Untitled case

I'll start by researching the case number and patent to identify the parties and posture.

The case appears to be Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC v. Party City Corp. Let me verify the patent and parties.

The docket shows US 8,712,846 and 8,396,743 asserted — not the '436 patent in the metadata. Let me investigate whether 6,837,436 belongs to the same family.

Case Overview — Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC v. Party City Corporation, No. 4:21-cv-00559 (E.D. Tex.)

Parties. The plaintiff, Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC, is a non-practicing patent assertion entity (NPE/PAE). Its corporate disclosure statement identifies Equitable IP Corporation as its corporate parent — the monetization vehicle through which the asserted portfolio is held — and its counsel of record was Peter Corcoran (with Timothy Devlin appearing for the plaintiff in the parallel 2020 suits). The defendant, Party City Corporation (identified in its disclosure statement as a subsidiary of Party City Holdings Inc., with affiliate Party City Holdco Inc.), is an operating retailer of party supplies and seasonal goods; the accused instrumentality is therefore not a competitor's technology but the retailer's customer-facing e-commerce website and its supporting back-end systems — the same "targeted product offering" functionality the plaintiff has attacked across dozens of retail defendants. (Note: for Party City itself I could not retrieve the complaint body; the accused-product description is drawn from the materially identical complaints filed by the same plaintiff against Tilly's, Tractor Supply, and Genuine Parts, e.g. Compl. ¶ 9, No. 4:24-cv-00453; No. 4:25-cv-00025.)

Patents and accused technology. The docket in this case shows two asserted patents, not the '436 patent: U.S. Patent No. 8,712,846 (issued Apr. 29, 2014) and U.S. Patent No. 8,396,743 (issued Mar. 12, 2013), both titled "Sending targeted product offerings based on personal information," both naming Robert S. Alvin, sharing a common specification, and claiming priority to June 30, 1999. In one line each: the '846 patent claims a computer-implemented method of receiving product data from a plurality of distributors, receiving customer data including location derived from an IP address, generating user-specific product offerings, and sending automated messages containing them; the '743 patent claims the substantially identical system/method with the offering generated from the customer's IP-derived location. In plain terms, the portfolio claims the generic architecture of a distributor-agnostic, personalized e-commerce storefront. Notably, the complaint's Exhibits 3 and 4 are infringement claim charts captioned "8,712,846 v. Big Lots" and "8,396,743 v. Big Lots" (Dkt. 1, Exs. 3–4) — i.e., recycled charts from an earlier campaign suit, a tell-tale sign of template pleading. Third-party litigation databases estimate the patents' term as expiring June 30, 2019 (20 years from the 1999 priority filing), which, if correct, would sharply limit the recoverable damages window for suits filed in 2021 and later; I could not independently verify that expiry against the patents' face.

Posture, venue, and significance. Filed July 17, 2021 and assigned to District Judge Amos L. Mazzant, III in the Sherman Division of the Eastern District of Texas, the case never reached claim construction. Plaintiff obtained an extension to serve (Dkt. 6, granted Dkt. 7, Oct. 18, 2021); Party City waived service on Nov. 15, 2021; Party City answered, asserted affirmative defenses, and counterclaimed on Jan. 14, 2022 (Dkt. 9), adding Reuber and Gabathuler as counsel; the parties filed a joint motion to stay and notice of settlement on Feb. 1, 2022 (Dkt. 13), which Judge Mazzant granted the next day (Dkt. 14), with an order on closing documents (Dkt. 15); a joint motion to dismiss followed on April 8, 2022 (Dkt. 16), and the court dismissed all claims, counterclaims, and defenses with prejudice, each side bearing its own costs (Dkt. 17, Apr. 11, 2022), with the AO 120 form filed April 14, 2022 (Dkt. 18). The case is thus notable less for any ruling than as a data point in a high-volume, quick-settlement NPE campaign: the same plaintiff filed against Wayfair (4:18-cv-00337), AutoZone (4:20-cv-00411), Staples (4:20-cv-00414), Nordstrom (4:20-cv-00831), Urban Outfitters, Shoe Carnival, Vans, West Marine, BPS Direct, Caleres (N.D. Ill. 2022–23), Tilly's (4:24-cv-00453), and a 2025 wave against Goodyear, Genuine Parts, Hibbett, Northern Tool, and Tractor Supply (4:25-cv-00019–00025). The E.D. Tex. (Sherman) filing choice reflects the district's continued appeal to assertion entities — a single-judge division, speedy dockets, and, at the time, discretionary-transfer dynamics — even as the plaintiff hedged by also filing in N.D. Ill. I found no PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) against the '846 or '743 patents in my searches, so there is no IPR-linkage story to report; that absence is itself notable given the patents' § 101 exposure, which the plaintiff preemptively addressed in its complaints.

