MISSED CALL, LLC has revived its litigation campaign, suing Sangoma (1:25-cv-00467) in the Western District of New York over the same patent asserted in June 2022 cases filed in the District of Delaware against Freshworks, Talkdesk, and Twilio. There, Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly retains jurisdiction to explore MISSED CALL's compliance with April 2022 standing orders concerning corporate ownership and certain litigation funding. An in-person February 14, 2024 status conference was taken off calendar after William P. Ramey, III of litigation counsel Ramey LLP notified the court of a conflict with a "scheduled procedure" in Houston, Texas. Judge Connolly has yet to reschedule that in-person conference; meanwhile, various declarations filed by Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) principal Carlos O. Gorrichategui have shed additional light on this monetization operation.
The sole patent asserted in this campaign (9,531,872) generally relates to "providing an indication about a missed telephone call". It comprises a family of one, issuing in December 2016 with an estimated priority date in July 2010. MISSED CALL received the patent from Naxos Finance—a Luxembourg-based patent licensing company that describes itself as "interested in acquiring Patent Rights with [] the aim to license them to users and in certain cases to resell them"—in a March 2022 assignment. Infringement allegations target the provision of communication platforms that support features for notifying users of missed calls.
MISSED CALL was formed in Texas in February 2021, with Pueblo Nuevo LLC as its sole managing member. Pueblo Nuevo was also formed in Texas, on December 30, 2020, but with monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals LLC (d/b/a DynaIP) named as its manager. DynaIP has offices in Houston, San Jose, and Philadelphia. State records list Gorrichategui as a member of DynaIP. Through DynaIP and its managed entities, Gorrichategui has been running a large and still-growing list of litigation campaigns since early 2021, litigated through a set of managed plaintiffs that includes MISSED CALL; SAFE IP LLC, several Delaware cases of which also remain open before Judge Connolly; and, perhaps of most recent fame, KOJI IP LLC (among many others).
Gorrichategui identifies himself on social media as engaged in "IP Monetization", as having been the president of DynaIP since its beginning (in 2013), and as having been the cofounder and COO of NextTechs Technologies LLC, "a technology investment bank engaged in the global intermediation of IP offers and needs", also based in Houston, Texas, since 2004. (NextTechs Technologies was formed in Texas in May 2005; current state records identify Michael Fitzgerald as a member and director of NextTechs.) Gorrichategui appears to have grown up in Panama.
All that said, Gorrichategui does not own Pueblo Nuevo; its actual owner came to light after those MISSED CALL Delaware cases against Freshworks, Talkdesk, and Twilio were assigned to Judge Connolly. New standing orders have imposed heightened disclosure requirements on litigants in his courtroom since April 2022. MISSED CALL first identified—at the time of filing and before the suits were assigned to Judge Connolly—that it has no parent corporation and that no publicly held corporation owns ten percent or more of its "stock". After assignment to Judge Connolly, however, Jimmy Chong of the Chong Law Firm P.A. and cocounsel Ramey filed an amended disclosure indicating that MISSED CALL is owned entirely by Pueblo Nuevo and that a "Hernan Perec" fully owns Pueblo Nuevo. Later filings clarified that "Hernan Perec" is actually Hernan Arturo Perez Torrijos, a Panamanian citizen.
The same disclosure pattern occurred in a separate set of Delaware complaints filed by DynaIP plaintiff SAFE IP (separately against Copyleaks, Grammarly, and Proctorio): amending a prior, routine disclosure (no parent, zero ownership by any publicly traded company) after assignment to Judge Connolly. However, in its revised disclosure, SAFE IP identified Pueblo Nuevo and Entente IP LLC (a Delaware entity formed in May 2020) as each holding 50% interest in the plaintiff, with Perez Torrijos revealed as the full owner of Pueblo Nuevo and David Ghorbanpoor as the full owner of Entente IP. A David Ghorbanpoor serves as a director of Innovation Acceleration Capital and describes himself on social media as a former Ocean Tomo consultant focused on IP monetization and venture investing.
Judge Connolly expressed "concerns about the accuracy of [these] amended corporate disclosure statements" in memorandum orders requiring counsel Chong and Ramey, as well as Ghorbanpoor and Perez Torrijos, to appear at evidentiary hearings scheduled initially in October 2022. Perez Torrijos had trouble gaining entry to the US in time, delaying those hearings, which were then canceled, and the Delaware cases stayed, as such compliance became bound up by petitions for writs of mandamus filed by plaintiffs tied to Texas monetization firm IP Edge LLC asking the Federal Circuit to step in—arguing that Judge Connolly was improperly wielding his inherent powers to consider collateral issues after a case has been dismissed, seeking to stop him from ordering the IP Edge-tied plaintiffs before him to produce (to the court) a wide-ranging set of materials concerning their ownership, control, assets, and legal representation, and eventually attempting to stop enforcement of Judge Connolly's standing orders entirely. Those petitions all failed and were ultimately dismissed.
