Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Sally Beauty Supply LLC is an international specialty retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies. It is a principal operating subsidiary of its parent, Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc., a publicly traded company (NYSE: SBH) headquartered in Plano, Texas. Sally Beauty was founded in 1964 with a single store in New Orleans and was acquired by Alberto-Culver in 1969, later spinning off as an independent public company in 2006. Sally Beauty Holdings reported annual revenues of over $3.7 billion and has more than 4,000 stores worldwide. The company employs approximately 27,000 full-time and part-time staff.
The company operates through two main business segments: Sally Beauty Supply and Beauty Systems Group (BSG). The Sally Beauty Supply stores cater to both retail consumers and salon professionals, offering more than 6,000 products for hair, skin, and nails. Product categories include hair color, hair care, styling tools, nail care, and cosmetics from professional lines like L'Oreal and Wella, alongside proprietary brands. The BSG division, which includes stores branded as Cosmo Prof, sells thousands of professionally branded products exclusively to salons and salon professionals.
Sally Beauty Supply's patent litigation posture, based on available data, is that of an operating company defending against lawsuits from non-practicing entities (NPEs). The company has been tracked as a defendant in one patent case and has not been a plaintiff. This defensive posture is typical for a large retailer with extensive e-commerce operations. The single tracked case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, a venue historically favored by patent plaintiffs.
The notable case is eDekka LLC v. Sally Beauty Supply LLC, filed in 2013. The plaintiff, eDekka LLC, was a prolific non-practicing entity that sued hundreds of retailers in 2013 and 2014, asserting a patent related to online shopping cart functionality. The lawsuits, including the one against Sally Beauty, were consolidated into a lead case. In 2015, a judge in the Eastern District of Texas invalidated the eDekka patent as being directed at an abstract idea, leading to the dismissal of 168 pending lawsuits, including the case against Sally Beauty.
This case was one of many filed by eDekka LLC, and it was consolidated with the lead case. The case was ultimately dismissed following the invalidity ruling in the consolidated action.