JCPenney

JCPenney (legal name J. C. Penney Company, Inc.; current operating entity Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney, commonly "JCP" or "Penney's") is an American department store chain founded in 1902 by James Cash Penney in Kemmerer, Wyoming. It is headquartered at 6501 Legacy Drive, Plano, Texas. JCPenney was publicly traded on the NYSE until its May 2020 Chapter 11 filing; in December 2020 its retail and operating assets were acquired by mall landlords Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management, making it private. In January 2025 JCPenney combined with SPARC Group in an all-equity joint venture to form Catalyst Brands, whose shareholders are Simon, Brookfield Corporation, Authentic Brands Group and Shein. Catalyst Brands reported more than $9 billion of revenue, ~1,800 store locations, 60,000 employees and $1 billion of liquidity at launch; JCPenney itself operates roughly 650 stores. JCPenney's own current revenue is not separately disclosed.

Operations. JCPenney is a mid-market, full-line department store retailer, selling family apparel, footwear, accessories, jewelry, beauty products, home furnishings and housewares, electronics and toys through its stores and jcpenney.com, plus in-store salon, portrait and optical services. Its exclusive private brands include Stafford, Arizona, Liz Claiborne, St. John's Bay, Worthington, a.n.a and Xersion. It is an operating company, not an IP-holding or assertion vehicle.

Litigation posture. The tracked record shows JCPenney as a defendant in one case and a plaintiff in none — the profile of an operating company targeted by a patent assertion entity rather than an NPE. The single case sits in the plaintiff-friendly Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division, Judge Rodney Gilstrap).

Notable case. Plano Encryption Technologies, LLC v. JCPenney, No. 2:16-cv-01073 (E.D. Tex., filed Oct. 3, 2016), was filed by Plano Encryption Technologies (PET), a Texas entity wholly owned by Koba Holdings, LLC, asserting U.S. Patents 5,991,399 and 5,974,550 — encryption/secure-communication patents originally issued to Intel — against JCPenney's mobile apps. RPX characterizes PET's campaign (which also targeted banks, Groupon, Etsy, Best Buy and others) as a small NPE operation with one officer. The case was consolidated into lead case 2:16-cv-01032 and dismissed on Sept. 20, 2017.

Sources: Wikipedia (JCPenney); JCPenney/Catalyst Brands press releases (Dec. 2020; Jan. 8, 2025); Bloomberg; USA Today; RPX Insight; Unified Patents; USPTO PTAB filings.