Factor2 Multimedia Systems, LLC has filed a Western District of Texas complaint against Early Warning Services and six financial institutions alleged to own it: Bank of America, Capital One Financial, JP Morgan Chase, PNC Financial Services Group, Truist Financial, and US Bancorp (6:24-cv-00362). The plaintiff targets the use of two-factor authentication within the Zelle mobile payment system and related websites and applications, Factor2 asserting the same six authentication patents already appearing in the campaign, in overlapping sets, against prior defendants ByteDance (TikTok), Amazon, Snap, Regions Financial, Comerica, Texas Capital Bancshares, and Washington Federal Bank, sued in that order since January 2024.

Virtually nothing has happened on the docket of the District of Columbia case that Factor2 Multimedia Systems, LLC filed against ByteDance (TikTok) this past January. The plaintiff has now sued Amazon (1:24-cv-00337) and Snap (1:24-cv-00336), both in the Western District of Texas, as well as (perhaps) the United States of America (1:24-cv-00475, 1:24-cv-00477), the last two complaints filed in the US Court of Federal Claims but apparently misidentifying Snap as the defendant—twice. The same six authentication patents are asserted across the board, against user verification features, with the US government targeted over “the system which provides two factor authenticated access to: USPTO.gov; MyUSPTO; MyUSPTO account; Patent Electronic System; EFS-Web; PAIR; and Patent Center, including the ‘2stable’ app[,] and distributes content and authenticates users on the USPTO site”.

Recently recorded patent assignments made public by the USPTO contain noteworthy transfers to multiple plaintiffs now in litigation, including a new source of patents for Apex Beam Technologies LLC, a new source of patents for Pantech Corporation, and a familiar source of patent rights for Crystal Leap Zrt, this time assigning patents directly, though. Movement can also be seen from troubled patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC, as well as movement from various sources to patent broker Allied Security Trust. Take a look.

Factor2 Multimedia Systems, LLC has sued ByteDance (TikTok) (1:24-cv-00133) over user verification features within the TikTok platform. Asserted in the new District of Columbia complaint are six authentication patents, the named inventors of which are no strangers to patent litigation, the pair having lost another patent from the same family to Alice—as patent-ineligibly drawn to the abstract idea, characterized by the court as “admittedly verbose”, of “using a third party and a random, time-sensitive code to confirm the identity of a participant to a transaction”—in a procedurally complicated dispute running from October 2015 into early 2019.