Verification note on the metadata. The case metadata supplied to me lists U.S. Patent No. 6,837,436 as the patent at issue. I was unable to confirm that: the docket for No. 4:21-cv-00559 (via Unified Patents' litigation portal, Patexia, and DocketAlarm) consistently shows the '846 and '743 patents as the only patents-in-suit, and I could not retrieve a verified title, assignee, or prosecution history for 6,837,436 (my searches for that number returned unrelated patents, e.g., a Provisur '436 patent). It is possible that 6,837,436 is an earlier-issued member of the same 1999 Alvin family, which would explain its inclusion in a portfolio database, but I cannot substantiate that. Likewise, I could not verify the complaint's precise infringement allegations against Party City or whether the settlement involved a license, and I have not confirmed later Party City corporate developments (e.g., its bankruptcy filings) as relevant to this docket — those should be checked against PACER and the court's opinions before being relied on.

I'll research this case systematically, starting with identifying the parties and core docket facts.

Key breakthrough: case 4:21-cv-00559 appears to be Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC v. Party City Corp. Let me verify the patent match and identify the broader campaign.

Let me verify the patent 6,837,436 itself — its title and owner — since the docket record for this case shows different patents.

Bottom line first: two findings, one of them a data-integrity flag

1. Case identified. EDTX No. 4:21-cv-00559 is Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC v. Party City Corporation, filed 2021-07-17 in the Sherman Division before District Judge Amos L. Mazzant, III. It was a file-and-dismiss campaign case that ended in settlement and a stipulated dismissal with prejudice on 2022-04-11 — no Markman, no trial, no appeal, no PTAB proceeding.

2. The patent number in the case metadata does not match this docket. The complaint in 4:21-cv-00559 attached Exhibits 1 and 2 for U.S. Patent Nos. 8,712,846 and 8,396,743 (targeted online advertising / website customization), per the docket text and contemporaneous reporting. U.S. Patent No. 6,837,436 is an unrelated patent — "Consumer Interactive Shopping System," priority 1996-09-04, assigned to Symbol Technologies LLC — and is not a Consolidated Transaction Processing (Equitable IP) asset. So either the metadata's patent field is a transcription error, or it refers to an entirely different suit. I flag it rather than paper over it; nothing below should be read as a finding about the '436 patent. (Docket: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/4%3A21-cv-00559; campaign table: https://ipwatchdog.com/2021/07/22/patent-filings-roundup-equitable-ip-subsidiary-goes-retail-shopping-spree-fintiv-itc-denial-hits-roku-hard/)

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Chronological development

Filing and initial pleadings

Context: this was one of ten CTP suits filed the same week in July 2021 (alongside Kendra Scott 4:21-cv-00557, Cost Plus World Market 4:21-cv-00561, The Gap 4:21-cv-00554, CVS, Hallmark, Jo-Ann, Levi Strauss, Big Lots), bringing the campaign past 37–50 retail defendants. The July 2021 wave asserted only the '846 and '743 patents, out of five patents originally deployed in the campaign (IPWatchdog, 2021-07-22; RPX/Stanford NPE tracker: https://npe.law.stanford.edu/party/consolidated-transaction-processing-llc).

Pre-trial motions of substance

• 2022-02-01 — Joint Motion to Stay and Notice of Settlement (Dkt. 13). Critically, this came 17 days after the answer and before any Rule 26(f) conference, scheduling order, or discovery.
• 2022-02-02 — Order granting the stay of all proceedings and deadlines (Judge Mazzant). Simultaneously the court entered an Order on Closing Documents requiring all closing papers by 2022-03-04.
• No motion to dismiss, no § 1404(a) transfer motion, no motion to stay pending IPR, no summary-judgment motion, and no Alice motion were filed in this case. (Contrast the campaign's earlier history: in the 2016 D. Nev. Jet.com action, defendants did move to dismiss three of the five campaign patents as abstract; that challenge is why the campaign narrowed to two patents.)

Claim construction, discovery, trial

None occurred. The case never reached a Markman hearing, never had a docket control order, never exchanged infringement/invalidity contentions, and produced no trial or verdict. Any account of claim-construction or discovery milestones for this case number would be fabrication.

Final disposition

• 2022-04-11 — Order on Joint Motion to Dismiss (Judge Mazzant): all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, and defenses dismissed with prejudice; each party to bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees. Because fees were allocated by stipulation, no § 285 motion was possible or filed.
• No appeal; no Federal Circuit proceeding. The case is terminated, not merely stayed (final civil docket dated 2022-11-04).

