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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

SHERMAN DIVISION

IMPLICIT, LLC

Plaintiff,

v. 

CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CORP.,

CAPITAL ONE, NATIONAL 

ASSOCIATION 

Defendants. 

Civil Action No. 4:23-cv-770 

JURY TRIAL DEMANDED 

COMPLAINT FOR PATENT INFRINGEMENT

Plaintiff Implicit, LLC (“Implicit” or “Plaintiff”), for its Complaint against Defendant 

Capital One Financial Corp. and Defendant Capital One, National Association (referred to herein

collectively as “Capital One” or “Defendants”), alleges the following: 

NATURE OF THE ACTION

1. This is an action for patent infringement arising under the Patent Laws of the 

United States, 35 U.S.C. § 1 et seq. 

THE PARTIES

2. Plaintiff Implicit is a limited liability company organized under the laws of the State 

of Washington with a place of business at 101 E Park Blvd, Suite 600, Plano, TX 75074. 

3. Upon information and belief, Capital One Financial Corp. is a corporation organized 

under the laws of the State of Delaware with a place of business at 7933 Preston Road, Plano, 

TX 75024 in this District. Upon information and belief, Capital One Financial Corp. sells, offers 

to sell, and/or uses products and services throughout the United States, including in this judicial 

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district, and introduces infringing products and services into the stream of commerce knowing 

that they would be sold and/or used in this judicial district and elsewhere in the United States. 

4. Upon information and belief, Capital One, National Association is a corporation 

organized under the laws of the District of Columbia with a place of business at 7933 Preston 

Road, Plano, TX 75024 in this District. Upon information and belief, Capital One, National 

Association sells, offers to sell, and/or uses products and services throughout the United States, 

including in this judicial district, and introduces infringing products and services into the stream 

of commerce knowing that they would be sold and/or used in this judicial district and elsewhere 

in the United States. 

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

5. This is an action for patent infringement arising under the Patent Laws of the 

United States, Title 35 of the United States Code.

6. This Court has subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1338(a). 

7. Venue is proper in this judicial district under 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b). 

8. This Court has personal jurisdiction over the Defendants under the laws of the 

State of Texas, due at least to their substantial business in Texas and in this judicial district, 

directly or through intermediaries, including: (i) at least a portion of the infringements alleged 

herein; and (ii) regularly doing or soliciting business, engaging in other persistent courses of 

conduct and/or deriving substantial revenue from goods and services provided to individuals in 

the State of Texas. Venue is also proper in this district because Defendants have a regular and 

established place of business in this district. Defendants have business operations for at its 

Dallas office located at 7933 Preston Road, Plano, TX 75024. (See, e.g., 

https://www.capitalonecareers.com/dallas.) 

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BACKGROUND

The Invention

9. Edward Balassanian is the inventor of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,774,740 (“the ’740 

patent”), 8,056,075 (“the ’075 patent”), and 6,976,248 (“the ’248 patent”) (collectively, “the 

patents”). True and correct copies of the ’740 patent, ’075 patent, and the ’248 patent are 

attached as Exhibits A, B, and C, respectively. 

10. The patent resulted from the pioneering efforts of Mr. Edward Balassanian

(hereinafter “the Inventor”) in the area of server architecture. These efforts resulted in the 

development of a method and apparatus for a server architecture that allows client computers to 

request and execute applets in 1998. At the time of these pioneering efforts, the most widely 

implemented technology used to address the demand for more secure and efficient computer 

systems was to depend upon improvements in hardware performance to make up for the 

performance penalty that was typically incurred when a computer system was made more secure 

and stable. In that type of system, one of the solutions to the problem of a variety of computers 

interconnected via the Internet and corporate networks was the development of portable 

architecture neutral programming languages. The Inventor conceived of the inventions claimed 

in the patents as a way to provide a scalable distributed system architecture that provides a 

mechanism for client computers to request and execute applets in a safe manner without 

requiring the client machines to have local resources compile or verify the code that improved 

upon traditional implementations of architecture neutral languages that required every client 

perform its own verification and interpretation of intermediate code. 

11. For example, as recited in claim 11 of the ’740 patent the Inventor developed a 

method operating on a computer system, having a client computer and a server computer, for 

managing requests to the server computer, the method comprising: 

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at the server computer, receiving a request from the client 

computer,

the request identifying an application and identifying a form of the 

application; and in response to receiving the request: 

compiling the application into a compiled form;

transforming the compiled application into a transformed form of 

the compiled form of the application, 

wherein transforming comprises execution and compression of the 

compiled form; and 

sending the transformed form of the application to the client 

computer. 

