Defendant
2 cases as defendant.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. ("TBS, Inc." / "Turner") was an American television and media conglomerate founded by Ted Turner, incorporated May 12, 1965 (as Turner Communications Group; renamed Turner Broadcasting System in 1979) and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, at the CNN Center and the Turner Broadcasting campus on Techwood Drive. It merged with Time Warner on October 10, 1996, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary. After AT&T's 2018 acquisition of Time Warner (renamed WarnerMedia), Turner was dissolved as a corporate brand on March 4, 2019, with its assets dispersed across WarnerMedia units; since April 8, 2022 those assets sit under Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ: WBD). The legal entity reportedly continues as a WBD subsidiary holding certain copyrights and legacy contracts. It has no standalone ticker and no separately reported revenue after 2019; S&P Global reported Turner-generated operating revenues of $3.21 billion in one pre-merger quarter.
Operations: Turner was an operating media company, not a patent-assertion entity. Its portfolio included the cable networks CNN, TBS, TNT, truTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang, HLN and Turner Classic Movies; Turner Sports (long-running NBA, MLB and NCAA men's basketball tournament rights); Bleacher Report; CNN's digital properties; and Turner Studios production facilities.
Litigation posture: Across the database Turner appears in only two tracked cases, both as a defendant and zero as a plaintiff — the profile of an operating company being sued, not an NPE. Both entries are in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Dallas), a venue historically favored by patent plaintiffs, and both are dated June 15, 2006; they appear to be the same underlying action docketed with and without "et al."
Notable case: InternetAd Systems LLC v. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. et al. (3:06-cv-01063, N.D. Tex., filed June 15, 2006; closed April 8, 2008). InternetAd was a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation (then NASDAQ: ACTG) asserting four patents on interstitial and pop-up internet advertising (U.S. 5,572,643; 5,737,619; 6,185,586; 6,457,025) originally issued to inventor David Judson. InternetAd filed similar suits against ESPN, The New York Times, Travelocity, Priceline and Best Western, typically resolving them through license and settlement agreements; Acacia's licensing campaigns have been characterized as NPE/patent-troll activity in court opinions and press coverage.
InternetAd Systems LLC sued Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. and other defendants in the Northern District of Texas. The case was closed on April 8, 2008 and involved 6 defendants and 4 patents-in-suit per RPX, with 5,572,643 among the asserted patents. The other defendants and the additional three patents are not named in the narrative.
InternetAd Systems filed suit against Turner Broadcasting System and several other defendants in the Northern District of Texas. The case was listed in an Acacia Research Form 10-Q under 'User Activated Internet Advertising Technology,' but no confirmed disposition was reported.