E-Pass Can Resue Patent Case Against Palm

kisrael writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that a patent held by E-Pass may have been infringed by Palm and other PDA makers even though their devices are larger than 'credit-card sized.' The 1994 patent describes a 'multifunction, credit card-sized computer that allows users to securely store a multitude of account numbers, PIN codes, access information and other data from multiple credit cards, check cards, identification cards and similar personal documents.'"

Comments

Umm...hello?

[Surak]

Can you say prior art? The HP 95LX ran MS-DOS in 1991, even though it's not credit card sized, according to this judge it would be infringing right?

Infringement?

[Jasin Natael]

Please. The PalmOS is Totally not secure. Just hook it up to a Hotsync port and run debug. :-P

--Jasin Natael

Don't read too much into this

[Glassbear]

Unfortunately, the court only posts its decisions in MS Word format, but if you want to read it, here's the link: E-Pass Technologies v. 3Com, Inc.

Don't read too much into this decision. The court hasn't found that there was infringement, only that the lower court nees to take a closer look at the issue. (In legal terms, the court of appeals overturned a grant of summary judgment by the lower court, meaning that the lower court has to hear additional evidence and/or reconsider its application of law before it can render a final judgment.) This is an interim opinion, but the case is not over yet.