WASHINGTON - An effort by several big banks to carve out an exemption from key Check 21 patents appears to be dead after its chief Senate backer withdrew his support.
Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions said he believes the provision in the pending patent reform bill to exempt large banks from patents awarded to tiny DataTreasury may be unconstitutional, so he is no longer supporting the measure.
DataTreasury owns the patents on several key imaging technologies that are critical to the Check 21 process and has filed suit against many of the biggest banks and transaction processors. Many of the plaintiffs have entered into multi-million dollar license agreements with Data Treasury, among them JP Morgan Chase, Diebold, Merril Lynch, RDM Corp. and Zions Bank’s NetDeposit unit to use the technology.
But there are still several suits pending, including those against Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
Those banks and their lobbying group, the Financial Services Roundtable, succeeded in convincing Sessions to sponsor an amendment to the patent bill that would carve out an exemption from patent infringement laws for those banks using the Check 21 technology.
(c) 2008
