Grecia v. MasterCard International Incorporated

As recently reported in RPX’s Q1 in Review, NPE litigation targeting the Financial Services sector jumped by 111% during the first quarter of 2021. That Q1 wave of Financial Services litigation was filed by a variety of NPE plaintiffs, including several inventor-controlled entities; an NPE associated with the monetization firm Dynamic IP Deals, LLC (d/b/a DynaIP); and an affiliate of prolific filer IP Edge LLC.

Since December 2013, William Grecia has been continuously litigating a three-member family of patents on which he is the named inventor. The campaign has hit dozens of defendants, including providers of streaming services (e.g., Amazon, Cablevision, Sony, WalMart (VUDU)), makers of software with encrypted cloud storage (e.g., Adobe) and devices with cloud settings (e.g., Apple, Google), and companies offering or using payment systems (e.g., American Express, Best Buy, Target). Despite a Federal Circuit setback at the outset of the year, Grecia has continued asserting one of the three patents in 2021, accusing Cullen/Frost Bankers (6:21-cv-00016), Kohl’s (6:21-cv-00102), and Samsung (Samsung Austin Semiconductor) (6:21-cv-00131) of infringement in Western District of Texas complaints, the last case filed one day after Samsung asked the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for declaratory judgments of both noninfringement and invalidity (2:21-cv-00562).

Inventor William Grecia has followed up a November 2018 wave of lawsuits against carriers Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), SoftBank (Sprint), and Verizon over their provision of Samsung Galaxy phones using Samsung Pay, with a new wave of cases against financial institutions. Bank of New York Mellon (1:19-cv-02810), Citibank (1:19-cv-02811), Morgan Stanley (1:19-cv-02811), and TIAA Bank (1:19-cv-02812) are each accused of infringing a single Grecia patent broadly directed to user authentication for digital content stored in a cloud; at issue are payment transfer services using the Zelle digital payments network, which was founded by a group of US financial institutions.

Inventor William Grecia has continued to expand his cloud authentication campaign with the filing of seven new lawsuits, accusing Adobe (3:16-cv-06283), Big Ten Network Services (1:16-cv-10211), Cablevision (1:16-cv-10213), Fox (1:16-cv-10216), the National Football League (NFL Network Services) (1:16-cv-10221), STARZ (1:16-cv-10222), and Target (1:16-cv-10267) of infringing multiple combinations of two patents (8,402,555; 8,533,860) generally related to user authentication for digital content stored in a cloud. Nearly all of these latest defendants are alleged to infringe through the provision of “TV Anywhere” video streaming services, with two exceptions: Adobe is accused of infringing the ‘555 and ‘860 patents through the encrypted cloud storage features of its Creative Cloud software suite, while Target is alleged to infringe the ‘860 patent alone through the use of the EMV standard (used for chip-based credit cards) in its point-of-sale systems.

Inventor William Grecia has added five new defendants to his cloud authentication campaign, asserting a single patent (8,533,860) generally related to a method of providing access to content via cloud computing against 1-800-Flowers.com (1:16-cv-07022), Adorama Camera (1:16-cv-07111), Best Buy (1:16-cv-07024), J. Crew (1:16-cv-07025), and Neiman Marcus (1:16-cv-07026). The companies are each accused of infringement through their websites’ use of online payment services offered by American Express (1:15-cv-09217), MasterCard (1:15-cv-09059), and Visa (1:15-cv-09210), which were sued by Grecia in November 2015. Specifically, 1-800-Flowers and J. Crew are alleged to infringe through Mastercard’s Masterpass service, Adorama Camera and Best Buy through Visa Checkout, and Neiman Marcus through AMEX Checkout.

Four defendants have been dismissed from, and four new defendants have been added to, the litigation campaign of individual inventor William Grecia. Grecia began asserting one or more of his three patents (8,402,555; 8,533,860; 8,887,308), which are generally related to accessing digital media stored in the cloud, in 2013. The most recent four defendants are American Express (1:15-cv-09217), MasterCard (1:15-cv-09059), and Visa (1:15-cv-09210), against which all three patents-in-campaign have been asserted in the Southern District of New York, and Adobe (3:15-cv-05474), against which only the ‘555 and ‘860 patents have been asserted, in the Northern District of California. Media streaming services are at issue in the campaign.