DataTreaury Wins Next Round in Check 21 Patent Fight

PLANO, Texas – A federal appeals court handed tiny patent company DataTreasury another victory in its high-stakes fight for control over a variety of patents for Check 21 technology, a market that is soaring with the conversion of the U.S. economy from paper-based to the bits and bytes of the Internet. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected a claim by EDS in a patent infringement suit brought by DataTreasury over an EDS product called ‘PAY for Check 21,' which provides banks and credit unions an image-based interface. The lower court here has ruled that DataTreasury owns the rights to the technology used by EDS. DataTreasury, which is a holding company for a variety of financial services filed suit last year against 50 of the largest financial services providers in the world and has settled many of the claims for tens of millions of dollars. Among the defendants are the two major check imaging networks, SVPCO and Viewpointe Exchange, which are both owned by the nation’s largest banks. Several of the defendants have signed multi-million dollar license agreements to settle their suits, including JP Morgan Chase, NCR, Diebold, and Zions Bank.