The stays in the six Delaware cases filed by MISSED CALL and SAFE IP have yet to be lifted. Prior to all of this, MISSED CALL had filed voluntary dismissals without prejudice in each of the stayed cases. Other plaintiffs in similar situations have argued, unsuccessfully, that Judge Connolly's continued exercise of jurisdiction to explore collateral issues (here, compliance with standing orders) is inappropriate. Nevertheless, MISSED CALL felt free to file new suits against each of Freshworks and Twilio, on November 3, 2023 in the District of Colorado and October 24, 2023 in the Western District of Texas, respectively.
Counsel for Twilio fired off a November 2023 letter to Judge Connolly in Delaware, explaining that MISSED CALL had filed a "duplicative action" (i.e., "copying this Complaint nearly word-for-word and asserting the same '872 Patent and the same causes of action still pending here"). Twilio contended that the Delaware court "maintains continuing jurisdiction over the above-captioned proceeding, and venue is inappropriate in Texas for a number of reasons, including that Twilio has no offices there", articulating plans to file a motion to dismiss in West Texas "in favor of this Court's continuing jurisdiction over the identical claims pending here". Twilio requested that Judge Connolly lift the stay in the case there "to address Defendant's pending dispositive motion filed pursuant to Section 101 and conduct any other evidentiary hearings needed to address the Court's 'concerns about accuracy of the amended corporate disclosure statements'".
That motion to dismiss argues that the claims of the '872 patent are patent-ineligibly directed to the abstract idea of "labeling a missed call as 'urgent' when the network signals that it terminated the call or 'not urgent' if it didn't". MISSED CALL never responded to that motion, because it filed its voluntary motion to dismiss without prejudice instead. MISSED CALL had launched this, its sole litigation campaign, in May 2022 with suits against Mitel Network in the Western District of Texas and NEC Corporation (NEC Corporation of America) in the Northern District of Texas. Those suits were dismissed (with prejudice) at the early stages of litigation and were followed by the first set of cases against Freshworks, Talkdesk, and Twilio, in June 2022.
On November 21, 2023, Chong has also sent a letter to Judge Connolly in light of the "duplicative actions" filed last fall in West Texas. In them, Chong reminds the court that his firm "was retained as local counsel for Missed Call, LLC", that he "filed a motion to withdraw as counsel in these cases due to lack of communication with lead counsel from the Ramey Law Firm", that voluntary dismissals were filed, and that the evidentiary hearings and underlying cases were stayed in light of the proceedings related to the IP Edge plaintiffs. Chong's last sentence appears to reveal the motivation to send the letters, indicating that his firm "has no knowledge or involvement with the filings in Western District of Texas [and] thus cannot comment on the status of those claims".
The second cases against Freshworks and Twilio were part of a burst of activity in this campaign in 2023, begun with a second case against Mitel Network, filed in West Texas, which the plaintiff promptly (within a week) dismissed with prejudice. (Both cases asserted the '872 patent.) Ramey filed that second suit against Mitel, having also filed the subsequent suits against Twilio, FreshWorks, as well as additional 2023 cases filed separately against 8x8 and RingCentral, the last two in the Northern District of California, which imposes by local rule heightened disclosure requirements on litigants.
As his firm has taken to doing in courts that impose heightened disclosure and in those that do not, Ramey has filed certificates of interested parties in connection with these cases, identifying only litigation counsel (typically, just Ramey LLP) as the only financially interested nonparty—not identifying MISSED CALL's managing member Pueblo Nuevo; Pueblo Nuevo's manager DynaIP; DynaIP's principal Gorrichategui; or Pueblo Nuevo's sole owner Perez Torrijos. The accuracy of these certificates is further called into question in light of declarations that Gorrichategui has submitted in opposition to the imposition of various sanctions against DynaIP-managed plaintiffs.
For example, one such declaration was recently submitted in an AML IP LLC case against Aero Global in the Southern District of New York, in which Gorrichategui declares:
- [DynaIP] is set up to help clients like AML IP, LLC to monetize their IP. The inventor/owner keeps a percent of any net proceeds. Most of the time, it is IP owners/sellers or even law firms and other IP brokers who approach DynaIP for helping them with their IP or their clients [sic] IP monetization efforts. But also DynaIP will approach IP owners/sellers, law firms or brokers directly for the monetization of their IP or their clients [sic] IP".
