JCPenney and numerous other retailers have been hunted for the last decade by patent trolls that aggressively file suits based on overly broad claims in patents against related but distinct technologies. JCPenney alone has endured dozens of patent troll lawsuits over this period.
Defending against these lawsuits requires the expenditure of excessive amounts of money as well as the investment of significant human capital. Every dollar JCPenney spends fighting these claims are dollars we cannot invest in improvements to products and services or job creation. Every hour of engineer and developer time spent in endless discovery are hours stolen from the development of the new technology required to sustain and grow JCPenney’s core businesses. This vicious cycle is playing out in thousands of patent troll lawsuits against countless other companies year after year.