12. For example, as recited in claim 1 of the ’075 patent, the Inventor developed a 

method for delivering one or more applets to one or more client computers, comprising, in no 

particular order, the steps of:

configuring an applet server manager at a server computer to 

manage at least one request from the one or more client computers 

for the one or more applets, the applet server manager having 

access to one or more networks;

receiving the at least one request at the applet server manager;

processing the one or more applets at the applet server manager, 

wherein processing the one or more applets includes at least one of 

the following steps:

compressing the one or more applets before sending the one or 

more applets to the one or more client computers,

optimizing the one or more applets before sending the one or more 

applets to the one or more client computers, and

verifying the one or more applets before sending the one or more 

applets to one or more client computers; and

sending the one or more applets from the applet server manager to 

the one or more client computers.

 

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13. For example, as recited in claim 1 of the ’248 patent, the Inventor developed a 

method operating on a computer system for managing requests to a server computer for applets 

in a client server environment wherein each request for an applet specifies one form of the applet 

out of a plurality forms of the applet, comprising: 

a) receiving on said server computer a request from a client computer 

for an applet in a form selected from a plurality forms;

b) compiling said applet into said selected form from a local resource 

comprising at least one source module and one compiler which 

acts on said source module to produce said selected form; and 

 

c) transmitting said applet in said selected form to said client 

computer. 

 

Advantage Over the Prior Art

14. The patented invention disclosed in the patents, provides many advantages over 

the prior art, and in particular improved the operations of an applet server which accepts requests 

for applets from client computers. (See ’740 patent at Abstract.) One advantage of the patented 

invention is a scalable distributed system architecture that provides a mechanism for client 

computers to request and execute applets in a safe manner without requiring the client machines 

to have local resources to compile or verify the code. (See ’740 patent at 2:6–10.) 

15. Another advantage of the patented invention is that compilation and byte-code 

verification are server based and thereby provide more efficient use of resources and a flexible 

mechanism for instituting enterprise-wide security policies. (See ’740 patent at 2:20–24.) 

16. Another advantage of the patented invention is that the server architecture also 

provides a cache for applets, allowing clients to receive applet code without having to access 

nodes outside the local network. (See ’740 patent at 2:24–27.) 

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17. Yet another advantage of the patented invention is that it allows a single version 

of the source to be stored for many target platforms instead of having a different binary for each 

potential target computer. (See ’740 patent at 2:38–41.) 

18. Because of these significant advantages that can be achieved through the use of 

the patented invention, Implicit believes that the patents presents significant commercial value 

for companies like Capital One. 

Technological Innovation 

19. The patented invention disclosed in the patents resolves technical problems 

related to server architecture, particularly problems related to the interoperability of enterprise 

level systems on the Internet with architecture neutral programming languages that allowed

programs downloaded from a server computer to a client computer to be interpreted and 

executed locally. As the patents explains, one of the limitations of the prior art as regards 

traditional implementations of architecture neutral languages is that while they provided 

tremendous cross platform support, these implementations of architecture neutral languages 

require that every client perform its own verification and interpretation of the intermediate code, 

resulting in high computation and memory requirements of the verifier. (See ’740 patent at 

1:51–59.) 

20. The claims of the patents do not merely recite the performance of some wellknown business practice from the pre-Internet world along with the requirement to perform it on 

the Internet. Instead, the claims of the patents recite inventive concepts that are deeply rooted in 

engineering technology, and overcome problems specifically arising out of how to provide a 

scalable distributed system architecture that provides a mechanism for client computers to 

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request and execute applets in a safe manner without requiring the client machines to have local 

resources to compile or verify the code. 

21. In addition, the claims of the patents recite inventive concepts that improve the 

functioning of corporate networks and interoperability amongst a variety of computers. 

22. Moreover, the claims of the patents recite inventive concepts that are not merely 

routine or conventional use of computers. Instead, the patented invention disclosed in the patents

provides a new and novel solution to specific problems related to improving system architecture 

in which applets may be cached in either intermediate architecture neutral from or machine 

specific form in order to increase overall system performance and efficiency. 

23. And finally, the patented invention disclosed in the patents does not preempt all 

the ways that system architecture may be used to improve the applet servers that accept requests 

for applets from client computers, nor does the patents preempt any other well-known or prior art 

technology. 

24. Accordingly, the claims in the patents recite a combination of elements sufficient 

to ensure that the claim in substance and in practice amounts to significantly more than a patentineligible abstract idea.

COUNT I – INFRINGEMENT OF U.S. PATENT NO. 7,774,740 

25. The allegations set forth in the foregoing paragraphs 1 through 23 are 

incorporated into this First Claim for Relief.

