Posts Tagged: "fintech"

This week in the U.S. capital, the Senate will hold committee hearings on antitrust issues in digital platforms and real-time payment systems, a sector of fintech that will also be explored by the House Task Force on Financial Technology. Elsewhere in the House of Representatives, there will be hearings on Veterans’ Affairs scheduling technology, clean industrial innovations and medical research funding at the NIH. The week kicks off at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation with a look at small business innovation funding programs. The Brookings Institution will also host events on Army modernization efforts and issues in disaggregating health data for improved policy-making.

In yesterday’s article, we discussed patent trends in the Internet of Things (IoT) industry, as part of our patent-trends study (performed in a collaboration between Kilpatrick Townsend and GreyB Services). Today’s article pertains to the Financial Technology (FinTech) industry, which is defined as technology used to support banking and financial services. In June 2014, the Supreme Court decided Alice v. CLS Bank, which nearly immediately made it much harder to patent a FinTech invention. This resulted in fewer FinTech patent application filings. Nonetheless, the use of bank accounts, credit/debit cards and money-transfer systems is ubiquitous, and protected innovations in this area offers a high potential value. Thus, it is essential to understand the industry and the patenting prospects, which can inform both R&D investments and patenting strategies.

As Jaime Siegel, OIN’s Global Director of Licensing, notes, OIN is able to grant free membership to companies joining the consortium thanks to the efforts of eight full-funding member companies which have each funded $20 million to support OIN’s operations through an endowment. These companies include the first six companies to form OIN: Sony, Phillips, IBM, Red Hat, NEC and SUSE; joining those companies are Google and Toyota. OIN’s board consists of representatives from each of these full funding members. Every new member of OIN signs the same licensing agreement as the full-funding members, giving all members in the organization equal standing in terms of the cross-license agreement.

This week in Capitol Hill hearings, it will be a relatively light week all around, and particularly so for those who focus on intellectual property, technology and innovation. Indeed, there are few hearings on tap for the week that might be of interest. Nevertheless, financial services innovation, health care cost reductions will be discussed in the Senate on Tuesday.

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.