Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Plano Encryption Technologies, LLC ("PET") is a Texas limited liability company formed in March 2015, with a registered address at 903 E. 18th Street, Suite 224, Plano, Texas. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koba Holdings, LLC, a Delaware entity, and both are named as real parties-in-interest in its patent proceedings. PET is a non-practicing entity: court filings state that its "sole business is to enforce its intellectual property," and it "does not make or sell any products or services." RPX reports PET's CEO and corporate counsel is Bradley D. Liddle, described as the entity's only employee and officer. No public revenue, headcount, or market-cap figures exist; it is private.
PET holds an acquired patent portfolio related to secure data transmission, storage, and encryption. The patents most frequently asserted are U.S. Patent Nos. 5,991,399 (secure distribution of data using asymmetric encryption and a "tamper-resistant key module"), 5,974,550 (remote security protocol between two processes), and 6,587,858. USPTO and RPX records indicate PET owns at least six patents, several of which originally issued to Intel. PET does not develop or license technology for sale; its operations consist of asserting these patents.
Litigation posture. PET is a patent assertion entity, not an operating company. Our tracked data shows one case, in which PET appears as defendant: Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. v. Plano Encryption Technologies, a declaratory-judgment action brought by Jack Henry and eleven Texas banks, not an infringement suit by PET. Consistent with the Stanford NPE database's "acquired patents" classification, PET was the plaintiff in a broader campaign that began in June 2015 against banks and mobile-banking platforms, later expanding to consumer apps (Best Buy, Etsy, Shutterfly, Groupon, J.C. Penney, Match.com, State Farm). Nearly all filings were in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, a plaintiff-friendly venue.
Notable context. The Federal Circuit case, Jack Henry & Assocs. v. Plano Encryption Techs., 910 F.3d 1199 (Fed. Cir. 2018), addressed venue and personal jurisdiction. The district court had dismissed the declaratory action, but the Federal Circuit reversed, holding PET subject to personal jurisdiction in the Northern District of Texas based on its licensing and enforcement letters to banks there — making the decision frequently cited on cease-and-desist letters as a jurisdictional basis.
Appeal of the N.D. Tex. declaratory judgment action (Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. v. Plano Encryption Technologies, No. 3:15-cv-03745-N); decided as 910 F.3d 1199 (Fed. Cir. 2018), with the '550 patent at issue.