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Date: 05-17-2022
Case Style:
Case Number: 2:20-cv-00319-JRG-RSP
Judge: Rodney Gilstrap
Court: United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Harrison County)
Plaintiff's Attorney: Jason Sheasby, Andrew Strabone, Anthony Rowles, Charles Ainsworth, Ingrid Marie Haslund Petersen, Jonathan Lindsay, Kelsey Tuohy, Lisa Glasser, Nicole Miller, Rebecca Carson, Stephen Payne, Robert Bunt
Defendant's Attorney: Gregory Stone, Adam Lawton, Andrew Danford, Tom Gorham, Blanca Young, David Cavanaugh, Derek Gosman, Gerard Salvatore, Grant Davis-Denny, Greg Lantier, Hannah Santasawatkul, Harry Gillam, James Underwood, Jeannette Leopold, Justin Kontul, Ashley Aull, Alyssa Chen, Lionel Lavenue, Marianna Mao, Melissa Smith, Miranda Reaut, Monica Grewal, Peter Detre, Peter Gratzinger, Greg Israelsen, Rowley Rice, Sara Lee, Sara Petty, Taeg Sang Cho, Ted Dane, Vincent Ling
Description: Marshall, Texas intellectual property lawyers represented Plaintiff, which sued Defendant on a patent infringement theory.
United Services Automobile Association (USAA) sued PNC Bank claiming that PNC infringed four of USAA’s patents related to remote check deposit technologies used in mobile banking systems.
USAA’s patented technologies enable USAA to connect members of the military and their families across the globe to financial services.
“USAA developed these technologies as part of its mission to improve the financial security of its members,” the lawsuit states. “In its decades of serving the military community, USAA has worked to innovate in serving the needs of its members, including a lifestyle that can make getting to a bank branch difficult, particularly if they are out to sea or deployed outside the United States. USAA’s innovations and investments are protected by multiple patents issued by the United States Patent & Trademark Office. PNC has chosen to use USAA’s patented technologies without permission and to use them for its own commercial gain. This lawsuit seeks remedies for PNC’s misconduct.”
USAA, a San Antonio- based reciprocal interinsurance exchange for military service members, has been serving present and former members of the U.S. military and their families since 1922 and is one of America’s leading insurance and financial services companies.
The complaint states: “This is an action for infringement of patents awarded to research and development teams at USAA for their years of work developing and improving technologies that, among other things, allow banking customers to easily and conveniently deposit paper checks into their accounts from their smartphones – wherever they might be in the world,...”
“These pioneering systems and methods resulted in a prototype developed by 2005, and the launch in 2006 of a consumer device remote check deposit system under the name Deposit@Home®. In 2009, USAA launched an application branded as Deposit@Mobile®, which today is available and used worldwide on devices such as iPhones, iPads and Android-based mobile devices,” the lawsuit states. “For the first time in banking history, USAA’s patented systems allowed customers to deposit checks anytime, anywhere by taking photographs with consumer electronics that consumers actually own or can easily acquire, such as a mobile phone’s digital camera. To date, USAA has invested many millions of dollars and thousands of employee hours in the development and implementation of its mobile deposit technologies.”
“PNC has benefited from our technology and we look forward to working with banks to create reasonable and mutually beneficial license agreements,” USAA said in a statement to Law 360. “Our goal has always been to be reasonably compensated for the investment in mobile banking innovation we have made on behalf of our members and the military.”
Outcome: Plaintiff's verdict for $218.45 million with a finding that infringement was willful.
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
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