mCom IP LLC v. Stellar Bancorp Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: mCom IP, LLC (Texas)
  • Defendant: Stellar Bancorp, Inc. (Texas)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Ramey LLP
• Case Identification: 4:23-cv-01847, S.D. Tex., 05/19/2023
• Venue Allegations: Venue is alleged to be proper based on Defendant having a regular and established place of business in the district, where it has also allegedly committed acts of infringement.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s unified banking systems infringe a patent related to integrating disparate e-banking touch points to provide personalized financial services to customers.
• Technical Context: The technology addresses the centralization of data from various electronic banking channels, such as ATMs and online portals, to create a consistent and personalized customer experience.
• Key Procedural History: An Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceeding (IPR2022-00055), which concluded with a certificate issued on April 26, 2023, prior to the filing of this complaint, resulted in the cancellation of numerous claims of the patent-in-suit. The cancelled claims include all of the patent's independent claims (Claims 1, 7, 13). The complaint asserts one directly cancelled independent claim (Claim 7) and three dependent claims (Claims 2, 14, 17) whose parent claims (Claims 1 and 13) were also cancelled in the IPR.

Case Timeline

Date	Event
2005-11-14	'508 Patent Priority Date
2014-10-14	'508 Patent Issue Date
2023-04-26	IPR Certificate Issued (cancelling claims 1, 3-7, 9-13, 15, 16, 18-20)
2023-05-19	Complaint Filing Date

II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis

U.S. Patent No. 8,862,508 - "System and method for unifying e-banking touch points and providing personalized financial services"

• Patent Identification: U.S. Patent No. 8,862,508, "System and method for unifying e-banking touch points and providing personalized financial services," issued October 14, 2014.

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent describes conventional electronic banking systems, like ATMs and online banking portals, as "stand-alone systems" that limit a financial institution's ability to provide a "personalized e-banking experience to customers" and lack a "common point of control" for management ('508 Patent, col. 1:56-66).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a client-server architecture centered around a "common multi-channel server" ('508 Patent, col. 2:21-24). This server integrates various "e-banking touch points" (e.g., ATMs, kiosks, websites) used by a financial institution (col. 1:28-35; Fig. 1). By unifying the data collected from these disparate channels, the system can track customer habits and preferences to deliver personalized content, such as targeted marketing or accelerated transaction options, across any touch point the customer uses (col. 2:30-36).
• Technical Importance: The described technology aims to solve the challenge of creating a consistent and tailored customer experience across an expanding array of electronic banking channels, thereby enabling financial institutions to better engage with and market to their customers ('508 Patent, col. 2:9-14).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of one or more of claims 2, 7, 14, and 17 ('508 Patent, ¶8). It is noted that an IPR proceeding cancelled all independent claims of the '508 patent, including asserted independent Claim 7. The other asserted claims (2, 14, 17) are dependent on cancelled independent claims (1 and 13) (IPR Certificate, p. 2).
• The complaint explicitly asserts independent Claim 7, which contains the following essential elements:
  • Providing a common multi-channel server coupled to one or more e-banking touch points and one or more computer systems.
  • Receiving an actionable input from an e-banking touch point.
  • Retrieving previously stored data associated with the input, where the data includes user-defined preferences.
  • Delivering the retrieved data to the e-banking touch point.
  • Storing new transactional usage data from the current session.
  • Monitoring the active session in real-time for a user's selection of targeted marketing content.
  • Selecting, in real-time, the targeted marketing content based on the user's selection.
  • Transmitting the targeted marketing content in real-time to the touch point for user response (acceptance, rejection, or no response).
• The complaint reserves the right to amend its infringement contentions (Compl. ¶9).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

• The complaint identifies the accused instrumentalities generally as "systems, products, and services of unified banking systems" that Defendant "maintains, operates, and administers" (Compl. ¶8). No specific product or service names are provided.