26. On August 10, 2010, the ’740 patent was duly and legally issued by the United 

States Patent and Trademark Office under the title “Application Server.” 

27. Implicit LLC is the assignee and owner of the right, title and interest in and to the 

’740 patent, including the right to assert all causes of action arising under said patent and the 

right to any remedies for infringement of it. 

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28. Upon information and belief, Capital One has and continues to directly infringe 

one or more claims of the ’740 patent by selling, offering to sell, making, using, and/or providing 

and causing to be used products, specifically its Capital One products implementing Node.js, 

which by way of example include the Capital One online platform: https://www.capitalone.com/

(the “Accused Instrumentalities”).

29. Upon information and belief, the Accused Instrumentalities perform a method for 

operating on a computer system, having a client computer and a server computer, for managing 

requests to the server computer. Exemplary infringement analysis showing infringement of 

claim 11 of the ’740 patent is set forth in Exhibit D. 

30. Implicit has been harmed by Capital One’s infringing activities. 

COUNT II – INFRINGEMENT OF U.S. PATENT NO. 8,056,075 

31. The allegations set forth in the foregoing paragraphs 1 through 29 are 

incorporated into this Second Claim for Relief.

32. On November 8, 2011, the ’075 patent was duly and legally issued by the United 

States Patent and Trademark Office under the title “Server Request Management” 

33. Implicit is the assignee and owner of the right, title and interest in and to the ’075 

patent, including the right to assert all causes of action arising under said patent and the right to 

any remedies for infringement of it. 

34. Upon information and belief, Capital One has and continues to directly infringe 

one or more claims of the ’075 patent by selling, offering to sell, making, using, and/or providing 

and causing to be used products, specifically its Capital One products implementing Node.js, 

which by way of example include the Capital One online platform: https://www.capitalone.com/ 

(the “Accused Instrumentalities”).

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35. Upon information and belief, the Accused Instrumentalities perform a method for 

delivering one or more applets to one or more client computers. Exemplary infringement 

analysis showing infringement of claim 1 of the ’075 patent is set forth in Exhibit E.

36. Implicit has been harmed by Capital One’s infringing activities. 

COUNT III – INFRINGEMENT OF U.S. PATENT NO. 6,976,248 

37. The allegations set forth in the foregoing paragraphs 1 through 35 are incorporated 

into this Third Claim for Relief.

38. On December 13, 2005, the ’248 patent was duly and legally issued by the United 

States Patent and Trademark Office under the title “Application Server Facilitating with Client’s 

Computer for Applets Along with Various Formats”. 

39. Implicit is the assignee and owner of the right, title and interest in and to the ’248 

patent, including the right to assert all causes of action arising under said patent and the right to 

any remedies for infringement of it. 

40. Upon information and belief, Capital One has and continues to directly infringe 

one or more claims of the ’248 patent by selling, offering to sell, making, using, and/or providing 

and causing to be used products, specifically its Capital One products implementing Node.js, 

which by way of example include the Capital One online platform: https://www.capitalone.com/

(the “Accused Instrumentalities”).

41. Upon information and belief, the Accused Instrumentalities perform a method 

operating on a computer system for managing requests to a server computer for applets in a 

client server environment wherein each request for an applet specifies one form of the applet out 

of a plurality forms of the applet. Exemplary infringement analysis showing infringement of 

claim 1 of the ’248 patent is set forth in Exhibit F. 

42. Implicit has been harmed by Capital One’s infringing activities. 

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JURY DEMAND

Pursuant to Rule 38 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Implicit demands a trial by 

jury on all issues triable as such. 

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff Implicit demands judgment for itself and against Capital One as 

follows: 

A. An adjudication that Capital One has infringed the ’740 patent, the ’075 patent, 

and the ’248 patent; 

B. An award of damages to be paid by Capital One adequate to compensate Implicit

for Capital One’s past infringement of the ’740 patent, the ’075 patent, and the ’248 patent. 

C. A declaration that this case is exceptional under 35 U.S.C. § 285, and an award of 

Implicit’s reasonable attorneys’ fees; and

D. An award to Implicit of such further relief at law or in equity as the Court deems 

just and proper. 

Dated: August 25, 2023 DEVLIN LAW FIRM LLC

/s/ James M. Lennon 

James M. Lennon 

jlennon@devlinlawfirm.com 

Timothy Devlin

tdevlin@devlinlawfirm.com 

1526 Gilpin Avenue 

Wilmington, Delaware 19806 

Telephone: (302) 449-9010 

Facsimile: (302) 353-4251 

Attorneys for Plaintiff Implicit, LLC

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