Barnes & Noble, Inc. ("B&N") is the largest retail bookseller in the United States, headquartered in New York, NY. Its lineage dates to 1873, when Charles M. Barnes began selling books from his Wheaton, Illinois home; the modern company took shape in 1971 when Leonard Riggio acquired the Barnes & Noble trade name and flagship Manhattan store. B&N was publicly traded on the NYSE (ticker BKS) from 1993 until August 2019, when funds advised by Elliott Advisors (UK) Limited acquired it in an all-cash deal valued at roughly $683 million including debt, taking the company private. It remains Elliott-owned and is run by CEO James Daunt, who also heads the UK chain Waterstones. Note that Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. (NYSE: BNED) — the college-bookstore business — is a separate, unaffiliated public company.
Operations: B&N operates roughly 600 U.S. bookstores across all 50 states, plus the BN.com e-commerce site; it has opened around 60 new stores per year in 2024–2026. Beyond books, it sells toys, games, stationery, and gifts, and controls the NOOK digital business (eBooks/audiobooks), SparkNotes, and stationery/gift retailer Paper Source. Employee and revenue figures for B&N alone are not publicly disclosed since going private; media reports (Bloomberg via eMarketer) estimate Barnes & Noble and Waterstones together generate about $3 billion in annual sales and roughly $400 million in profit.
Litigation posture: B&N appears in our data only as a defendant (2 cases, 0 as plaintiff), both at the U.S. International Trade Commission — consistent with an operating retailer defending against outside patent assertions, not a patent monetizer.
Notable cases: Both tracked matters arise from the July 2012 complaint by Technology Properties Limited LLC, Phoenix Digital Solutions LLC, and Patriot Scientific Corp. against Acer and other respondents, instituted as ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-853. The complainants (holders of the "Moore Microprocessor Patent" portfolio) asserted U.S. Patent No. 5,809,336 on a variable-speed microprocessor clock, accusing B&N's NOOK Simple Touch, NOOK HD, and NOOK HD+ devices. A parallel Northern District of California suit was stayed pending the ITC action.