Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Bank of America, N.A. et al.

The patent infringement litigation Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Bank of America, N.A. et al. involved Intellectual Ventures I LLC (IV) as the plaintiff, a prolific patent assertion entity (PAE) known for acquiring large portfolios of patents across various technology sectors and monetizing them through licensing and litigation. The defendants, Bank of America, N.A., Bank of America Corporation, and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., are part of Bank of America, a major American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company. Intellectual Ventures is often characterized as a "patent troll" due to its business model of acquiring patents and asserting them against operating companies without making or selling any products itself. This specific lawsuit was part of a broader campaign by Intellectual Ventures targeting numerous financial institutions with patent infringement claims.

The primary patent asserted in this case was U.S. Patent No. 7,603,382, which generally relates to systems and methods for customizing web page usage based on user data. More specifically, in related litigation, claims concerning this patent, along with others, were described as being directed to the abstract idea of tailoring an information provider's webpage based on data about a particular user. While the exact accused products or services by Bank of America in this specific case are not detailed in public summaries, IV's lawsuits against banks typically target financial technology and digital banking infrastructure. For example, in other related cases, IV has accused companies of infringing patents related to tracking and storing information about user purchases and expenses, and customized internet content.

The case was filed in the North Carolina Western District Court (Case No. 3:13-cv-00358) on June 21, 2013, and was terminated relatively quickly on September 19, 2014, with a dismissal. The judge presiding over the case is not readily available in public summaries, but for dismissed cases, the specific judge is often less impactful than in fully litigated matters. The Western District of North Carolina is where Bank of America has its corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, making it a relevant venue for the defendant. The case is notable as an example of Intellectual Ventures' extensive assertion campaign against the financial services industry, a common strategy for NPEs to generate licensing revenue. A Covered Business Method (CBM) review, CBM2014-00030, was filed by Bank of America against this patent (7,603,382) on November 12, 2013, demonstrating a common defensive strategy against NPE assertions, particularly after the America Invents Act introduced such post-grant review procedures. The PTAB later found the claims related to customized webpage usage ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in April 2015.

The patent infringement case Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Bank of America, N.A. et al. (3:13-cv-00358, W.D.N.C.) was filed on June 21, 2013, asserting U.S. Patent No. 7,603,382, and ultimately dismissed on September 19, 2014. Key legal developments revolved around a motion to dismiss and a parallel Covered Business Method (CBM) review at the PTAB.

Key Legal Developments and Outcome:

• Filing & Initial Pleadings:

  • 2013-06-21: Intellectual Ventures I LLC filed its complaint against Bank of America, N.A., Bank of America Corporation, and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,603,382. The filing date is also noted as June 12, 2013, in relation to PTAB proceedings.

• Parallel PTAB CBM Proceeding:

  • 2013-11-12: Bank of America, National Association, initiated a Covered Business Method (CBM) review, CBM2014-00030, at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) challenging U.S. Patent No. 7,603,382. The petition explicitly listed the district court case 3:13-cv-00358 as related litigation. This CBM challenge likely targeted the patent as a business method patent under the America Invents Act (AIA).

• Pre-trial Motions of Substance (Motion to Dismiss):

  • 2014-06-04: The defendants filed a motion to dismiss. While the specific grounds for dismissal are not detailed in the provided search snippets, the motion was presented as a critical hurdle for the plaintiff to overcome. Such motions in patent cases often raise issues of patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101, especially for business method patents, or standing.

• Final Disposition (Dismissal):

  • 2014-09-19: The district court case was dismissed. Given the filing of a motion to dismiss by the defendants and the relatively swift termination of the case within approximately 15 months, it is highly probable the case was dismissed as a result of the court granting the defendants' motion to dismiss, potentially based on patent ineligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in light of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (2014) or other jurisdictional grounds. The timing aligns with many cases dismissed post-Alice for lack of subject matter eligibility of business method patents.

There were no reported claim construction (Markman) outcomes, significant discovery milestones, trial events, verdict, or post-trial motions, which is typical for a case that is dismissed relatively early in the litigation process due to a dispositive pre-trial motion. The outcome of the CBM proceeding (CBM2014-00030) at the PTAB is not explicitly stated to have directly caused the dismissal of the district court case; however, the existence of the CBM undoubtedly put pressure on the validity of the patent, and district courts often granted stays or dismissals in favor of PTAB proceedings for efficiency or to allow the PTAB to address patent validity first.

Based on available information, identifying the complete counsel of record for Intellectual Ventures I LLC in Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Bank of America, N.A. et al., case number 3:13-cv-00358, is challenging without direct access to the full PACER docket for this specific, terminated case. However, common practices for Intellectual Ventures' patent litigation and the general legal landscape at the time of filing (2013) suggest certain types of firms and attorneys would likely have been involved.

While a precise list of every attorney who appeared is not immediately available through public web searches, patent litigation often involves a combination of lead intellectual property counsel and local counsel. Firms known for significant patent litigation at the time, particularly for non-practicing entities like Intellectual Ventures, would typically be engaged.

Without specific docket entries identifying counsel appearances for the plaintiff in this particular case, I cannot provide a definitive list of names, roles, firms, and experience for attorneys representing Intellectual Ventures I LLC. Filings are not explicitly sealed, but the public web search results do not provide the detailed docket entries needed to pinpoint every attorney who appeared.

Therefore, the specific counsel of record for the plaintiff, Intellectual Ventures I LLC, in this case cannot be definitively identified from the public web search results at this time.

I'll research the defendants' counsel using multiple search angles.

Let me look at the district court docket directly for counsel appearances.

Defendants' Counsel of Record — Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Bank of America, N.A. et al., No. 3:13-cv-00358 (W.D.N.C.)

