Defendant
1 case as defendant.
I'll verify iHeartMedia's profile and the Cedar Lane Technologies litigation context.
iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: IHRT) is a San Antonio, Texas–based audio media company headquartered at 20880 Stone Oak Parkway. It traces its origins to Clear Channel Communications (founded 1972 by L. Lowry Mays and B.J. McCombs); the current holding company was incorporated in 2007, renamed iHeartMedia in 2014, and began trading publicly in July 2019 after emerging from Chapter 11 reorganization. Third-party profiles put employment at roughly 8,000–10,800, trailing-twelve-month revenue near $3.99 billion, and market capitalization around $361 million as of September 2026. Ownership is public, with institutional and former-creditor holders; the 2006 private-equity sponsors (Bain Capital, Thomas H. Lee Partners) have largely exited. Sources differ on employee counts, so figures should be treated as approximate.
Operations. iHeartMedia reports three segments. Multiplatform Group operates roughly 860–870 broadcast radio stations across ~160 U.S. markets, plus Premiere Networks syndication, the Total Traffic and Weather Network, the Black Information Network, live/virtual events, and the SmartAudio data-targeting suite. Digital Audio Group covers the iHeartRadio streaming service, podcasting (it claims the No. 1 U.S. podcast publisher ranking per Podtrac), and ad-tech assets including Unified, Voxnest, Triton Digital, and Omny Studio. Audio & Media Services comprises Katz Media Group (media representation) and RCS Sound Software (broadcast automation and scheduling software).
Litigation posture. iHeartMedia is an operating company defending against patent assertions, not an assertor. In the tracked data it appears once, exclusively as a defendant, with zero plaintiff-side suits. That one-sided profile is the classic signature of a media/technology operating company targeted by non-practicing entities rather than a two-way litigant.
Notable case. Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. iHeartMedia Inc., No. 1:20-cv-00472, was filed May 1, 2020 in the W.D. Tex. (Judge Robert Pitman). Cedar Lane is a Canadian entity based in Nelson, British Columbia, founded in 2019 and characterized by Unified Patents and Korean IP authorities as an NPE that acquired patents originating with Intellectual Ventures and asserted them broadly across consumer-electronics, media, and AV/image-processing defendants. Unified Patents identifies U.S. Patent 8,165,867 — covering wireless control of one electronic device by another — as asserted against iHeartMedia alongside Disney, Comcast, Dish, LG, SiriusXM, and others. iHeartMedia never filed an answer; Cedar Lane voluntarily dismissed the case on September 29, 2020, and the court closed it the same day.