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."