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Software Patent
of the year 2006

March – Patent 3

EP619565 – Automatic transaction system used with cards to download fees or data of a utility program

EU-softwarepatent on software/business method
Application by PITNEY BOWES (USA) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Granted on 05 November 1997, protest was entered but rejected
Patent specification provided by FFII/Gauss
Patent specification provided by EPO/espacenet

Advice on the reading of patent specifications:

The decisive element are the claims, as they specify which actions are forbidden within the framework of the patent.
Violating one single claim is sufficient to be considered a patent violation. Generally, claim number 1 is the decisive main claim which covers all other claims relating to special cases.
The description is intended to help the reader interpret the claim. At the same time, it is supposed to document and disclose the details of the invention. This disclosure is the original purpose of the entire patent system.
In practice, a patent specification contains no detailed information on how the patented procedure could be implemented (even if the patent owner allowed the implementation). In particular, a software patent contains no program code (reference implementation), but merely describes the idea of a software.

Patented idea: Payment with a chip card

Main claim: A certain amount of money is stored in a chip card. The terminal debits the amount and delivers the article.

Further claims:

Specialisation on the sale of stamps and consignment notes that are printed when required
Storage of additional graphical data on the chip card

Description: In a very elaborated way the patent specification describes the concept of paying with a chip card. There are also included security aspects. Obviously the authors realised that it is unsafe to store only an amount of money on a chip card. "Active" cards, which can protect parts of their memory module against external access are much safer. Such methods are not spotted in the claims; there are only mentioned the memory modules of the card used to store data.

Everyday parallel: A buyer pays a salesman a certain amont of money in advance. The salesman takes down this amount on a piece of paper (chip card). As a result of the purchase the salesman subtracts the value of the article from the quoted amount and delivers the article. The "credit" can also be negative. In summary, one can say that buying something on tick in a bar or at the grocer is also covered by this patent.

Examples for patent infringements: