Pryor Cashman Represents Citizens Financial Group, Inc. in Major Patent Litigation Relating to Online Banking
Pryor Cashman is representing Citizens Financial Group, Inc. ("Citizens"), a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland, in a patent litigation filed by Pi-Net International in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
This case is one of fourteen related patent lawsuits filed in federal courts in Delaware and Los Angeles’s Central District of California against financial institutions Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Wilmington Trust, M&T Bank, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Sovereign Bank, Capital One and ING, as well as rental car companies Payless, Enterprise, Avis Budget, Dollar Thrifty, U-Haul and Ace.
The Citizens litigation involves Pi-Net’s U.S. Patents Nos. 5,987,500, 8,037,158, and 8,108,492, which, according to Pi-Net, “disclose the fundamental technology underlying web commerce by use of web applications.” In addition, Pi-Net asserts that multiple claims of these patents are infringed by Citizens' electronic banking systems.
In response to Pi-Net’s claims, Citizens asserts that Pi-Net’s patents are not infringed, are invalid and unenforceable due to the inequitable conduct of Pi-Net’s principal and named inventor, as publicly-available documents indicate that portions of Pi-Net’s patent applications were copied from industry standard documents, and those documents were not provided by Pi-Net to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The case, Pi-Net International, Inc. v. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware), C.A. No. 12-355-RGA, is before Judge Richard G. Andrews.
Representing Citizens Financial Group, Inc. in the litigation are Pryor Cashman Partners Lawrence Spector and James Klaiber and Counsel Benjamin Semel.
