Headwater Research LLC's separate Eastern District of Texas cases against Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile) and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) are set for trial this week. Claims from two patents are to be tried against each defendant set, with Headwater docketing its final selection of seven claims from those two patents as to the Deutsche Telekom defendants; and three claims, as to Verizon. In its runup to trial, the Verizon docket has been hammered by recommended resolutions for the parties' myriad pretrial motions, as well as (mostly sealed) objections thereto, including recommended denials of Verizon's motions for summary judgment of noninfringement of the two patents to be tried as well as a recommended grant of a Verizon motion for summary judgment of noninfringement of a third patent. Meanwhile, Headwater Research has also just filed a new complaint, this one in the Western District of Texas, accusing Amazon (7:25-cv-00286) of infringing two other patents from the large family that Headwater has been litigating since October 2022.
Headwater recently asserted the two patents that Headwater accuses Amazon of infringing (9,615,192; 10,321,320) in its May 2025 complaint against Alphabet (Google), that suit also filed in the Western District of Texas. Per the plaintiff, "A core aspect of the accused systems is Amazon Device Messaging ('ADM')", from which "Amazon reaps substantial revenues and competitive advantages", and "ADM provides the only push channel for Fire tablets, Fire TV, Echo Show, and other Amazon-branded devices. Every app developer that wants to send real-time push messages on those devices must integrate ADM". Headwater also characterizes Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) as "another core aspect of the accused systems".
A third patent (9,198,117) from the same large family is also asserted against Google, Headwater targeting the provision of FCM, characterized as a "core aspect of the accused systems" there as well. An Eastern District of Texas jury returned a $278.8M verdict for Headwater in a case against Samsung, testimony from which Headwater features prominently in its complaint against Google. Headwater also points to "public testimony in the Department of Justice's 2025 antitrust case" that allegedly "revealed that Google paid Samsung about $8 billion between 2020 and 2023—roughly $2 billion per year—to ensure Samsung devices, including Galaxy phones and tablets, ship with Google Play Services (and, by extension, the embedded FCM client stack) pre-installed and set as the system-level default". For additional coverage of that complaint, see "Headwater Research Leverages Testimony from Samsung Trial in Complaint Against Google" (May 2025).
In this campaign, Headwater sued Samsung first, followed by cases against Verizon (Verizon Wireless), Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile), Lenovo (Motorola Mobility), and AT&T (AT&T Mobility) (in that rough order). The plaintiff has hit the wireless carrier defendants, as it has Samsung, through multiple complaints. For background coverage, see "Headwater Research Sues the Major Wireless Carriers for a Third Time This Year" (May 2025), with full treatment of the $278.8M verdict against Samsung provided at "Jury Returns Verdict for Headwater Research in Second Samsung Trial" (April 2025).
There remain three additional cases in this campaign's pipeline against Samsung alone. In the most recently closed Samsung case, a jury returned its verdict on April 25, 2025, finding that Samsung has infringed claims 1, 7, and 19 of the 8,406,733 patent and claims 1, 12, and 16 of the 9,198,117 patent. The '192 patent was originally in suit there, but it was not tried to the jury, the plaintiff omitting it from its final election of asserted claims. Headwater pleads that Google has had knowledge of the '192 patent through its pleadings in that Samsung case, alleging that Google and Samsung shared information as the suit moved along. Similar allegations do not appear in the complaint against Amazon.
Russ August & Kabat (RAK) represents Headwater Research. The case against Amazon has yet to be assigned to a judge, but District Judge David Counts has been assigned to preside over the Google suit. In response to an unopposed motion, Magistrate Judge Derek T. Gilliland set July 28 as the deadline for Google to respond to Headwater's complaint. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, together with Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne, presides over the Eastern District of Texas suits, which include all defendants but Lenovo and Motorola Mobility, which Headwater sued in the Northern District of California. There, Headwater disclosed only it and RAK as financially interested nonparties. Lenovo has filed a motion to dismiss under Alice, challenging the two asserted patents as ineligibly drawn to the abstract ideas of "screening requests" and "scheduling activities", respectively. The case entered claim construction before the parties stipulated to a stay to await the outcome of certain inter partes review proceedings triggered by petitions that Lenovo filed. The PTAB denied institution in response to one but, in early March 2025, instituted trial as to the other.
The cases against Verizon Wireless and Sprint/T-Mobile have been placed in Judge Gilstrap's June 23 trial setting. As noted, a storm of recommended resolutions and objections thereto have been docketed with respect to the former suit. Among them is Judge Payne's recommendation that Verizon's motion for summary judgment of noninfringement of the 9,198,042 patent be granted because Headwater lacks evidence that "Verizon's network 'determin[es]' that a setting on the device 'needs to be modified' as required by" claim 1 of the '042 patent (and by its dependents, including asserted claims 6, 9, and 12-23). Thus, in its final election, Headwater has chosen to try claim 83 of the '541 patent and claims 1 and 15 of the '613 patent against Verizon and claims 79 and 83 of the '541 patent and claims 1, 12, 15-16, and 18 against Sprint/T-Mobile. (A fourth patent (8,924,543) was dropped from the Verizon case this past January.)
The first case against Samsung resulted in a noninfringement verdict. There, the court ruled that Headwater and its counsel "committed an egregious violation" of a discovery order by failing to timely disclose to Samsung that certain source code exists (and where), source code relevant to Headwater's copying claim in the case, which the court precluded Headwater from presenting. Here, the court denied a motion for sanctions against Headwater related to the preservation of certain emails through the demise of ItsOn, a company that Headwater principal and named inventor Greg Raleigh founded to implement this patented technology. The court ruled that Headwater had "no right, authority or practical ability to control ItsOn's assets which had been assigned for the benefit of its creditors" once ItsOn entered liquidation on January 2018, four years before litigation began—too long to make preservation foreseeable.
Judge Payne did, however, preclude any claim that Verizon copied anything, further recommending that damages be limited to any incurred after filing due to lack of marking. Verizon argued that it had no presuit notice of the patents-in-suit; the court noted that Headwater seemed to contest that assertion not by pointing to any specific presuit notice but by contending that "Verizon had a great deal of knowledge about Headwater's patent portfolio. They actually invested in Headwater. Part of their diligence in the investment was looking into Headwater's patent portfolio". Per the court, more is required to impart notice of infringement. Judge Payne also recommended—among the many additional pretrial motions—denial of Verizon's motion challenging under Alice the asserted claims of the '541patent as directed to the abstract idea of "selectively managing communications by (1) determining a user-configurable policy to apply to communications, (2) assessing the communication, and (3) applying the appropriate policy to the communication" and the claims of the '613 patent, to the abstract idea of "selectively managing communications by (1) assessing a communication, (2) determining a policy to apply to the communication, based in part on user input, and (3) applying the policy to control the communication".
As noted, jury selection is set for June 23, 2025 in the cases against the Deutsche Telekom defendants and Verizon, with plenty of work apparently needed to resolve various objections to Judge Payne's various recommendations. Jury selection is currently set for July 7, 2025 in the case against AT&T. The next most advanced Samsung case is set for trial this October. 6/20, Amazon, Western District of Texas.
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