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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
(DataTreasury Corporation)
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MELVILLE, N.Y. - DataTreasury Corporation, a Long Island-based payment processor, announced today that it has filed patent-infringement lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against four major banks. These lawsuits allege that Bank of America, Citigroup, Wachovia and Wells Fargo infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 5,910,988 and 6,032,137, which were issued to DataTreasury in 1999 and 2000 for image capture, centralized processing and electronic storage of document and check information. These patents describe a technology process capable of implementing the federally enacted Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, popularly known as "Check 21." Annually, Bank of America processes approximately 9.4 billion checks, Citigroup approximately 2.4 billion, Wachovia approximately 4.5 billion and Wells Fargo approximately 3.7 billion.
The filing of these four patent-infringement lawsuits follows the recent entry of two Consent Judgments signed by federal judges in Texas, judgments that ended patent-infringement lawsuits that had been pending against one of the world's largest and most respected financial institutions. (Copies of the original Consent Judgments are attached to this news release and may also be viewed at www.datatreasury.com/consentdocuments.) These Consent Judgments explicitly state that DataTreasury's patents are valid and enforceable, and the financial institution in question is now a licensee of DataTreasury's patents.
"We hope that these new defendants realize that long and expensive litigation is definitely not in the best interest of their shareholders," said DataTreasury's lead litigation counsel, Ed Hohn of Texas-based Nix, Patterson & Roach, LLP, "since it is now clear that DataTreasury's patents are not only valid and enforceable, but have also gained commercial acceptance in the banking industry."
DataTreasury's patents have also been recognized in several other countries, including Australia, Egypt, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Singapore and Taiwan, and their issuance is pending in a number of additional countries and in the European Union. The international licensing process is scheduled to begin later this year.