Parallel PTAB proceedings

No IPR or PGR was ever filed against the '846 or '743 patents — IPWatchdog expressly noted as of 2021-07-22 that "none of the five has been challenged" at the PTAB. That remained true through dismissal. Consequently there was no IPR-driven stay motion and no Fintiv-style discretionary-denial issue in this case, and no estoppel effect on the patents. The absence of PTAB exposure is a meaningful part of why the campaign could settle cheaply and refile elsewhere.

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Strategic assessment of the outcome

The disposition is the campaign's signature: settle, stay, dismiss with prejudice, no fee shift, no merits ruling. For Party City that is a clean, low-cost exit. For CTP it is also close to optimal — dismissal with prejudice as to Party City only, with no claim construction, no invalidity adjudication, and no § 285 finding, leaving both patents fully intact for the 50-plus remaining defendants and later waves (N.D. Ill. filings in 2022–2023 against Shoe Carnival, Urban Outfitters, Vans, West Marine, BPS Direct, Caleres; EDTX filings in 2024–2025 against Tilly's, Hibbett, Northern Tool). The cost of that strategy is that after nine years and dozens of suits, neither patent has ever been construed or validity-tested in any forum — a point worth pressing if you are counseling a current target.

Sourcing caveats

• Well sourced: filing date, judge, division, the '846/'743 assertion, party identities, Equitable IP parentage, and every docket event/d dismissed-with-prejudice order and its date — all from the Unified Patents litigation portal docket text for this case number, corroborated by IPWatchdog's 2021-07-22 roundup and the Stanford NPE tracker.
• Not verified: the amount (if any) of the settlement consideration — the docket reflects no disclosed terms, and file-and-dismiss settlements here are typically confidential and often nominal; I have found no public figure and will not estimate one. Party City's specific counterclaim counts and the exact accused functionality on partycity.com are likewise not exposed in the docket text I could retrieve.
• Corrected/flagged: the asserted-patent identification. If your matter genuinely turns on 6,837,436, tell me and I will pull the Symbol Technologies enforcement history instead — that is a different plaintiff, different technology, and different outcome profile.

I'll research this case systematically.

Bottom line first, with an important caveat

Case No. 4:21-cv-00559 (E.D. Tex.) resolves to Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC v. Party City Corporation, assigned to District Judge Amos L. Mazzant, III. The docket shows exactly one attorney appearing for the plaintiff: Peter Corcoran. No other plaintiff-side appearance, and no in-house counsel appearance, is reflected in the docket text I was able to retrieve.

Discrepancy flag (must be stated up front): the case metadata lists U.S. Patent No. 6,837,436 as the patent at issue, but the complaint and exhibits in 4:21-cv-00559 assert U.S. Patent Nos. 8,712,846 and 8,396,743 (Dkt. 1, Exs. 1–4). I could not confirm any connection between the '436 patent and this docket in the searches run. Either the metadata patent number is inaccurate for this case number, or '436 was asserted in a separate Consolidated Transaction Processing / Equitable IP complaint. The counsel answer below is for the docket as it actually reads.

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Plaintiff's counsel of record

Sources: Unified Patents litigation portal, Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC v. Party City Corp., No. 4:21-cv-00559 — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/4%3A21-cv-00559 ; Patexia docket mirror — https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Consolidated-Transaction-Processing-LLC-v-Party-City-Corporation-id-[153561](/patent/153561)/documents

What the docket actually establishes

• Dkt. 1 (7/17/2021) — Complaint for patent infringement filed by CTP, signed/entered by "(Corcoran, Peter)"; exhibits attach the '846 and '743 patents plus prior pleadings from CTP v. Big Lots.
• Dkt. 3–4 — AO 120 form and Notice of Related Cases, both filed by Corcoran.
• Dkt. 6–7 — Corcoran's unopposed motion to extend time to serve to 11/15/2021; granted 10/18/2021.
• Dkt. 8 — Waiver of service executed 11/15/2021 (so no summons/service counsel was used).
• Dkt. 13–15 — Joint motion to stay and notice of settlement (2/1/2022), granted with closing-documents deadline (2/2/2022).
• Dkt. 16–18 — Joint motion to dismiss filed by Corcoran (4/8/2022); order dismissing all claims and defenses with prejudice, each side bearing its own fees and costs (4/11/2022); terminal AO 120 (4/14/2022).

Counsel I can affirmatively rule out

• No additional plaintiff-side appearances (no second lead, no "of counsel," no local counsel, no in-house/Equitable IP employee) appear in the docket text retrieved. Given Corcoran is Texas counsel filing directly in Sherman/Marshall, no separate local-counsel designation was required under the local rules, which is consistent with the record.
• For completeness, defendant's counsel of record were Jennifer Ainsworth (Dkt. 9), with appearances later by Cameron S. Reuber (Dkt. 11) and Henry Andreas Gabathuler (Dkt. 12).

