The Kroger Co.

The Kroger Co.

The Kroger Co. is a publicly traded retail company founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, the company trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KR. It is one of the largest retailers in the United States, reporting approximately $147.6 billion in revenue for the most recent fiscal year and employing around 403,000 people.

Kroger is a major operating company in the food and drug retail industry. Its primary business is operating thousands of supermarkets and multi-department stores under various banners, including Kroger, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, and Harris Teeter. In addition to its retail stores, the company's operations include 32 food manufacturing facilities that produce its own private-label brands, over 1,700 supermarket fuel centers, and more than 2,200 pharmacies. The company's store formats range from combination food and drug stores to large marketplace stores offering general merchandise like apparel and home goods.

Based on the provided data, The Kroger Co. is an operating company that defends against patent infringement suits. It has been a defendant in all three tracked patent cases and has not been a plaintiff. These lawsuits have been filed in jurisdictions including the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, a common venue for patent litigation, and the District of Colorado.

The tracked cases against Kroger were filed by entities named Alpha Modus, Corp., Disintermediation Services, Inc., and NM, LLC. The litigation history, characterized by Kroger's consistent defendant status, suggests it is a target for patent assertion entities rather than an active enforcer of its own patent portfolio.