AutoZone, Inc.

AutoZone, Inc. (NYSE: AZO) is a leading American retailer and distributor of aftermarket automotive parts and accessories. Founded in 1979 as Auto Shack in Forrest City, Arkansas, the company is now headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. AutoZone is a publicly traded company and a component of the S&P 500. For its 2025 fiscal year, the company reported revenues of approximately $18.9 billion and employed around 130,000 people.

AutoZone is the largest retailer of its kind in the United States, operating over 7,100 stores across the Americas, including the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil. The company's product lines include new and remanufactured automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products for cars, vans, and light trucks. In addition to its retail operations for individual consumers, AutoZone runs a commercial sales program serving garages, repair shops, and dealerships. The company owns several private-label brands, most notably Duralast, and also owns ALLDATA, which provides automotive diagnostic and repair software.

The company's patent litigation history shows it as a defendant in a single tracked case. This posture is typical of a large operating company defending its business practices against patent assertions. The case, Aml Ip LLC v. AutoZone, Inc., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, a common venue for patent litigation.

The plaintiff in its only tracked case, Aml Ip LLC, is a non-practicing entity (NPE) that has asserted patents related to e-commerce technology against numerous other large retailers. This pattern suggests AutoZone was targeted as part of a broader assertion campaign by the NPE. The specific case against AutoZone was filed in late 2024.