(Emphasis added.) That highlighted statement suggests that it is DynaIP's general practice to enter an agreement to monetize patents in return for "a percent of any net proceeds" paid back to the source of those patents. The existence of this practice is amplified by the unusual turn in the litigation campaign of DynaIP-backed, Ramey-repped AuthWallet, LLC, in which underlying communications have been brought into the spotlight by yet another Gorrichategui declaration; for details, see "'It Would Be Nice to Get Him Some Return Here!'" (May 2025).
Under this general practice, any such "inventor/owner" would certainly be financially interested in the outcome of the litigation of the DynaIP-managed plaintiff that litigates its patent assets. If the setup here for MISSED CALL falls under this general practice, then Naxos Finance would be an interested party that should have been named in any certificate of interested parties, whether or not required by local rules.
Little substantive litigation happened in the other cases in this campaign before they were each voluntarily dismissed with prejudice. Most notable was the transfer, from the Western District of Texas to the Northern District of California, and subsequent forced dismissal with prejudice of the second suit against Twilio. On March 25, 2024, after transfer, Twilio filed a motion to dismiss the complaint against it, challenging the claims of the asserted patent as patent-ineligibly directed, under Alice, to the same abstract idea noted above. By the deadline to respond, as noted by the court, MISSED CALL had filed "nothing". Per Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler, "Ultimately, if a plaintiff does not participate in its litigation, it risks dismissal of the case for failure to prosecute it, which will result in a judgment being entered in favor of the defendant", the court including additional language in its order suggesting that a later motion to shift fees would likely be entertained. MISSED CALL missed another deadline, the court ordered it to dismiss the case with prejudice, and Twilio never filed a motion to shift fees.
The Northern District of California has become a hornet's nest for Ramey LLP. There, Ramey (personally), as well as current Ramey LLP attorney Jeffrey Kubiak and former Ramey LLP attorney Susan S.Q. Kalra, have been sanctioned for several things, including the unauthorized practice of law in California. For more complete coverage of that ongoing situation, see "Ramey Days and Mondays Occur Every Week of Late" (May 2025). California courts have begun denying Ramey's applications to proceed pro hac vice in various cases filed there; for details, see "'A Severe Failure of Ramey of Judgment, Training, and Supervision'" (May 2025). The problems in the Northern District of California are not limited to the unauthorized practice of law; for coverage of additional hornets, see here.
The growing Northern District of California issues, bundled together, are still not the only tangle for Ramey LLP. Problems are currently brewing in New York—see, e.g., "No Retreat for DynaIP-Managed Plaintiff from District Where Alice Motions 'Are Rarely Denied'" (April 2025)—that build upon a much longer context here. To understand that context, see "There's Something About Ramey" (September 2023), "West Texas Judges Seem to Agree, There IS Something About Ramey" (October 2023), "When It Rameys, It Pours" (November 2023), "Letter to Court Provides Plaintiff's Take on Representation by Ramey LLP" (December 2023), "The AiPi-Ramey Relationship Implodes" (January 2024), "Ramey-Repped Plaintiff Files Another Complaint, Misses Deadline to Respond to a Motion to Dismiss" (March 2024), and "Ramey LLP Seeks to Maintain Appeals, Apparently to Defend Against Any Sanctions in the Court Below" (April 2024), for starters.
There is more. For example, consider "It Was All Frivolous" (August 2024),
"Microsoft Accuses Ramey of Doubling Down on
Improper Conduct as Ramey Again Attacks 'Certainly
Troubling' Declaration" (August 2024), "$60K in Attorney Fees Shifted Against CTD
Networks, Ramey's 'Receipts' an Effective Shield but No
Sword" (January 2025), "Requested Nonmonetary Sanction Against 'Ramey
and His Band of Merry Lawyers' Taken 'Under Advisement'
for More Than Year" (February 2025), "Judges Confront Long Tail of Confusion from
DynaIP's Early Monetization Days" (March 2025), and
"Fee Shifting Orders, Motions Coming Fast and
Furious Against Ramey and Ramey-Repped Client" (March
2025).
Perhaps in light of all of this trouble, pro hac vice
admittance may be a challenge, and Ramey LLP did not file the new
complaint against Sangoma for MISSED CALL. Instead, it was signed
by solo practitioner David J. Hoffman. The case has yet to be
assigned to a judge.
To understand the risks involved in renewing Judge Connolly's interest in the litigation campaign of MISSED CALL, see "IP Edge's 'Main' Monetization Model to Restart with a . . . Wang?" (May 2025). Judge Connolly, among other things, ultimately referred several attorneys before him to their state governing bodies, as well as to the US Department of Justice, as potentially perpetuating a fraud on the USPTO and/or federal courts. 5/30, Western District of New York.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
