USAA sued Regions on Tuesday, alleging the Birmingham, Alabama-based bank is infringing on four mobile deposit capture technology patents.
USAA didn’t specify the amount it’s seeking in financial damages but called Regions’ infringement “willful” and asserted that the payout “should be enhanced up to three times the actual damages awarded,” according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
That court, historically, has been friendly to USAA, handing the San Antonio-based insurance and financial services provider three nine-figure judgments against banks it has sued since 2019.
A Regions spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.
However, USAA, in its complaint, noted that more than 24% of Regions’ deposit transactions came through its mobile channels, citing the bank’s first-quarter earnings call.
“Regions has profited, and continues to profit, including by providing its infringing mobile deposit service to millions of Regions customers without USAA’s permission and without any compensation to USAA, materially harming USAA and its members,” the company asserted in its complaint.
USAA’s fight over mobile deposit technology, an innovation first meant to benefit service members deployed overseas, has raged for roughly two decades. USAA collaborated on remote deposit capture in the early 2000s with identity verification software firm Mitek. The two companies, however, had a falling out, and each separately launched similar mobile deposit capture products — first Mitek in February 2008, then USAA in August 2009.
After a series of legal battles over the rights and licensing of the technology, the companies settled in 2014. Both kept their patents.
USAA then sent letters to 100 banks in 2017, warning them they were violating the company’s 130 mobile deposit patents.
USAA has offered licensing agreements as an alternative to court action – and a handful of financial institutions have taken that deal. Truist in October 2023 signed such an agreement to resolve a lawsuit with USAA. Discover, little more than a month earlier, signed a licensing agreement to avoid court action. Raleigh, North Carolina-based First Citizens Bank & Trust, signed a similar agreement in October 2024.
"We have signed many license agreements and look forward to working with more banks and credit unions to create mutually beneficial license agreements," Nathan McKinley, USAA's vice president and head of corporate development, said in a statement Tuesday. "We remain committed to improving our technology and to be reasonably compensated for the significant benefits our innovations have brought to the industry."
Not every bank has fared as well. Wells Fargo was ordered to pay USAA more than $300 million in 2019 and 2020 in patent-infringement judgments that came two months apart.
A judge ordered PNC in May 2022 to pay USAA $218.5 million in a similar patent-infringement case. But after the Pittsburgh-based bank requested a review of USAA’s patents, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board sided with PNC, ruling that three of USAA’s patents on mobile check deposit technology are invalid.
The four patents in question in the Regions case are different from the ones for which USAA sued other banks. However, USAA, in Tuesday’s complaint, argued Regions didn’t release its mobile deposit technology “until years after USAA has already implemented its patented technology.”
Further, Regions “chose to infringe” on the patents rather than engage in licensing discussions, USAA asserted.