Apple sued for allegedly infringing electronic payment patents

Another day, another lawsuit. Universal Secure Registry, a Boston area “enabling technology” company, has filed a complaint in United States District Court for the District of Delaware accusing Apple and Visa of infringing patents for electronic payments and identity authentication that paved the way for their mobile payment platforms.

The suit seeks unspecified damages, but details the scope of the infringement, claiming, “since 2014 Apple’s backend servers and Visa’s payment processing network VisaNet, including Visa Token Service, have supported and processed transactions made using Apple Pay, including billions of Apple Pay transactions made in the United States.” 

According to the complaint, “Apple CEO Tim Cook stated at the iPhone 6 launch event in September 2014, ‘[p]ayments is a huge business. Every day between credit and debit we spend $12 billion. That’s over $4 trillion a year and that’s just in the United States. And this business is comprised of over 200 million transactions a day.”

“USR has set forth facts in the complaint which we believe will lead to discovery that will support claims of willful infringement against both Apple and Visa,” USR founder and CEO Kenneth Weiss says. “If a jury finds that Apple and Visa’s infringement were willful, up to triple damages could be awarded.”

USR purportedly holds a portfolio of 13 U.S. patents, plus additional patents pending and foreign patents authored by Weiss since 2000.  The patents focus on software applications that secure and unimpeachable identity authentication can enable. These include payments, secure financial transactions, physical access and a replacement for Weiss’s original SecurID token.