BofA Wins Partial Dismissal of Patent Lawsuit on AI Bot ‘Erica’

Bank of America Corp. convinced a Texas federal judge to dismiss allegations it had knowledge of patents its virtual financial assistant “Erica” is alleged to infringe before it was sued over them, though post-suit claims survived.

Judge Rodney Gilstrap granted Bank of America’s motion to dismiss Dialect LLC’s allegations of pre-suit willful, induced, and contributory infringement, in an opinion docketed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. He denied the motion as to infringement alleged to have occurred since the suit was filed.

Dialect LLC, a patent-assertion entity, sued the bank March 22 alleging its ...