Posts Tagged: "Bank of America"

On March 16, 2020, Bitcoin sold at $5,024, down from its previous high of over $19,000. On November 25, 2020, it sold at over $19,000 again. Interest in blockchain technology and Bitcoin, in particular, is on the rise after a cold winter, which began in January 2018. Facebook Libra made a bid to become the world’s currency, and although government regulators have so far stifled its implementation, it still may be implemented in a revised form that satisfies the regulators. Some estimate that Apple could generate $100 billion in shareholder value if they were to integrate Bitcoin into Apple Pay.

British patent data insights firm Cipher recently released an IP strategy report that provides a look at how many firms are patenting technologies in the hopes of disrupting various industry sectors. Among the various highlights of the report include a look at fintech patents, which shows that tech companies and not banks are leading the way in obtaining patents that cover the future of banking.

USAA alleges that Wells Fargo Mobile Deposit remote deposit capture system, which was released years after either of USAA’s remote deposit services were first offered, infringe upon the asserted patents. Wells Fargo Mobile Deposit has been downloaded more than 10 million times from the Google Play Store alone and by February 2018, Wells Fargo had 21 million users who were actively using a mobile banking account. Wells Fargo mobile check deposit system involves the use of alignment guides and feedback indicators which are designed to assist customers in orienting the camera, features covered by the USAA patents. Although USAA approached Wells Fargo last August to discuss the licensing of USAA’s remote deposit capture patents, Wells Fargo allegedly continues to practice the technologies without any compensation to USAA. Along with counts for infringement of each patent asserted, USAA is also seeking a finding of willful infringement to enhance the actual damages by three times.

Bitcoin was touted as the world’s first decentralized digital currency. It basically is a cryptocurrency which uses peer-to-peer technology to provide payment network gateway. Bitcoin is deliberately designed for public use by making it an open-source. Therefore, nobody owns or governs or control Bitcoin and everyone can be a part of it. Bitcoin financial infrastructure follows decentralized and automated systems which overcome the inefficiency of the traditional financial system. The unique feature of Bitcoin is that no one can block you from transferring money from anywhere in this world. Further, this makes whole transaction process irreversible. These transactions are recorded in a public distribution ledger called a blockchain.

Margaret Weichert, Trump’s selection for deputy director of management at the OMB, is an inventor who has received “14 successful U.S. patents,” an indication that someone knowledgeable about patents and the U.S. patent system will have a role in shaping U.S. policy on the budget for the executive branch, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As an inventor and entrepreneur, Weichert’s focus was squarely on financial networking and online transactions.

Many of the patents we noticed in our recent survey of BofA technologies are related to enhanced security methods for financial transactions, such as the innovation protected by U.S. Patent No. 9218596, entitled Method and Apparatus for Providing Real Time Mutable Credit Card Information. It discloses a smartcard apparatus having a microprocessor chip, a button, a dynamic transaction authorization number and a Bluetooth low energy device (BLE) that works to transmit an instruction to a smartphone for a request for a dynamic transaction authorization number when the button is depressed and receive the number from the smartphone; the smartcard further has a battery and a dynamic magnetic strip comprising a digital representation of the dynamic authorization number. This technology is designed to enhance security measures in smartcards having magnetic strips without requiring a banking institution to issue new cards. Enhanced security for banking transactions taking place on cloud infrastructures is featured within U.S. Patent No. 9184918, entitled Trusted Hardware for Attesting to Authenticity in a Cloud Environment. I

2015 was a truly remarkable year for innovation and we saw major trends in self-driving cars, wearable technologies, digital wallets and much more. I hope you will enjoy this top 10 listing, which includes innovations for providing water in arid regions, wireless charging systems for electronic devices and even the collection and retransmission of sunlight. Of course, as with all of these types of lists, the criteria used for inclusion on this list is subjective, based on my own personal preferences. Please feel free to let us know if you saw something particularly noteworthy in 2015.

Mobile devices were the subject of a pair of recently issued Bank of America patents recently. It was at least a little intriguing, however, that the invention relates more to personal security than the protection of financial accounts. U.S. Patent No. 8922657, entitled Real-Time Video Image Analysis for Providing Security, claims a method for providing security to a user by receiving an image of an area frequented by a user, building a directory of non-human object and individual data within that area, recognizing variations between the data directory and a real-time video stream of the area and presenting selectable indicators of recommended security actions associated with the variations to a user via a mobile device. The innovation is intended to provide smartphone owners and other mobile device users with an augmented reality service for identifying unwanted home intrusions and offer them options for contacting authorities.