOL/fees

I found no evidence of: a motion to dismiss (including § 101), a motion to transfer, a motion to stay pending IPR, any Markman/claim-construction proceeding, discovery motions, summary judgment, trial, verdict, or post-trial/fee motions in 1:23-cv-00002. The parallel 37signals action did reach a § 101 ruling (below), but that was a different court and defendant.

5. Final disposition — stipulated dismissal with prejudice

Verbatim operative text (PatSnap/PACER rendering):

"Plaintiffs Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC and Pennar Software Corporation and Defendant Hive Technology, Inc. … have agreed to dismiss the claims and causes of action between them. Accordingly, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(ii), IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED … that this action is hereby dismissed with prejudice. Each party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees."

Legal effect: A Rule 41(a)(1)(ii) dismissal with prejudice operates as a final adjudication on the merits, barring these plaintiffs from re-asserting the '448/'644 patents against Hive on the same accused conduct. The mutual cost-bearing clause is neutral — it reveals nothing about who, if anyone, paid consideration. The absence of any public settlement or license filing means any payment (the Zendesk parallel case was closed on a "Settlement Agreement" on 2023-12-12) is not disclosed.

⚠️ Verification caveat: I was unable to confirm the exact date of the dismissal stipulation or its docket entry number for 1:23-cv-00002 within the search budget. Given the pattern (Seyfarth Shaw's April 2023 "NPE Showcase" noted these cases "last only a few months," and the parallel D. Del. cases closed in late 2023), a 2023 dismissal is the most likely timeline, but treat the precise date as unconfirmed.

Parallel PTAB proceedings

• No IPR or PGR petition on either the '448 or '644 patent is recorded in the sources I retrieved. No stay-pending-IPR motion appears in the Hive docket, which is consistent with the absence of a PTAB challenge.
• Unified Patents PATROLL crowdsourcing contest: Unified ran a prior-art bounty on claim 1 of U.S. 6,845,448, open 2023-01-20 to 2023-03-31, offering $2,000. On 2023-05-08 Unified announced winners Ekta Aswal and Dinesh Swamy. Critically, the contest did not convert into a filed IPR as far as my searches show — the prior art was crowdsourced but no petition resulted. The patents are described as expired, which typically makes IPR less attractive (no prospective injunctive leverage for the patentee, and the estoppel/benefit calculus changes).
• The patents have no recorded validity challenges in patent-database sources (PatSnap lists "Validity challenges: None recorded"), reinforcing that the PTAB track was never used.

The most significant merits development on these patents — but not in this case

Web 2.0 Techs., LLC v. 37signals LLC, No. 1:23-cv-00230 (N.D. Ill.) — Judge John Robert Blakey held on 2024-03-25 that both asserted patents are directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas under 35 U.S.C. § 101/Alice. Applying Alice step one, the court found the '448 claims ("collection, transfer, and publishing of data," Cellspin) and '644 claims recite nothing beyond a

Plaintiffs' Counsel of Record — Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC et al. v. Hive Technology, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-00002-MN (D. Del.)

Bottom line

The public record discloses a single attorney of record for the plaintiffs: Timothy Devlin of Devlin Law Firm LLC (Wilmington, Delaware). He is both lead counsel and Delaware/local counsel. I found no pro hac vice appearances or additional plaintiff-side attorneys in this docket — consistent with the fact that this case was one of the shortest-lived suits in the Web 2.0 Technologies campaign. I could not access PACER directly (paywalled); the findings below rest on CourtListener/RECAP docket text, the filed complaint signature, the October 4, 2023 letter to Judge Noreika, and third-party docket aggregators. Anything I could not verify is flagged.

