TradeCard Inc.'s request for a second trial was denied in its patent infringement suit accusing Bank of America Corp. and S1 Corp. of using its technology for automated processing of letters of credit and purchase orders in international trade.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an order this month denying TradeCard's request for a new trial and refusing to set aside a March 2006 jury verdict, which found that the TradeCard patent is invalid.
"We are pleased with Judge Hellerstein's ruling," B of A said Wednesday. "We maintained all along that the bank did not infringe the TradeCard patent and that the TradeCard patent was invalid."
Kelsey I. Nix, a partner at the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, who represented TradeCard in the case, did not respond to a request for comment.
The case involved a TradeCard patent issued in November 2000. B of A and S1 unveiled the POPS processing system in January 2003, and TradeCard filed its suit two months later.
The case involved both prior art and non-infringement issues. Judge Hellerstein wrote that B of A had been working on an automated purchase-order system since the summer of 1991, and that First National Bank of Chicago had developed a predecessor system in the late 1980s.
Frank E. Emory Jr., the head of the litigation and intellectual property practice at Hunton & Williams LLP, who represented B of A, said its system also differed from TradeCard's operationally, because it required employees to examine discrepancies between purchase orders and invoices, while TradeCard's system was automated.
Defendants in patent cases should be in an even stronger position now, Mr. Emory said, since the case KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., decided by the Supreme Court in April, raised the standard for evaluating this kind of business method patents. "What the courts are trying to do is to find the right inflection point between a revolutionary idea and an evolutionary idea."
