MShift filed suit in federal court in San Francisco Friday claiming Digital Insight is infringing on its patent for the company’s pioneering mobile banking technology that Digital Insight is providing to hundreds of credit unions and banks.
"It’s crucial at this time that we really protect our technology and not let people steal it," Scott Moeller, CEO of MShift, told The Credit Union Journal Saturday.
The so-called 881 Patent, entitled a "System for Converting Wireless Communications for a Mobile Device," was awarded to MShift by the U.S. Patent Office in 2005 and allows smartphones and other mobile devices to access network sites by means of an adaption or conversion engine which translates between the language of the network site (for example HTML) and the language of the mobile device (HTML, HDML or WAP).
MShift was one of the first technology providers out of the box with mobile banking and first contracted with Digital Insight for a referral deal, then as reseller, according to Moeller. But that relationship ended in late 2009 and Digital Insight found another third-party vendor to provide mobile banking technology. "They’re selling a competitor’s technology that directly infringes on our patent," he said.
The third-party provider for DI is called Mobile Money Ventures, a joint venture between Citibank and South Korea’s SK Telecom that was not named in the infringement suit. Moeller said the venture may be added as a defendant in the case later.
The MShift technology has been popular among early credit union providers of mobile banking, with Patelco CU and The Golden 1 CU among the first customers, said Moeller, who founded the company in 1999. In fact, 28 of the top 50 credit unions by size offer mobile banking and 18 of those do so on the MShift platform, he said. Others are: Alliance CU, Visions FCU, Bank-Fund Staff FCU, Digital FCU and Xceed FCU.
Digital Insight, a unit of Intuit, is one of the biggest providers of Internet banking services to credit unions and banks. A company spokesman did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
MShift has applied for a patent that enables deposits on all mobile smartphone devices, including BlackBerrys, iPhones, Androids and Nokia.
