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12 January 2015Patents

JP Morgan wants waiting game in IV patent wrangle

US bank JP Morgan Chase has asked an appeals court to suspend a lawsuit in which it was accused of infringing cybersecurity patents, because it is waiting to hear about a possible review by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

JP Morgan was accused by non-practising entity Intellectual Ventures (IV) of directly infringing five patents covering firewall systems and other online information protection systems.

Previously, Alvin Hellerstein, a judge at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, rejected the bank’s bid to stay the lawsuit, which was filed in June last year.

But, in an appeal filed against the decision at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday (January 7), JP Morgan said Hellerstein erred in his decision.

The New York headquartered bank said that because it had filed for a covered business method (CBM) review with the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) last summer, the lawsuit should be stayed pending the board’s decision on that request.

The PTAB is not expected to decide whether to institute proceedings until next month, and IV, which has a portfolio of more than 70,000 patents, said any appeal should not be heard until the USPTO has decided to hear the petition.

Eric Citron, IV counsel, said: “The court is [without a granted CBM petition] going to be taking [JP Morgan Chase’s] word for it that is a meritorious CBM review.”

Introduced as part of the America Invents Act, CBMs allow companies that are being sued for patent infringement to challenge the validity of patents relating to data processing and other operations used in the practice, as well as administration or management of a financial product or service.

The patents in the lawsuit are US numbers 5,745,574, 6,826,694, 6,715,084, 6,314,409 and 7,643,666, which include a security infrastructure for electronic transactions and a firewall system blocking intruders from accessing a computer network.

Neither JP Morgan nor IV responded immediately to a request for comment.

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