Counsel table

Support for the identification

• D.I. 1 (Complaint, filed Jan. 2023): Docket text reads: "COMPLAINT – WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES, LLC v. HIVE TECHNOLOGY, INC. for Patent Infringement, Filing fee $402, receipt number ADEDC-4034502 … (Attachments: #1 Exhibit 1, #2 Exhibit 2, #3 Civil Cover Sheet, #4 Patent/Trademark Report, #5 Corporate Disclosure Statement, #6 Summons Issued) (Devlin, Timothy) (SEE CIVIL ACTION 23-2)." The parenthetical naming Devlin is the CM/ECF filer/signature attribution — the functional equivalent of counsel of record on the initiating pleading.
• CourtListener docket, Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC v. Trello, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-00344-MN, D.I. 17 (Oct. 4, 2023) — Devlin's letter to Judge Noreika responding to the Court's October 2, 2023 oral orders expressly lists "Hive Technology, Inc. — 1:23-cv-00002-MN" among the related Web 2.0 cases and is filed on Devlin Law Firm letterhead. That letter is the best confirmation that Devlin Law Firm was the plaintiff-side firm across this case family, including the Hive matter.
• PatSnap litigation report on this docket (based on PACER for 1:23-cv-00002) identifies "Plaintiff counsel: Timothy Devlin" and "Plaintiff law firm: Devlin Law Firm LLC." Treat aggregator tables as secondary corroboration, not primary authority.
• The stipulated Rule 41(a)(1)(ii) dismissal (with prejudice, each side bearing its own costs) recites that it was executed "by and between counsel for the parties"; the plaintiffs' signature block is on the stipulation, but I was unable to retrieve the scanned document page to confirm whether any second plaintiff-side name appears there.

Matters to note / open items

1. No formal "notice of appearance" for plaintiffs located. In D. Del., the filing attorney is the attorney of record from the complaint forward; because this case terminated quickly by stipulation, there was no occasion for the PHV motions, multiple appearances, or briefing teams typically seen in longer cases. If you need a court-certified appearance list, pull the PACER docket's "Attorneys" tab for 1:23-cv-00002 directly — the aggregators may not reflect it.
2. Pennar Software Corporation's counsel. This case was filed by Web 2.0 Technologies alone; Pennar was added as co-plaintiff (the dismissal stipulation quotes both as plaintiffs). Judge Noreika's Oct. 2, 2023 oral order in the parallel cases reflects that plaintiffs were amending complaints to add Pennar. In the companion cases where Pennar appears, the same Devlin Law Firm team represents both plaintiffs, so there is no indication of separate counsel for Pennar. I could not confirm the exact date the amended complaint naming Pennar was docketed in 23-cv-00002 before dismissal.
3. No in-house counsel identified. Web 2.0 Technologies is a small licensing entity; no in-house attorneys appear on the docket.
4. Defense cross-check (for completeness): Hive Technology was represented by Marc J. Rachman, Samuel Taylor Hirzel II, and Sarah Benowich of Heyman Enerio Gattuso & Hirzel LLP (Wilmington, DE), per aggregator reporting. Not verified against the filed stipulation's signature block.

Relevant experience — Devlin Law Firm / Timothy Devlin (sourcing caveat)

Publicly available material describes Devlin as a Delaware IP litigator heading Devlin Law Firm LLC, a Wilmington boutique whose practice centers on patent litigation, and he is the named counsel across the Web 2.0 Technologies / Pennar Software suits in D. Del. before Judge Noreika (e.g., the Trello, Workzone, Mango Technologies, Zendesk, and related 1:23-cv-00104/105/107/108 matters). I did not locate a reliable, citable independent source detailing specific prior representations or wins beyond this campaign, so I am deliberately not listing additional "notable past cases." For a verified bio-level experience summary, the firm's own site (devlinlawfirm.com) and the D. Del. attorney roll would be the authoritative sources to check before citing specifics.

I'll research this docket and the defendant's counsel of record.

Let me pull the actual docket sheet and verify each attorney's firm.

Let me verify the two out-of-state counsel names and their firms.

Counsel of Record — Defendant Hive Technology, Inc.

Bottom line: The defense team was a two-firm structure typical of D. Del. patent practice — a New York IP litigation boutique handling the substantive defense with a Wilmington firm as Delaware local counsel. My sourcing here is secondary/aggregated docket data (PatSnap Eureka litigation database), not a direct PACER or RECAP pull, so I flag confidence levels per attorney below.

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1. Marc J. Rachman — outside/lead counsel (national counsel)

• Firm / office: Davis+Gilbert LLP, 1675 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
• Role: Partner, Litigation + Dispute Resolution and Intellectual Property + Media Practice Groups. The aggregator docket record lists him first among defendant counsel, consistent with a lead-counsel role; not judicially confirmed.
• Experience note: Licensed in NY since 1994 (Boston University School of Law, 1993, cum laude); Super Lawyers–listed for IP litigation 2012–2026. His published bio expressly covers "trademark, copyright, false advertising, rights of publicity, trade secret and patent infringement disputes," but his caseload is weighted toward soft-IP, advertising and commercial litigation (he developed the firm's graffiti-art copyright defense niche). Directly relevant qualification: he has argued before the Second and Ninth Circuits, and the firm's public practice descriptions emphasize advertising/marketing, digital media, adtech and technology-startup clients — a reasonable fit for a project-management SaaS defendant.
• Verification: Rachman at Davis+Gilbert is well corroborated (dglaw.com bio; Super Lawyers; Law360 firm/attorney page). His appearance in this specific case rests on the PatSnap docket extract — I could not independently view a D. Del. notice of appearance.

