Slashdot Mirror
Small Firm Claims Patents On e-Banking Processes
bth writes "The New York Times has a
report that DataTreasury Corp is suing banks over 2 patents that 'describe a way to store and retrieve transaction records electronically.' A patent search reveals US6032137 and US5910988, each having the title: 'Remote image capture with centralized processing and storage -- System for central management, storage and report generation of remotely captured paper transactions from documents and receipts.' From one of the abstracts: 'The system retrieves transaction data such as credit card receipts checks in either electronic or paper form at one or more remote locations, encrypts the data, transmits the encrypted data to a central location, transforms the data to a usable form, performs identification verification using signature data and biometric data, generates informative reports from the data and transmits the informative reports to the remote location(s).' It is good to know that someone has managed to finally invent a system that can store, retrieve, and securely transmit financial transactions."
This might actually be a good thing for fixing the current US patent fiasco. The banking industry has plenty of lawyers and political clout. Maybe some change will come out of this suit.
Just means more anarchy to sit back and watch.
Well that and I don't have investments in banks.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
After reading both patents and looking over all attached diagrams and drawings I'm surprised. The patents are completely devoid of any technical data at all. I can make flowcharts for a warp drive and a cold fusion reactor too. I thought a patent had to contain some technical detail about how the device being patented was supposed to work. E.g. where is the source code for any of this? I couldn't find it anywhere in the patents.
Paying for a patent is the cheap part. It gets more expensive to prevent enfringement. I have doubts about this company going up against the goliath corporations using this technology.
The point of IP is to allow the inventor of an invention profit from their creation. The other point is of IP is that because the patent is made public society gets to keep the invention once the IP has expired.
A key feature of most IP implementations is that you can sell a patent to another company. A lot of the problems with the patent sharks could be solved if this were not possible.
If a patent can't be transfered then sharks can't get hold of it. You should have to renew a patent every year.. making keeping huge portfolios expensive.
In the software patent world, I think one small change would make it (more) aggreeable to FOSS. Make the time the patent lasts much shorter, like on the order of five years. That way, FOSS is protected. In software, if you haven't made your millions in five years then your not going to full stop. This would also protect FOSS from huge damages claims if they are caught infriging since the time to claim damages over is much shorter.
While i'd like software patents to disappear in the US, it wont happen and therefore I believe a third way is needed. A compromise that restores sanity to the system. My suggestions would be a good first step.
Simon.
This is one of the things that is wrong with the patent system - no one but large companies can afford to spend that much money on a patent search - and most of those companies are covered by cross licensing. The only thing patents harm in the current legal situation is small firms who can't afford to pay legal fees for a protracted battle and so just pay protection money instead.
Corporation is a privately held company founded in 1998, and it was issued US Patent No. 5,910,988 and US Patent No. 6,032,137 in 1999 and 2000 for image capture, centralized processing and electronic storage of document and check information.
well, well--- I remember working for a financial institution long before this- they were in the process of installing a new system that scanned, stored, and retrieved information....hm. Maybe ScanOptics might have something to say about this.
While all patents are presumed valid until proven otherwise, only they who are fools believe that a perfect prior art search can be conducted for under $2k in 10 hours on application after application after application. There are about 30 patents cited as related art on the front of the patent. The internet text version doesn't show whether that was art submitted under 37 CFR 1.56 or cited by the examiner, but it does suggest that a sizable search was done and prosecution wasn't a straight-forward rubber stamp.
What's more, I wouldn't be at ALL surprised if the limitations recited by the claims were not commonly disclosed in 1997, when the patent was filed. It's certainly not my field of expertise, but online banking with an automated paper check scanning system might have existed before 1997, but I would be surprised if anybody had published the details of their system in an accessible medium and with enough detail to prove, before a judge, that the claimed invention already existed or would have been an obvious modification.
And do note that "obvious" has nothing to do with the dictionary definition, but rather the case law establishing that word under 35 USC 103