Headwater Research LLC has filed suit against Apple (7:25-cv-00318) in the Western District of Texas. Asserted are two patents new to this expanding campaign but part of the same large family asserted against prior defendants, which include wireless carriers AT&T (AT&T Mobility), Deutsche Telekom (Sprint, T-Mobile), and Verizon (Verizon Wireless) as well as device makers Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Lenovo, and Samsung. Headwater targets Apple over the provision of mobile devices—including "mobile phones, tablets, wearables, and television devices, as well as servers"—that support the Apple Push Notification service, which allegedly uses "remote notifications (also known as push notifications) to push small amounts of data to devices that use your app, even when your app isn't running".
The asserted patents (8,667,571; 10,064,055) belong to an open family with more than 280 issued US patents, roughly 50 of which have been asserted in the complaints that Headwater has filed to date. The plaintiff describes the '571 patent as generally related to "methods performed by a network system by allowing for a secure solution that could support the delivery of messages from multiple application servers to end-user devices"; the '055 patent, to "a method of operating a network system by providing Device Assisted Services (DAS) for a secure solution that could support the delivery of an application credential to an end-user device".
Trial is underway before District Judge Rodney Gilstrap in the first of many cases filed against Verizon Wireless, Headwater still presenting its case-in-chief as of this past Friday. The campaign's first jury trial resulted in a noninfringement verdict for Samsung; the second, a $278.8M verdict for Headwater against Samsung. Deeper coverage of Raleigh, the plaintiff, and the runup to this trial can be read at "Judge Payne Disqualifies Wilmer Hale in Ever-Growing Headwater Research Campaign" (July 2025); "Trial Prep Well Underway in Cases Against Earlier Wireless Carrier Defendants, Headwater Research Hits Amazon" (June 2025); and "Headwater Research Leverages Testimony from Samsung Trial in Complaint Against Google" (May 2025).
Headwater's campaign also has international legs, including an earlier suit filed against Apple before the Unified Patent Court (UPC). Russ August & Kabat represents Headwater in the US. The new case was initially assigned to District Judge David Counts, who moved it to District Judge Alan D. Albright. 7/17, Western District of Texas.
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