Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC V. Overstock.com, Inc.

Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC (CTP), an Equitable IP Corporation plaintiff, has continued to roll through retail defendants, filing October cases in the Eastern District of Texas against Bed Bath & Beyond (4:20-cv-00825), Express (4:20-cv-00827), Macy’s (4:20-cv-00830), Nordstrom (4:20-cv-00831), and Skechers (4:20-cv-00832). May of this year saw suits filed against Advance Auto Parts, AutoZone, GameStop, Office Depot, Pep Boys, Petco, PetSmart, Staples, and Vitamin Shoppe, with Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million hit in August. In these more recent cases, the NPE has limited its assertion to two of the five patents originally at issue in the campaign, both patents having been challenged years ago with a motion to dismiss characterizing them as patent-ineligibly directed to the abstract idea of “targeting advertisements based on customer location”.

Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC (CTP), a Nevada entity that has identified Equitable IP Corporation as its parent company, has filed another round in its e-commerce campaign, adding suits against Costco (1:19-cv-01915), Ford (1:19-cv-01916), Home Depot (1:19-cv-01917), JCPenney (1:19-cv-01918), and Lowe’s (1:19-cv-01919) in the District of Delaware to cases against Amazon, eBay, and Walmart already active there. All five new complaints assert the same five e-commerce patents, with infringement allegations focused on common features within the defendants’ e-commerce platforms, as well as features that distinguish between multiple sellers for a given item and that allow sellers to choose from multiple payment processors. The active suits against Amazon, eBay, and Walmart are themselves curious September 2019 reboots of March 2019 cases filed against those three companies (and later voluntarily dismissed).

Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC (CTP) has added a case against Etsy (1:19-cv-00591) to the suits that it filed in mid-March against Amazon, eBay, Overstock.com, and Wal-Mart. All five cases were filed in Delaware, asserting the same five e-commerce patents, with infringement allegations focused on common features within e-commerce platforms, as well as features that distinguish between multiple sellers for a given item and that allow sellers to choose from multiple payment processors. In the first case in CTP’s campaign, filed in the District of Nevada in July 2016, Jet.com (subsequently acquired by Wal-Mart) filed an early motion to dismiss under Alice, characterizing three of the patents-in-suit as patent-ineligibly directed to the abstract idea of catalog sales and the other two, to the abstract idea of targeting advertisements based on customer location.

Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC (CTP) has added more suits to its sole litigation campaign, which it resuscitated with a case filed against Wayfair last May in the Eastern District of Texas. This time the plaintiff has sued Amazon (1:19-cv-00518), eBay (1:19-cv-00519), Overstock.com (1:19-cv-00520), and Wal-Mart (1:19-cv-00521) in Delaware, asserting the same five e-commerce patents. At issue are a variety of common features in the defendants’ e-commerce platforms, including customer data retention and management, data management for products offered for sale and user reviews, purchase recommendations, user interface controls for immediate purchase or checkout, payment processing and the related use of customer data for shipment and billing info, order management, and related user notifications. Additionally, CTP targets features of those platforms that distinguish between multiple sellers for a given item and that allow sellers to choose from multiple payment processors.

Post Media Systems LLC has kept its sole litigation campaign alive, filing suit against SoundCloud (2:16-cv-01269) after a September settlement with iHeartMedia and an October settlement with Spotify. All patents in a family of five (7,069,310; 7,472,175; 8,015,263; 8,725,832; 8,959,181) are asserted in the new complaint, subsets having been asserted against the prior two defendants. The family generally relates to managing media files for playback over a computer network, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of their music and radio online services and related apps. Post Media’s is one of seven litigation campaigns, in disparate technical fields, initiated by entities managed by Erik Stamell, now the president of NPE Equitable IP Corporation, since November 2015.