Functionality and Market Context

• The complaint alleges that Defendant's "products and services... perform infringing methods or processes" and that Defendant introduces these systems into the stream of commerce (Compl. ¶2). It further alleges that Defendant's actions "caused those claimed-invention embodiments as a whole to perform" (Compl. ¶8). The complaint does not provide specific details about the technical operation or market position of the accused systems.

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint states that support for its infringement allegations may be found in a "preliminary exemplary table attached as Exhibit B" (Compl. ¶9). However, this exhibit was not included with the provided complaint document. The complaint’s narrative allegations state that Defendant’s "unified banking systems" infringe one or more claims of the ’508 patent, but do not map specific features of any accused product to the claim limitations (Compl. ¶8). Without the referenced exhibit or more detailed allegations in the complaint body, a tabular analysis of the infringement contentions is not possible.

No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

The complaint does not provide sufficient detail for analysis of specific infringement disputes. However, based on the patent's technology, the construction of the following terms may be central to the case.

• The Term: "e-banking touch point"

  • Context and Importance: This term defines the physical and digital scope of the claimed system. Practitioners may focus on this term because its breadth will determine whether the claims read on a modern, diverse set of banking interfaces that may not have been contemplated when the patent was filed.
  • Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
    • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The claims provide a broad, non-exhaustive list of examples, including an "ATM, a self-service coin counter (SSCC), a kiosk, a digital signage display, an online accessible banking website, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a personal computer (PC), a laptop, a wireless device, or a combination of two or more thereof" ('508 Patent, col. 9:49-54).
    • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification frequently describes touch points in the context of active, customer-initiated financial transactions, such as making withdrawals or balance inquiries ('508 Patent, col. 4:51-64). An argument could be made that the term requires an interactive, transactional capability, which might limit its application to more passive components like a "digital signage display."

• The Term: "common multi-channel server"

  • Context and Importance: This server is the core architectural component of the invention, responsible for unifying the various touch points. Its definition is critical for determining whether a distributed, cloud-based, or otherwise decentralized banking architecture meets this limitation.
  • Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
    • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent describes the server’s function as integrating "with existing channel systems provided by financial institutions, associating and connecting them" ('508 Patent, col. 2:21-24), which could suggest a software layer that works with, rather than replaces, existing distributed hardware.
    • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification refers to managing activity from a "single remote location" and depicts the server as a single, centralized hub (element 102) in Figure 1 ('508 Patent, col. 3:31-32). This could support an interpretation requiring a singular, co-located hardware or software instance rather than a logically distributed system.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges both induced and contributory infringement. The factual basis for inducement is the allegation that Defendant "actively encouraged or instructed" its customers on "how to construct a unified banking system" (Compl. ¶10). The basis for contributory infringement is similar, alleging Defendant instructed customers "on how to use its products and services" to create an infringing system (Compl. ¶11).
• Willful Infringement: The complaint seeks a declaration of willful infringement and treble damages (Compl. ¶V.e). The allegations of knowledge to support both willfulness and indirect infringement are based on Defendant having known of the '508 patent "from at least the filing date of the lawsuit" (Compl. ¶¶10, 11).

VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case

• A primary threshold issue will be one of claim viability: given that an IPR certificate issued prior to the complaint's filing cancelled all independent claims of the '508 patent, a court will need to determine what legal basis, if any, remains for the continued assertion of the directly cancelled Claim 7 and the dependent Claims 2, 14, and 17, whose parent claims were also cancelled.
• Should the case proceed past the initial stage, a key question will be one of evidentiary sufficiency: what specific, identifiable features of Defendant's generally described "unified banking systems" perform the functions recited in the asserted claims, particularly the real-time monitoring and transmission of "targeted marketing content" as required by the patent?
• Finally, a central question of claim construction will concern the definitional scope of the term "common multi-channel server." The case may turn on whether this 2005-era term, described with reference to a centralized architecture, can be construed to read on the potentially more distributed, cloud-based, or virtualized systems common in modern banking infrastructure.