NPE Litigation Targeting Financial Services Doubled in 2021

As recently reported by RPX in its Q4 in Review, NPE litigation targeting the Financial Services sector rose during 2021, with double the number of defendants added to litigation compared to the same period in 2020. Forty-three of those defendants were added during the fourth quarter.

That activity included eight new Financial Services campaigns launched by NPEs last year, half of which saw additional litigation in Q4—including some from a host of familiar litigants. Among those plaintiffs were Liberty Peak Ventures, LLC, a Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC subsidiary that has targeted payment cards in a campaign started in July; and Acacia Research Corporation’s R2 Solutions LLC, which added various financial services defendants to its new search and analytics campaign throughout last year. Even more new financial services campaigns were kicked off in 2021 by Auth Token LLC (targeting EMV payment cards) and Ward Participations BV (mobile payments).

Several campaigns launched before 2021 also saw new complaints hitting financial services defendants in Q4. Among those campaigns were two controlled by well-known patent monetization firms: IPValuation Partners, LLC plaintiff Lupercal LLC (with new litigation focusing on mobile check deposit technology) and Equitable IP Corporation’s Communication Interface Technologies LLC (mobile app notifications). Others that added financial services cases to existing campaigns were inventor-controlled plaintiffs Texas Secure Authentication, LLC (targeting multi-factor authentication methods in online banking and Internet services) and Textile Computer Systems, Inc. (payment cards), as well as inventor and individual plaintiff William Grecia (payment systems). Additional financial services defendants were also added to the pre-2021 campaigns still being waged by Authwallet LLC (targeting payment authorization technology) and Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. (payment kiosks).

Further coverage of these campaigns can be found on RPX Insight, while analysis of other trends impacting patent litigation and the patent marketplace is available in our fourth-quarter report.