MINNEAPOLIS – U.S. Bancorp is the latest financial company to settle patent infringement claims with DataTreasury, a small Texas company that holds several patents on Check 21 technology.
Under the deal U.S. Bancorp will pay DataTreasury licensing fees for the key check technology in exchange for settling the case. The patents cover a system for the remote-image capture and centralized processing, storage and retrieval of documents and other paper transaction data.
In March 2010 a jury awarded the firm $26.6 million in damages after finding that US Bancorp and Viewpointe – a technology firm partially by US Bancorp and other big banks – willfully infringed the company’s two check-imaging patents. Later that year a federal judge doubled the damages to around $54 million.
DataTreasury has brought in around $400 million in licensing fees and legal victories for its digital check-processing patents with settlements against JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, UBS, Zions Bancorp, PNC, Viewpointe, NCR Corp. and several others.
