MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.
Fiserv Inc., the manager of check-processing and cash machines, won a U.S. patent-infringement lawsuit filed by a Canadian company over software technology designed to prevent check fraud.
Fiserv doesn’t use the invention covered by the patent owned by closely held Advanced Software Design Corp. of Richmond Hill, Ontario, a federal judge ruled Monday. The patent covers both encryption and decryption of checks, and Advanced Software “cannot prove that defendant Fiserv performs both of these processes,” U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry in St. Louis said.
Advanced Software had sued Fiserv and three regional Federal Reserve banks, seeking cash compensation and an order to prevent further use of its inventions. Perry threw out the claims against the Federal Reserve banks in November 2007, along with any work Fiserv does for the government, saying that if the software company wants to sue the U.S., it would have to do so in a court in Washington that specializes in such cases.
Advanced Software is awaiting an appeals court ruling on its challenge to that 2007 decision.
Still remaining in the case were claims related to Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv’s work on behalf of other banks. In her non-infringement order, Perry ruled that Advanced Software “shall take nothing,” from its claims.
“We are disappointed, obviously, but we definitely intended to appeal the decision,” said Evi Constantinou, a spokeswoman for Advanced Software. “We’re fully confident of our position. We didn’t go into this lightly.”
Advanced Software licenses its programs to banks and competes directly with Fiserv in the market for detection of fraud in checks, she said.
Officials with Fiserv didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.
The case is Advanced Software Design Corp. v. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 07-cv-185, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri (St. Louis).
