Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG) has been sued for patent
infringement by Google Wallet, a smartphone application that acts as a virtual
wallet and stores credit, debit card information and also facilitates payments
where contactless payments are accepted.
The lawsuit has been filed by the investor of the
patent Peter Sprogis.
Tech Crunch, which ran the story written by patent
attorney Leonid Kravets, said that the patent was filed on Sept 19, 2005 and
issued on November 20, 2007.
"There is no assignment information recorded at
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to determine if the patent may have been
bought by another entity," the report said.
According to Kravets, "Based on my initial review
of the Google Wallet website, I did not find any awards being provided by the
Google Wallet program. Google only states that “[y]ou may earn reward points
for purchases through your card issuer’s credit or debit card rewards program
(such as gas, grocery, and restaurants purchases, overall spending, and
purchase protection or insurance), if applicable…. Your card issuer (not Google
Wallet or The Bancorp Bank) determines and is responsible for whether rewards
points or other benefits apply to these purchases.” Therefore, it will be
interesting to see how the plaintiffs are interpreting the claims, in order to
determine if this case has any legs."
He observed that the timing of the litigation appeared
to be odd since the technology was still struggling to take hold in the United
States.
"This appears to be a clear sign that patent
litigation will expand into the mobile payments space as adoption of the mobile
payment technology increases," he said.
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