Headlines:
Ingenico, DataTreasury Settle Patent Suit
The French point of sale terminal maker Ingenico Group signed a licensing agreement with DataTreasury Corp., the Melville, N.Y., item processor that has said its patented technology is critical to check image exchange systems.
Last week, immediately before jury selection in DataTreasury's suit against Ingenico was scheduled to begin, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas accepted a settlement deal between the two companies. Ingenico conceded that DataTreasury's patents are valid, but the companies did not release further terms of the settlement, announced Monday.
"This agreement is significant because it substantiates that the DataTreasury patents are valid and enforceable," said Rod Cooper, a lawyer with the Cooper Law Firm of Dallas and DataTreasury's patent counsel.
A spokesman for Ingenico did not return phone calls Monday.
DataTreasury has filed suits accusing numerous banking and technology companies of patent infringement. Some high-profile companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Zions Bancorp., have reached settlements with DataTreasury. Suits against First Data Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp., Viewpointe Archive Services LLC, and others are pending.
Ed Hohn, a lawyer with Nix, Patterson & Roach LLP and a co-lead attorney on the Ingenico case, said that the settlement gives further weight to DataTreasury's claims in the other suits.
JPMorgan Chase and Ingenico both "tried to invalidate these patents, and we survived," he said. "This truncates the legal issues into infringement."
DataTreasury's claims could make it more expensive for the banking industry to use exchange networks to send and receive check images. The company has frequently said it plans to exert its patent rights over anyone using such networks.
Mr. Hohn said some financial services companies have approached DataTreasury to request licensing agreements and avoid litigation. He said he plans to announce two to three deals in the next few months.
DataTreasury's patent case against First Data is scheduled to go to trial in July.
Heartland Installs Thin-Client System
Heartland Financial USA Inc. of Dubuque, Iowa, which operates eight banks and 59 branches in nine states in the Midwest and the West, has centralized much of its computing network to reduce costs and improve security.
Marti Vandemore, the vice president of information services at the $2.7 billion-asset Heartland, said it has converted 80% to 90% of its employees from laptop or desktop computers to "thin-client" terminals, though a few workers still need their old computers for various reasons. "We'll probably concentrate on those areas next, to work toward that 100% implementation."
That conversion took eight months; it began at a handful of new locations, then moved two departments at its home office, and then finally was introduced at all its banks.
Shane Nicely, an assistant vice president at Heartland, said it began installing Softricity Desktop virtualization software late last year from Softricity Inc. of Boston to manage its network from a server farm at a data center in Dubuque.
Softricity announced its licensing deal with Heartland last week.
Executives say the centralization has reduced calls to the help desk and improved compliance with laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Heartland completed it at the end of the spring, Mr. Nicely said.
Heartland spent three years studying options for moving from desktop computers to thin client machines before deciding to use Softricity.
The Softricity system, which hosts applications and files centrally and delivers them on demand to users, replaced a network using software from Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. "We have fewer issues now than we did before," Mr. Nicely said.
As part of the project, Heartland discovered it was using 160 user applications. "That was a lot of applications for a company our size," Mr. Vandemore said. By identifying redundancies, it cut the number of applications to about 100.
Only 600 people use Heartland's network now, but the server farm could handle 1,500 to 2,000, "so we wouldn't have to redesign a couple of years down the road," Mr. Vandemore said.
