Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

JPMorgan Files Patent Application On 'Bitcoin Killer'

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-digital-benjamins dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has filed a patent application for an electronic commerce system that sounds remarkably like Bitcoin — but never mentions the controversial, Internet-only currency. The patent application was filed in early August but made publicly available only at the end of November; it describes a 'method and system for processing Internet payments using the electronic funds transfer network.' The system would allow people to pay bills anonymously over the Internet through an electronic transfer of funds — just like Bitcoin. It would allow for micropayments without processing fees — just like bitcoin. And it could kill off wire transfers through companies like Western Union — just like Bitcoin. There are 18,126 words in the patent application. 'Bitcoin' is not one of them."

12 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe the Patent Office will notice by eclectus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe the patent office will notice a bit of prior art? One can hope, right?

    --
    This signature is a waste of 42 characters
    1. Re:Maybe the Patent Office will notice by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, first to file doesn't affect the issue of publicly disclosed prior art.

      First to file only sets the priority of the application.

    2. Re:Maybe the Patent Office will notice by icebike · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, but I'm thinking more of USPTO process in this case. The patent can still be granted unless someone files a petition citing prior art. After that it may be invalidated based on Bitcoin existing, but my point it that it's still possible that the bank can receive this patent.

      Except that it is almost exactly unlike bitcoin. Because it deals in real bank account and real money. Money you can spend anywhere.

      The novel part is the fees-free micropayments, which will allow you to use things on the web without being flooded with ads for things
      you don't want. Payments as low as factional pennies. Its a frangible currency.

      However, SCOTUS is currently reviewing this whole field of "do something via computer" and get a patent, and the whole business practices thing is as likely to be tossed out or more tightly limited in the aftermath.
      Coin is coin. And doing it by computer is not that new. Micro-payments are not that new. They were simply too expensive to deal with in the past.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    3. Re:Maybe the Patent Office will notice by Eunuchswear · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The whole article is shit.

      Patents don't protect what you want to do, they protect how you do it.

      The article claims that JP Morgan have invented a system that does some of the same things that Bitcoin does, it gives no evidence that it does those things in the same way.

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    4. Re:Maybe the Patent Office will notice by Theaetetus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It doesn't matter. If the people behind Bitcoin never bothered to file for a patent, JP Morgan is now going to get it first--meaning Bitcoin will then be in violation of said patent (as unfair as that is).

      That's not how first-to-file works. If the people behind Bitcoin kept Bitcoin secret, never published anything, never used it publicly, etc., and then (i) JP Morgan filed a patent application on it, and (ii) subsequently the people behind Bitcoin filed a patent application on it, then JP Morgan would win and get the patent - because, given two applications by two different inventors on the same invention, the first-to-file wins (hence the name). This is as opposed to the first-to-invent system, where in the above scenario, Bitcoin would win if they could show lab notebooks and internal documents showing that they actually invented it prior to JP Morgan and were working on reducing it to practice the whole time. Those proceedings were called interferences, and they occurred, on average, about 20 times a year. Out of half a million applications. That's literally all the change to "first to file" means, and those .004% applications are all that were affected. It has nothing to do with what's prior art or whether Bitcoin, which predates JP Morgan's application, can infringe any patent granted from it - and no, it can't. Not unless they change their implementation to incorporate something new that's in the JP Morgan application. If they freeze the implementation here, they can't possibly ever infringe.

  2. Being able to do the same things is irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just because this proposed currency is capable of doing many of the things that Bitcoin does, doesn't mean it copies Bitcoin.

    Point out the technical components that copy Bitcoin, not the capabilities.

    1. Re:Being able to do the same things is irrelevant by Agent+ME · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, I'm skimming the patent, and I don't see how this is like Bitcoin. It's not a decentralized currency. It's just a different interface for using existing bank accounts they control. It's only anonymous to the users. The whole system runs on trusted servers they control and can see what's happening on.

      The stuff that made Bitcoin revolutionary isn't that it works over the internet, or has receive-only addresses. The revolutionary part was that it was decentralized. It didn't rely on any trusted or privileged groups or servers. All nodes that people run are equal. There is no central minting group who can secretly mint more or change the minting rules. The currency itself is limited. This proposal does not involve any of that.

  3. Has nothing to do with bitcoin. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The patent is a near-exact description of how paypal works.

  4. Trolling by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Informative

    Troll summary for a troll article.

    The patent has nothing to do with Bitcoin. It's a payment processing system that's set up so it can use anonymized IDs rather than actual account numbers.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  5. If you patent prior art, I feel bad for you son. by gandhi_2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's got 18 thousand word, but a 'bit' ain't one.

    --
    THL phish sticks
  6. NOTHING like Bitcoin by harvestsun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The point of Bitcoin is that it's decentralized. There's no single entity that keeps track of what money is where. Every person who uses Bitcoin has a record of every transaction (in the form of the blockchain), and is involved in the process of verifying transactions (in the form of bitcoin mining). Although the security is still being debated, in theory, you would need to control half the computing power of the Bitcoin network in order to break the security.

    In contrast, this patent seems to be talking about a system that uses your same old credit card account. Which is not surprising; how would a BANK use a DECENTRALIZED currency system with its customers?

    So basically, this is a meaningless article written by some idiot at Fox News who wanted to make a headline that would stand out. Which I suppose worked, since it made it past the impeccable Slashdot editing process.

  7. This predates Bitcoin by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

    The original application on which this is based is dated May 3, 1999. So this predates Bitcoin. Only prior art earlier than the priority date is relevant.

    The life of the patent counts from the priority date, so this patent, if issued, will run out in 2019. The USPTO doesn't consider this patent to contain patentable subject matter; they've issued a 101 Non Final Rejection. (You have to look up the patent application in USPTO Public PAIR to see this. Public PAIR has the status info for all patents as they go through examination, and images of all the actual documents. All the letters and forms back and forth between the applicant and the USPTO are in there. PAIR is kind of slow, and there's a CAPTCHA to prevent it from being scraped in bulk, so the data in PAIR isn't indexed by search engines.)