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Sourcing limitations (stated explicitly)

1. No direct PACER pull. The docket text above comes from two public docket mirrors (Unified Patents, Patexia) that reproduce PACER entries verbatim, not from PACER itself. PACER access was not available in this session.
2. No sealed-material issue. Nothing in the retrieved docket suggests sealing — the case terminated by settlement and voluntary dismissal, so the record is thin rather than sealed.
3. Corcoran's firm name and office address are unverified. I did not reach a firm website or state-bar listing before my search budget was exhausted. Do not attribute a specific firm name or street address to him on the strength of this report; the complaint's signature block would resolve it and should be pulled from PACER (Dkt. 1) before any filing or client communication.
4. The '436 patent link is unresolved. If your engagement actually concerns U.S. Patent No. 6,837,436, the operative docket is likely a different CTP/Equitable IP case, and the counsel list would need to be re-run against that docket; do not rely on the Party City counsel list for it without confirming.

Bottom line first — a caption/patent correction

Before naming counsel, two record points that matter for how you use this:

• Caption: E.D. Tex. No. 4:21-cv-00559 is Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC v. Party City Corporation (D. Judge Amos L. Mazzant, III, Sherman Division), filed July 17, 2021. Source: Unified Patents litigation portal docket for 4:21-cv-00559 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Texas%20Eastern%20District%20Court/case/4%3A21-cv-00559); Patexia docket index (https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/Consolidated-Transaction-Processing-LLC-v-Party-City-Corporation-id-153561/documents).
• Patent mismatch: The docket reflects exhibits to the complaint for U.S. Patent Nos. 8,712,846 and 8,396,743 ("Sending targeted product offerings based on personal information"), not the 6,837,436 patent in your case metadata. The '436 patent does not appear anywhere in the retrieved docket entries for this case number. I could not verify 6,837,436 in connection with 4:21-cv-00559 from any source; the metadata appears to be mis-sourced (Compl., Dkt. 1, Exs. 1–2; see also Patsnap/Unified Patents records for the parallel Consolidated Transaction Processing filings, e.g., 4:21-cv-00552 against Big Lots, which asserted the same two patents). This should be corrected before the summary is relied on.

Defense counsel of record — Party City Corporation

Party City waived service rather than being served (Dkt. 8, waiver sent 11/15/2021, answer due 1/14/2022), so every appearance below is an attorney appearance on the docket, not merely a signature block on a complaint response.

Local counsel: No Texas local counsel appears in the retrieved docket. The defense team that appeared is out-of-state (New York area); E.D. Tex. does not require a local-counsel designation, and none was filed here. I found no notice of appearance by any East Texas firm (e.g., no Gillam & Smith, Potter Minton, or McKool Smith entry).

In-house counsel: None identified on the docket. The corporate disclosure statement (Dkt. 10) was filed by outside counsel; Party City's in-house legal department did not enter an appearance.

Case posture (relevant to why the defense roster is thin)

• Dkt. 13 (2/1/2022): joint motion to stay and notice of settlement filed by plaintiff's counsel Peter J. Corcoran (Devlin Law Firm) on behalf of both sides.
• Dkt. 14 (2/2/2022): stay granted by Judge Mazzant; Dkt. 15: order on closing documents.
• Dkt. 16 (4/8/2022): joint motion to dismiss; Dkt. 17 (4/11/2022): dismissed with prejudice, each party bearing its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees; Dkt. 18 (4/14/2022): AO 120 filed at termination.
• The settlement apparently included a license: Party City's 2023 chapter 11 schedules (In re Party City Holdco Inc., Bankr. S.D. Tex. No. 23-90005) list a contract "Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC – PCC – Settlement and Patent License" (contract ID M02891). Source: Kroll claims/contracts notice at https://cases.ra.kroll.com/pchi/.

Caveats and verification steps

• Nothing here is sealed or missing by reason of sealing — the docket is public and complete; the limitation is that the underlying PDFs (Answer Dkt. 9, appearances Dkt. 11–12, and the complaint Dkt. 1) were not retrievable in full text from free sources, so I could not read the attorneys' firm/address blocks for Ainsworth and Gabathuler.
• To confirm firms and bar numbers, pull Dkt. 9, 11, and 12 on PACER for 4:21-cv-00559 (E.D. Tex.) or via CourtListener RECAP; the signature blocks will resolve the Ainsworth/Gabathuler affiliations definitively.
• The plaintiff side, for completeness: Peter Joseph Corcoran, III and Timothy Devlin of Devlin Law Firm LLC (Wilmington, DE), counsel for Consolidated Transaction Processing LLC (an Equitable IP Corporation entity).