SoCal IP Law Group

I'll research the firm's profile and the tracked case before writing.

Let me verify the tracked case posture and the firm's PTAB profile.

SoCal IP Law Group LLP — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Firm overview. SoCal IP Law Group LLP is a small, Los Angeles-area intellectual property boutique headquartered at 310 N. Westlake Blvd., Suite 120, Westlake Village, CA, with a second California address in Santa Barbara (1332 Anacapa St., Suite 120) listed on State Bar and firm records. Martindale lists eight lawyers at the firm and a 4.9/5.0 peer-review rating across 20 reviews. Available public sources — including the firm's own site, Martindale, BBB, and directory listings — do not show an AmLaw ranking or a Chambers ranking; I found no reliable third-party indicator of attorney headcount, revenue, or national ranking. On the evidence available, this is best characterized as a regional IP boutique with a prosecution-and-counseling core rather than a BigLaw IP litigation group.

IP litigation specialty. The firm's own services description covers the full IP waterfront: patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret litigation; PTAB adversarial work; TTAB oppositions and cancellations; UDRP and gTLD disputes; customs enforcement; and international IP disputes — alongside a substantial patent and trademark prosecution, opinions, clearance, and licensing practice. Martindale also lists "High-Technology Law" among the firm's categories. The single tracked litigation matter is squarely software/SaaS: Sampo IP LLC's suit over the "Centrifugal Communication and Collaboration Method" patents, asserting U.S. Patent Nos. 6,772,229; 6,161,149; and 8,015,495 against enterprise collaboration and cloud messaging products. I found no evidence of Wi-Fi/standards, pharma, semiconductor, or mechanical litigation work; the firm's publicly documented adversarial experience is concentrated in high-tech/software and trademark matters.

Side preference. On the authoritative case list, the firm's one tracked appearance is plaintiff-side (1 plaintiff, 0 defendant), with Steven C. Sereboff as counsel. That plaintiff was Sampo IP, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Marathon Patent Group — a publicly traded patent licensing company — making this NPE/PAE-side enforcement work against operating companies (Blackboard, Inc. and Salesforce.com). The firm's PTAB and TTAB appearances reinforce a patent-holder orientation: in every PTAB proceeding I could verify, SoCal IP attorneys represented the patent owner, not the petitioner. At the same time, the firm holds itself out as serving technology clients on prosecution, clearance, and design-around work for corporate risk management, i.e., operating-company advisory work. The honest read is a patent-holder/enforcement-leaning boutique with a mixed prosecution client base — but one litigated data point is a thin basis for a generalization about side preference.

Notable tracked case. Sampo IP LLC v. Salesforce.com (filed with Blackboard, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-00601, E.D. Va., Nov. 12, 2013) is the firm's only tracked matter. Marathon Patent Group's own press release confirms the filing, the three asserted patents, and the accused communications systems/methods. Beyond the filing, I could not verify a public judgment, verdict, or settlement outcome in that case from the sources available; treat any outcome characterization with caution.

PTAB / IPR practice and key attorneys. The firm advertises PTAB work including IPRs, CBMs, PGRs, and ex parte reexaminations, but I found no public report quantifying its filing volume — so no scale figure can be stated. What is documented is substantive, high-stakes patent-owner-side PTAB work by Steven C. Sereboff: he was lead counsel for patent owner Applications in Internet Time, LLC in RPX Corp. v. AIT, IPR2015-01750/-01751/-01752, including the April 2019 oral hearing on remand following the Federal Circuit's real-party-in-interest/time-bar decision in Applications in Internet Time, LLC v. RPX Corp., 897 F.3d 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2018); backup counsel for Tracbeam, LLC in IPR2015-01700; and substituted-in lead counsel for the University of Utah Research Foundation in IPR2019-01230 (with Brian S. Tamsut as backup). Sereboff also signed Federal Circuit amicus briefing for the Conejo Valley Bar Association on patent exhaustion. Other named partners include Michael D. Harris (IP litigation; former USPTO patent examiner; previously with the Los Angeles boutique Poms, Smith, Lande & Rose) and Mark A. Goldstein (IP strategy, patents, trademarks, and licensing). Marina L. Lang, Nikki M. Dossman, Brian S. Tamsut, Anneliese Lomonaco, Jonathan Pearce, and M. Kala Saraiya also appear as counsel of record in firm PTAB/TTAB filings, though I could not independently verify partner status for each.

Sourcing note: firm overview, service scope, and individual bios come from socalip.com and Martindale; the case posture comes from the tracked docket list and Marathon Patent Group's Nov. 12, 2013 press release; PTAB involvement comes from USPTO/PTAB filings and hearing transcripts. Findings I could not verify — Chambers/AmLaw rankings, IPR filing volume, and the outcome of the Sampo litigation — are flagged as such rather than estimated.