Nearby Systems LLC, a plaintiff associated with Texas monetization firm Empire IP LLC, has added cases against Truist Financial (2:24-cv-00952) and Whataburger (2:24-cv-00954) to the litigation campaign that it launched in June 2022 with suits against CVS, Deli Management, and Rent-A-Center. In the new Eastern District of Texas complaints, the plaintiff asserts three patents generally related to “displaying location-based content on a digital map” on a mobile device. The defendants are accused of infringement through the provision of mobile apps that feature maps for allowing users to locate and navigate to store locations.

Eastern District of Texas Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap has adopted the report of Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne recommending the denial of a Penney OpCo (d/b/a JCPenney) motion challenging patents asserted by Nearby Systems LLC, an Empire IP LLC plaintiff, against it under Alice. JCPenney argued that the claims of those patents are ineligibly directed to the abstract idea of “combining mapping data into a single map”; Judge Payne disagreed, recommending that “[w]hile the value and novelty of such a configuration is not at issue under §101, the Court is satisfied that it is sufficiently concrete to survive §101”. The court’s order likely dooms a parallel motion filed by another defendant in the campaign, Dollar General, which remains pending before Judges Payne and Gilstrap.

Nearby Systems LLC has filed separate suits against Cinemark (2:23-cv-00384) and Penney OpCo (d/b/a JCPenney) (2:23-cv-00385) in the Eastern District of Texas where the Empire IP LLC plaintiff has been litigating this campaign since June 2022. The new suits follow the dismissal (with prejudice) of a case filed then against Deli Management and stays in separate cases filed against CVS and Rent-a-Center (in light of notices of settlement). The two asserted patents generally relate to “displaying location-based content on a digital map” on a mobile device.