California: Riot Games Sued Over League of Legends and Valorant Communication Patents

A patent owner that lost its case against Fortnite maker Epic Games in June has now sued Riot Games over some of the same patents. IngenioShare LLC filed the suit in federal court in Los Angeles on Oct. 21, 2026, claiming that the way players communicate in League of Legends and Valorant infringes four of its patents.

The 37-page complaint (case No. 2:26-cv-12284, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California) says IngenioShare is suing now “to preserve its ability to seek recovery” while it appeals the Epic ruling.

It also says the company will ask the court to put the Riot case on hold, a step called a stay that the judge can grant or refuse, until that appeal is decided. No court has yet ruled on IngenioShare’s infringement allegations against Riot.

What IngenioShare says the games do

Three of IngenioShare’s patents describe an online “portal,” and the fourth a server, that let people reach each other by text, voice or images using a user ID, without handing over a phone number or email address. The person receiving messages can block a sender, and the system can tell whether that person is available.

According to the complaint, League of Legends, which it defines to include Teamfight Tactics and League of Legends: Wild Rift, and Valorant are “designed to enable players to communicate with one another.” It accuses the games’ “communication functionality” of infringing.

The charts matching game features to patent claims were filed as exhibits, which were not in CourtListener’s free archive as of Nov. 2. The main complaint does not spell out which screens or tools are at issue.

Four patents, claims in two already ruled invalid

Two of the four patents were part of IngenioShare’s North Carolina case against Epic, where a judge declared the asserted claims invalid. The complaint says the other two were not asserted or decided there. The table draws on the complaint, the June 4 Epic ruling and Google Patents records checked on Nov. 2. For those two patents, the Riot complaint names claim 1 of each, the same claims the North Carolina court held invalid.

The same records list Kwok Wai Cheung, Peter P. Tong and C. Douglass Thomas as inventors, and show the first three patents passing from IpVenture to Tong and Thomas, and from them to IngenioShare, in June 2021. Courthouse News has reported that Tong co-founded IngenioShare and founded IpVenture.

The complaint does not ask for an injunction, the kind of court order that could block a feature. It asks the court to declare that Riot infringed and to award damages, interest, attorney fees if the case is found “exceptional,” and costs. IngenioShare also wants a jury trial.

Why file a case only to pause it?

The complaint gives only the reason quoted above. Federal patent law fills in the background: under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages cannot cover infringement from more than six years before a lawsuit is filed. That window is measured from the filing date, so a case on file holds its place even while it sits idle.

The complaint also says Riot was contacted about the ’810 patent “at least as early as” Nov. 29, 2018, two days after it was issued, and about the ’407 patent at least as early as Oct. 11, 2019. It does not say who made that contact or what was said.

What it means for League and Valorant players

In short, the suit seeks money, not changes to either game. As of Nov. 2, the case docket on CourtListener, last refreshed Oct. 27, listed six filings, all case-opening papers dated Oct. 21. It showed no response from Riot, no lawyer appearing for the company and no motion to pause the case yet.

Our Gaming Law Tracker follows other lawsuits and laws shaping video games. Because IngenioShare has tied the Riot case to its Epic appeal, that earlier fight matters here.

How the Epic case was dismissed, and the receptionist problem

IngenioShare first sued Epic in Texas in June 2021, and that case was dismissed in March 2022 because it was filed in the wrong court location.

Epic, meanwhile, asked the Patent Office to cancel claims in several of the patents. The patent board declined to review the ’407 patent in May 2022 and, in May 2023, ruled that Epic had not shown the ’810 and ’727 claims were obvious. The Federal Circuit affirmed the 2023 rulings in April 2025.

IngenioShare then sued again in North Carolina on July 2, 2025, over the ’810 and ’727 patents and a third, the ’038. On June 4, 2026, Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II dismissed that case with prejudice, meaning IngenioShare cannot refile those claims against Epic unless the ruling is overturned on appeal. Courthouse News reported the dismissal, as it had the original filing.

Myers did not decide whether Epic infringed. He ruled that the claims are directed to an abstract idea, managing electronic communications, rather than a specific improvement to how computers work, and add no “inventive concept” beyond that idea, so they are not eligible for a patent under Section 101 of the Patent Act. He noted that Epic’s Patent Office challenges could not have tested that question.

He found support in a comparison Epic offered, which he called “persuasive”: the claimed portal works much like an office receptionist. A receptionist can put a visitor through or take a message, can turn a visitor away at an employee’s request and does not have to share anyone’s contact details.

The Riot complaint takes that comparison on directly. Across several pages, it argues that the patented systems cannot be reduced to what a receptionist does, and it calls the comparison “at best, a superficial analogy.”

IngenioShare filed its notice of appeal to the Federal Circuit on June 12. The Fourth Circuit, which hears most other appeals from North Carolina, also opened a case number for it that day. The Riot complaint says the appeal is now pending at the Federal Circuit, which hears patent appeals, as No. 26-1944, with IngenioShare’s opening brief filed Aug. 31.

The three lawyers on the Riot complaint, Cyrus A. Morton and Li Zhu of Robins Kaplan LLP and Stephen R. Risley of Kent & Risley LLC, are all listed on that notice of appeal.

Featured image: Riot Games’ building at 12333 Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, January 2025. Photo: Coolcaesar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.

Update, Nov. 3: This article was revised to clarify the status of the patent claims, the Epic appeal and the case docket.

Featured image: Riot Games’ building at 12333 Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, January 2025. Photo: Coolcaesar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.

Update, Nov. 3: This article was revised to clarify the status of the patent claims, the Epic appeal and the case docket.