Apple Wins Patent For "iWallet"

redletterdave writes "Apple won a major patent for its 'iWallet' technology, which is a digital system that uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to complete credit card transactions and manage subsidiary financial accounts directly on your iPhone. On the home screen for iWallet, users can see their entire credit card profiles, statements, messages from their banks, and even adjust preferences or add additional cards. Within preferences, users can schedule credit card payments and set parental controls on their children, which allows kids to use their iPhones as wallets but limits the extent to which they can use it. Users can track their payments and statements within the iTunes billing system, which keeps the credit card information safe and secure."

Comments

Great.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can lose my phone, camera, AND my wallet in one fell swoop?!?!?!?!?!

Whats next... iPhone car keys?

Re:Great.....

[PeanutButterBreath]

I would imagine that the iWallet could be remotely revoked.

Sure. Say you reach for your iWallet to buy a coffee and realize that you left it at the news stand 10 minutes earlier. Fortunately, you have the ability to remotely disable access to your accounts. So, you just pull out your smart phone and. . .ruh-roh!

Meanwhile, the clerk at the news stand sees that your iWallet has been left behind. Being an honest sort, he decides to try to reunite the device with its owner by calling. . .ruh-roh!

Another one bites the dust

[Chemisor]

Great. Here's another technology that nobody will be allowed to use for the next 20 years.

Re:Another one bites the dust

[Wakko Warner]

Nice grammar. Also, there were literally dozens of different music players before the iPod, so nice analogy fail.

Apple, anti-competition master.

[Microlith]

And if you've ever wondered why Japan and Europe have had things like this for ages but we're just now seeing a glimmer of it here, it's because of stuff like this. No one ever gets ahead without someone tossing a landmine in your path and asking for their pound of flesh.

I see that the site actually useful for linking, Patently Apple, is getting their monopoly fetish on. From the sounds of things, they've managed to patent the entire concept out from under everyone else. They've managed to claim ownership over the concept of configuring accounts and placing various transaction rules on them.

So no one else can do that without Apple attacking them. I can't wait to have the entirety of NFC payments reserved exclusively to Apple devices, or Apple demanding exorbitant per-device fees for the ability to do so.

Re:Apple, anti-competition master.

[Microlith]

Americans are slow to pick up this kind of technology. It's been a problem for decades and it has nothing to do with patents.

Except that no NFC hardware has been on the market here for the better part of a decade, while it's been steadily rolled out and available elsewhere. The technology has, quite simply, not been available.

Do you think Europe and Japan don't have patents? or that they are irrelevant?

At least in Europe, software patents aren't valid. And in Japan, they seem to not have nearly the problems we do in the US with building and rolling out systems that are widely compatible between companies and regions. Here in the US a purely software pile of BS will block other vendors from distributing anything useful and open up everyone to legal assault, and deliberate incompatibilities and everyone demanding their own transaction fee and associated charge and alliance or it fails to work readily inhibits the adoption of new technologies and other customer-beneficial options.

Re:Apple, anti-competition master.

[Kagetsuki]

Posting because I tried to mod you "informative" but accidentally hit "redundant". Sorry.

But yes, THIS. The origin of the technology is "FeliCa" which started development in 1988 and was released in 1994. At this point here in Japan I have my train pass and cash on my phone and IC based systems are used in so many places now I could basically get by with nothing but my phone and drivers license.

No, they patented a system of NFC spending rules

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/03/apple-wins-patent-for-iwallet-the-one-that-will-rule-the-world.html

"Apple has received a major Granted Patent that generally relates to establishing financial transaction rules for controlling a subsidiary financial account and, more particularly, to various systems, methods, and electronic devices configured to provide for the establishment of such rules."

The rules basically come down to setting one account as a subsidiary of another, and the parent account then setting a system of spending rules and limits that apply to the subsidiary account. Optionally that these rules are transmitted to the bank as well, and applied generally outside of using the NFC as well.

Re:lame

[dimeglio]

Doesn't sound like it. They just patented "a way" of using NFC. Should be simple enough to find another way.

Re:lame

[ozmanjusri]

They just patented "a way" of using NFC.

To extract more money from everybody's wallets.

It's the Apple way.

Re:The core problem with the digital wallet...

[jo_ham]

*loses wallet*
"Hello [$Bank]? Yes, I lost my wallet, can you cancel my card and send me a new one? A few days and it will arrive in the mail? Excellent!"

*loses phone*
*logs into Apple ID from any computer*
*cancels card link to lost/stolen phone*
*connects card to new phone*
*continues life as normal, with minimum disruption to card access*

This doesn't even need to be about Apple - NFC payments and "electronic wallets" are the future

Re:New disorder

[MacGyver2210]

I normally wouldn't reply to an AC, but this pissed me off.

This is exactly the type of thing Apple would brainwash you into believing: that people aren't sick of their shit.

Welcome to reality. Step outside the distortion field for one second and you'll see how truly asinine and annoying it is when Apple, Google, MS, or any of those tech giants squash advancement for another, purely out of greed. Lately, Apple has been by far the worst. They reach out and patent technologies that other companies are well into developing, which they probably would have already had patents for - except they are normal, rational people who don't think someone is going to patent such a broad-sweeping commonplace item.

Nobody in their right mind would go after a 'slide to unlock' patent, the words 'AppStore', or patenting RFID(basically) all over again. There has been a slide-lock device somewhere on my house since I was born 30 years ago. I have no doubt there is a patent somewhere for the hardware version, and it has been around for at least a hundred years. How's that for prior art? RFID has been around since at least the late 1980s.

I'm surprised it is allowed to continue as it is completely anticompetitive to patent such vague concepts without any actual R&D and with (literally) tons of prior art.