Important caveat up front: Unlike the plaintiff's side — where pro hac vice admission orders were published and surfaced in search (see below) — I was unable to locate a verified list of the defendants' district-court counsel of record in the public search results. The docket PDFs indexed by Justia/CourtListener for this case are largely the court's own orders (Docs. 47, 50, 55, 57), and those orders either do not name defense counsel in the excerpted text or do not reproduce the signature blocks. I am therefore not going to name district-court defense attorneys, because doing so would require inference rather than sourcing. What follows is (a) what is documented about who defended this corporate family, (b) where that evidence comes from, and (c) exactly how to close the gap.

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1. Documented defense representation in the parallel PTAB proceedings (high confidence)

The best-sourced defense-side appearance evidence comes from the parallel Covered Business Method reviews, which Bank of America filed against the same patents while the district case was pending. Those counsel are confirmed by the Board's own records:

Source: Record of Oral Hearing, Cases CBM2014-00028/-00029/-00030/-00033 (Mar. 2, 2015), and CBM2014-00030 Paper 34 (June 25, 2015) — reproduced at Docket Alarm. Note that in CBM2014-00033 (the '587 patent) Bank of America alone was petitioner, and in CBM2014-00028/-00029/-00030 Bank of America petitioned jointly with PNC.

Why this matters but is not a substitute: The CBM petitioner is "Bank of America, N.A." — the same defendant as in 3:13-cv-00358. It is common for the district-court defense team to be the same firm as the PTAB team, but PTAB counsel of record is not the same thing as district-court counsel of record, and I have no filing that confirms WilmerHale appeared in the W.D.N.C. action. Treat this as a strong lead, not a confirmed fact.

2. What the district docket tells us (and doesn't)

The substantive defense filings whose signature blocks would identify counsel are:

• Doc. 36 — Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim of Induced or Contributory Infringement (filed by Bank of America, N.A.)
• Doc. 50 — Magistrate Judge's Memorandum & Recommendation (Oct. 30, 2013)
• Doc. 55 — Defendants' Response to IV's Objections to the M&R (filed Dec. 5, 2013)
• Doc. 57 — Order granting Doc. 36 and adopting the M&R (Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., Mar. 4, 2014)

The indexed page images I could retrieve (e.g., Justia filings 47 and 57, and the Casetext copy of Doc. 55) show the substance and page numbers of these filings but not the counsel signature blocks. The case's lead district judge was Robert J. Conrad, Jr., with Magistrate Judge David S. Cayer (case number suffix "RJC-DSC").

3. Plaintiff's counsel (for contrast — do not confuse these with defense counsel)

The publicly indexed pro hac vice orders name plaintiff's team only:

• Doc. 5 (June 13, 2013): Sal Lim admitted pro hac vice for IV I and IV II.
• Doc. 47 (Oct. 11, 2013): Yakov Zolotorev, Peter Mikhail, Lawrence McDonough, Daniel Castro, Nickolas Bohl, David Alberti, and Vinay Kumar Malik admitted pro hac vice for IV I and IV II.

These are IV-side admissions (several of these names are associated with IV's outside IP counsel of that era), so they are not defendant counsel.

4. Reconciliation / flags against the prior sections

Two points where search results conflict with earlier-generated content, which you asked me to flag:

1. Patents at issue. The prior sections and the case metadata state that only U.S. Pat. 7,603,382 was asserted. The actual Complaint (Doc. 1, filed 06/12/2013, not 06/21/2013) asserts five patents: 7,664,701; 7,603,382; 6,199,083 ('894); 8,083,137; and 7,260,587 — split between IV I and IV II. The court's own M&R/order addresses induced and contributory infringement of the '382, '137, '587, and '701 patents. So the "patents at issue: 7603382" field is incomplete.
2. Dismissal date and ground. The metadata says terminated 2014-09-19, and the prior "Key Legal Developments" section speculates the case was dismissed on § 101 grounds post-Alice. The record contradicts the ground: the March 4, 2014 order (Doc. 57) granted a Rule 12(b)(6) motion directed only at IV's induced/contributory infringement theories — a pleading-sufficiency ruling, not an eligibility ruling. Meanwhile a PACER-derived aggregator lists the case as "Closed (05/19/15)", which postdates both the 9/19/2014 metadata date and the April 24, 2015 CBM final written decision invalidating the '382 claims. The 2014-09-19 "termination" is best explained as a docket/statistics artifact (or a partial/administrative closure) rather than the final disposition.

5. How to confirm defense counsel definitively

The gap is a document-access gap, not a "sealed filing" gap — nothing here appears sealed. To close it:

• Pull the PACER docket for 3:13-cv-00358 and open the signature blocks of Docs. 36, 55, and 57, plus any Notice of Attorney Appearance or Application for Admission Pro Hac Vice filed on the defense side (look for docket entries between June 2013 and late 2013; the same batch of pro hac vice motions that produced Doc. 47 for the plaintiff should have a counterpart filed by defendants).
• Cross-check the W.D.N.C. local counsel — a Charlotte-based firm would have signed as local counsel for the out-of-town defense team. I could not verify which firm from the available snippets, so I am not naming one.
• Confirm whether WilmerHale (Steinberg/Lantier/Grewal) also appeared in the district case, which would unify the defense team across the CBM and the litigation.

Bottom line: The only defense-side counsel I can source with specificity are the WilmerHale attorneys (Donald R. Steinberg as lead, with Gregory H. Lantier and Monica Grewal) who represented Bank of America, N.A. in the parallel PTAB CBMs — CBM2014-00030 (the '382 patent) and the companion CBMs. The identity of the defendants' district-court counsel of record in 3:13-cv-00358 is not verifiable from the public search results I retrieved, and I have deliberately not filled that gap with an unsourced guess.