Don Herring Auto Sales, LTD

Company overview. Don Herring Auto Sales, LTD (commonly operating as Don Herring Mitsubishi / Don Herring Auto Group) is a privately held, family-owned car dealership group in the Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas area. The business traces to founder Don Herring Sr., who entered car sales in 1971 and began serving the metroplex as a dealer in 1979; the family purchased its first Mitsubishi store in Dallas in 1988, adding Plano (1996) and Irving (2005). It is headquartered at 2901 W. Airport Fwy, Irving, TX. Following Don Herring Sr.'s death in 2022, his son Don Herring Jr. is owner/CEO. Third-party data (Kona Equity) estimates roughly 28 employees and about $8.2 million in annual revenue, though these are algorithm-generated estimates, not company disclosures.

Products / services / operations. The company operates three full-service Mitsubishi dealerships (Dallas, Plano, and Irving), selling new and certified pre-owned Mitsubishi vehicles (Outlander, Eclipse Cross, Outlander Sport, Mirage) and used vehicles of other makes. It also offers financing and leasing, trade-in services, parts, and factory-trained maintenance and repair (brakes, tires, inspections) through its service departments. It is a conventional operating company with real retail operations — not a patent-holding entity.

Patent-litigation posture. Don Herring is purely a defendant. In its only tracked patent case, it was sued (0 plaintiff appearances, 1 defendant appearance) in the Eastern District of Texas by Context Directions LLC — a patent assertion entity that, per RPX and PatSnap coverage, has filed a wave of suits against Texas auto dealerships. The suit, Context Directions LLC v. Don Herring Auto Sales, LTD, No. 4:24-cv-00228 (E.D. Tex., filed March 14, 2024), is the earliest of that series in the tracked data.

Notable case context. The complaint asserts mobile-device "context awareness" patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 9,807,564 and 10,142,791), alleging that vehicles sold by the dealership — with sensors such as cameras, radar, and speed/braking sensors — infringe by treating the vehicle as the claimed "mobile device." Similar Context Directions suits naming other dealerships (Peters Chevrolet, Wagner Cadillac, Patterson Motors, Gulliver USA) have largely settled or been dismissed. The case's venue in E.D. Tex. (a historically plaintiff-friendly patent forum) follows the plaintiff's pattern of suing dealerships rather than automakers.