Posts Tagged: "Wells Fargo"

Third Circuit Says Patent Owner Failed to Show Banks Control Askeladden, So No Breach of Contract

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on August 31 affirmed a district court’s ruling that Verify Smart Corp had failed to plausibly allege an agency relationship between Wells Fargo and Bank of America (the “Banks”) and a banking industry group’s subsidiary sufficient to prove the Banks enlisted the subsidiary to challenge a patent they were contractually prohibited from challenging themselves.

USAA Asserts Mobile Check Deposit Patents Against Wells Fargo

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.

Big Banks Get Software Patents Despite Alice

There are plenty of patents being issued to these giants of the banking industry which protect methods of processing transactions or performing other services through computer technologies. This year’s Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International has drawn a lot of attention to software patents, and particularly the type of financial service software patents that were protected by the Alice Corporation patent. The Supreme Court specifically cited that fact that the software was related to financial transactions as at least some reason to rule the patent claims invalid. Yet, there are a number of patents we noticed which were recently issued to these financial corporations involving software technologies for financial services.