Smith Weber

I'll research this firm before drafting.

Firm overview. Smith Weber, L.L.P. (also styled Smith Weber LLP) is a small civil-litigation boutique headquartered at 5505 Plaza Drive, Texarkana, Texas — a short drive from the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas, where most of its tracked patent work sits. The firm was founded in 2006 for the stated purpose of building a trial practice serving Texas, Arkansas and, on a selective basis, national clients (firm website, smithweber.com). Directory data puts it at one office with roughly two to three attorneys (Martindale-Hubbell lists an office size of 2; BCG Search lists 1 total office and 3 total attorneys), which places it firmly in the small regional litigation shop tier rather than BigLaw or an IP boutique. The firm holds an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell; I found no AmLaw, Chambers, or Legal 500 ranking for it, and no reliable public revenue or attorney-headcount figures beyond the directory estimates above.

IP litigation specialty. Smith Weber's own practice description leads with general civil litigation — patent infringement, products liability, environmental contaminants, employment, and commercial disputes — rather than a dedicated IP docket. Its tracked patent work is narrow and concentrated in wireless telecommunications: the Sol IP matters (E.D. Tex., Marshall Division, before Judge Robert W. Schroeder III and Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne) involved LTE/3GPP 4G standards, cell-search and synchronization technology, and Wi-Fi/IEEE 802.11 MIMO frame-transmission patents. Robert W. Weber's listed practice areas include intellectual property alongside civil litigation, products liability, and employment law. In practical terms, the firm's IP role reads as regional trial counsel in asserted-patent suits rather than a wireless or semiconductor specialist practice.

Side preference. The tracked record is exclusively defense-side: 2 appearances, both for defendant Sprint entities, zero plaintiff-side. One is logged as lead counsel and one as local counsel, which is consistent with the classic EDTX pattern — an out-of-state defense team takes the substantive lead (in the related Sprint filings, Rouse Hendricks German May appeared pro hac vice) while the Texarkana firm supplies local counsel and Texas court coverage. There is no tracked evidence of NPE/PAE plaintiff-side prosecution or of the firm acquiring and asserting patents. Note that older firm descriptions state the firm has tried cases "for both plaintiffs and defendants" in civil litigation generally; that is a general-litigation statement, not a patent-plaintiff record.

Notable cases and outcomes. The principal matter is Sol IP, LLC v. Sprint Communications Company L.P. et al., No. 2:18-cv-00527 (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 3, 2018), which the tracked list reflects as two entries (lead counsel and local counsel) for the same underlying dispute. Sol IP, an NPE asserting patents originating with Korea's ETRI, sued AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon (with Ericsson and Nokia intervening); the Sprint action was consolidated with the parallel AT&T case, Sol IP, LLC v. AT&T Mobility LLC, No. 2:18-cv-00526. The litigation featured unusually heavy claim-construction practice, including two days of Markman proceedings and multiple memorandum opinions construing the LTE and Wi-Fi patent groups in December 2019. The Sprint docket shows termination by dismissal on May 20, 2020; the AT&T-led consolidated case remained active into 2020. I could not verify settlement terms or consideration, so the disposition should be treated as unconfirmed beyond the docket entry. Public federal dockets also show Weber appearing in other EDTX patent matters, including Cellular Communications Equipment LLC v. LG Electronics Inc., No. 6:13-cv-00508, and Red Anvil LLC v. Sony Corporation of America, No. 2:15-cv-00991; these are not in the tracked appearance list, so role and scope should be verified before being cited.

PTAB / IPR practice. There is no public evidence that Smith Weber maintains a standalone IPR/PGR filing practice, and no public report supports a meaningful filing volume for the firm. One PTAB petition document in the USPTO PTAB records lists Robert William Weber of Smith Weber LLP as counsel alongside McGuireWoods LLP in a proceeding connected to the Sol IP litigation family — consistent with local-counsel participation in a petitioner-side challenge rather than firm-led PTAB work — but the document alone does not establish the firm's role, and it should not be characterized as an IPR practice without further verification. Separately, search results for "Weber" IPRs (e.g., Weber, Inc. v. Provisur Technologies, IPR appeals at the Federal Circuit) involve the food-slicing equipment manufacturer Weber, Inc., an unrelated company, and must not be attributed to this firm.

Key partners / practice leaders. Robert William Weber is the clear practice anchor: partner at Smith Weber, licensed in Texas (1980), Arkansas, and Pennsylvania, a 1979 graduate of South Texas College of Law, former briefing attorney for the Texas Court of Civil Appeals (Sixth District), AV Preeminent rated by Martindale-Hubbell, and selected to Super Lawyers (Texas, business litigation) in 2020. He is the sole attorney in the tracked appearances. Directory and firm listings also name founding partner Mike Smith and C. David Glass (Texas Tech J.D., 2002) as firm attorneys, but available public sources do not document either as an IP litigation leader, so I would not describe them as such. Beyond Weber, the firm's IP litigation bench is not verifiable from public sources.