Sprint Corp. (Sprint LLC)

Sprint Corp. (Sprint LLC) — Sprint Corporation was an American wireless telecommunications carrier headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, tracing its origins to the Brown Telephone Company, founded in 1899 in Abilene, Kansas. It was publicly traded on the NYSE (ticker "S") before SoftBank Group acquired majority ownership in July 2013. On April 1, 2020, T-Mobile US completed its roughly $23 billion all-stock acquisition of Sprint; Sprint became a wholly owned, indirect subsidiary of T-Mobile and now exists as Sprint LLC. The Sprint brand was retired for retail purposes on August 2, 2020, and remaining customer accounts were migrated to T-Mobile by 2023. Prior to the merger, Sprint reported roughly $33.6 billion in revenue (2019) and about 28,500 employees (Q1 2019).

Products / services. Sprint was the fourth-largest U.S. mobile network operator, serving about 54 million customers as of mid-2019. It provided wireless voice, messaging and broadband service over CDMA/EvDO and 4G LTE networks (and formerly iDEN, WiMAX and 5G NR), sold prepaid service through Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA, offered wholesale network access to MVNOs, and held substantial 2.5 GHz mid-band spectrum, largely redeployed by T-Mobile. Its local landline business was spun off as Embarq in 2006. Sprint remains an operating company, not a patent-holding vehicle.

Litigation posture. The tracked data show Sprint as an operating-company defendant, not an asserter: 1 case as defendant, 0 as plaintiff. That asymmetry is consistent with a large carrier being targeted rather than a litigating entity.

Notable case. The sole tracked matter is Headwater Research LLC v. T-Mobile US, Inc. et al., in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division (No. 2:23-cv-00379). Headwater, listed in Stanford's NPE Litigation Database, has asserted patents from a large family (reportedly nearly 280 issued patents) covering device-assisted services, mobile data management and security. Marshall is a historically plaintiff-friendly venue. The case was dismissed by joint motion, with Headwater's claims dismissed with prejudice and the carriers' counterclaims dismissed without prejudice; no public merits finding or damages award. Related Headwater suits against Sprint LLC in the same district were dismissed as well.