National Bank d/b/a The National Bank of Central Texas

Company overview. The entity in the case data, "National Bank d/b/a The National Bank of Central Texas," is a nationally chartered community bank headquartered at 905 Main Street, Gatesville, Texas (Coryell County). It was chartered August 21, 1889, as The First National Bank of Gatesville, renamed The National Bank of Gatesville in 1938 and National Bank in 1990, and did business as The National Banks of Central Texas. Its regulatory top holder is National United Bancshares, Inc. (Gatesville). The bank rebranded as National United effective January 27, 2017; third-party FDIC data now lists certificate #3214 as inactive. It is not the similarly named First National Bank of Central Texas of Waco (founded 1901, FDIC #3325), a separate institution.

Products / services. Full-service retail and commercial community banking: personal and business checking, savings and certificates of deposit, IRAs, real estate, personal and commercial lending, online banking, plus securities and annuities through a third-party broker-dealer. Branch locations have been reported in Copperas Cove, Gatesville, Hewitt, Kempner, Killeen, Lampasas and Waco. Verified employee counts and current asset totals were not available from the sources reviewed.

Patent-litigation posture. Operating company acting defensively, not an NPE. The single tracked case is National Bank d/b/a The National Bank of Central Texas v. Plano Encryption Technologies, LLC, a declaratory judgment action filed August 28, 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division (No. 6:15-cv-00249, Judge Walter S. Smith). The bank appears once as plaintiff and never as defendant. Plaintiff-side venue here reflects the bank's home forum rather than a plaintiff-friendly patent venue like the Eastern District of Texas, where the defendant NPE was based and where other Texas banks were sued.

Notable cases / context. Plano Encryption Technologies (PET), a non-practicing entity that sent infringement demand letters to numerous Texas banks over mobile-banking software supplied by Jack Henry & Associates, asserted U.S. Patents 5,974,550, 5,991,399 and 6,587,858. The National Bank case was dismissed with prejudice on November 17, 2015 on a joint motion, each side bearing its own fees and costs. PET's parallel letters and suits produced related decisions, including the Federal Circuit's 2018 ruling in Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. v. Plano Encryption Technologies, LLC on personal jurisdiction and venue.