2. Samuel Taylor Hirzel, II — local counsel (D. Del.)

• Firm / office: Heyman Enerio Gattuso & Hirzel LLP (HEGH), 300 Delaware Avenue, Suite 200, Wilmington, DE 19801.
• Role: Delaware counsel; D. Del. bar No. 4415.
• Experience note: A genuine Delaware litigation/patent practitioner — HEGH filings show him briefed the Biogen v. Amneal ANDA patent consolidated case (Judge Stark) alongside partner Dominick T. Gattuso, and he is a regular Delaware counsel in the long-running Crystallex / PDVSA v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and ConocoPhillips Gulf of Paria enforcement proceedings. His practice skews to complex commercial/sovereign-immunity and Section 220/Chancery work more than to patent merits.
• Verification: High — his signature blocks, bar number, and firm address appear repeatedly in RECAP/court-filed PDFs; PatSnap lists him as HEGH counsel for Hive here.

3. Sarah Benowich — counsel (firm unconfirmed)

• Role: Listed as defendant counsel for Hive Technology.
• Firm: Not independently confirmed. PatSnap lists all three defense attorneys under the single firm field "Heyman Enerio Gattuso & Hirzel, LLP," which is almost certainly an artifact of its data model (Rachman is definitively Davis+Gilbert, not HEGH). Given the pairing with Rachman, the most likely affiliation is Davis+Gilbert as an associate/attorney in the same IP+Media group, but I was unable to verify this and am not asserting it. My second, targeted query hit the tool step limit before returning results.
• Experience note: Cannot provide one without corroboration. Do not treat her as a confirmed participant absent a PACER notice of appearance check.

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Important caveats and provenance

1. No firm/attorney appearance has been verified from a primary docket document. PACER is paywalled and the RECAP/CourtListener entry I surfaced (docket 68128810) is a placeholder "Plaintiff(s) v. Defendant(s), 1:99-mc-02023" record containing only the original complaint text ("COMPLAINT – WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES, LLC v. HIVE TECHNOLOGY, INC. … (Devlin, Timothy) (SEE CIVIL ACTION 23-2)"). It does not display the defendant's notices of appearance. The complaint was docketed under a miscellaneous number and then opened as 23-cv-2, which is why the 1:23-cv-00002 sheet is thin.
2. Sealed filings: I found no indication that defense counsel appearances were filed under seal, but I also cannot rule it out. Given the case was filed 1/2023 and closed within roughly the year via stipulation, appearances should exist on the docket; I simply could not retrieve them.
3. Plaintiff side (for context only): Leading counsel for Web 2.0 Technologies was Timothy Devlin, Devlin Law Firm LLC (Wilmington). Pennar Software Corporation was added as a co-plaintiff after the initial filing — the Jan. 1, 2023 complaint named only Web 2.0 Technologies, and a later letter to Judge Noreika in the related Trello case (1:23-cv-00344, D.I. 17, 10/04/2023) addressed the plaintiffs discrepancy.
4. No merits activity: The case ended by stipulated dismissal with prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(ii), each side bearing its own costs — so no claim construction, § 101, or invalidity ruling tested any of these counsel. The only substantive § 101 authority on these two patents (U.S. 6,845,448 and 8,117,644) comes from Web 2.0 Technologies, LLC v. 37signals LLC, No. 1:23-cv-00230 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 25, 2024) (Blakey, J.) (dismissing without prejudice as directed to abstract ideas), where defendant 37signals was represented by Jacqueline Genovese Bova of Goodwin Procter — not by the Hive defense team.
5. Parallel PTAB proceedings: I found no IPR/PGR against the '448 or '644 patents in my search (PatSnap shows "validity challenges: None recorded"). Unified Patents ran a prior-art bounty on the '448 patent (Jan.–Mar. 2023) but that is not an instituted PTAB proceeding.

Recommended next step if you need 100% confidence: pull the PACER docket sheet for 1:23-cv-00002-MN and read the notices of appearance (typically D.I. 8–12) and the stipulation of dismissal. That will confirm each name, firm, bar number, and role, and resolve the Benowich question.