Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Friday November 01 2019, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the loss-for-smile-detection dept.

In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that you can't get a patent for implementing an otherwise abstract idea on a computer. The decision, known as CLS Bank v. Alice, has had a big impact over the last five years, invalidating a lot of broad software patents.

But a ruling this week illustrates the limits of that landmark ruling. The confusingly named United Services Automobile Association, which provides insurance and other financial products, sued Wells Fargo for infringing two patents on the concept of cashing checks with a mobile device. Wells Fargo argued that the patents were abstract—and therefore invalid—under the Alice rule.

[...] The patents cover check-cashing mobile apps that automatically snap a photo once a suitable image of the check is in the field of view.

A key claim of one of the USAA patents covers the concept of using a "processor" (aka a smartphone) to take a picture of a check and then send the check over a "communication pathway" (aka a network). USAA's supposed invention is the idea of monitoring "an image of the check in a field of view of a camera of a mobile device with respect to a monitoring criterion using an image monitoring and capture module of the mobile device"—and waiting until the image has met the criteria (is the entire check in the frame? Is there adequate light?) before snapping the picture. In other words, they patented the idea that you should wait until you have a good shot before snapping a picture.

[...] Wells Fargo argued that USAA had simply used a computer to perform the same steps any human being would take when snapping a photo of a check. Obviously if a human being was snapping a picture of a check, they would monitor the image in the viewfinder and only click the button once it showed an acceptable image.

But the court disagreed, noting that human eyes and human brains can't measure objective criteria like brightness as precisely as a computer can. USAA has argued that its approach leads to fewer bad check images being submitted. So in the court's view, the patent doesn't just cover an old-fashioned process being done on a computer—the use of the computer improves the process, yielding a patentable invention.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday November 01 2019, @11:06PM (3 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Friday November 01 2019, @11:06PM (#914850)

    Or perhaps we could just strangle all these smart phone lovers with some old fashioned phone cords. Problem solved.

    Really, why even mess with a printed check if you are using your toy cell phone anyway? Don't all loyal iPhone owners use Apple PayPayPay anyway? Or GooglePay, or even good old PayPal? "On a computer"? If sending a photo is so reliable, then why couldn't I put a check in my scanner, scan it, and then e-mail it? Or better, yet, FAX it. Yea... Because buy moar smert phones!

    Also, how does one get cash from a cell phone? (Other than shooting someone, and then flipping their phone for cash to buy drugs) Don't they mean depositing or bill paying?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 02 2019, @01:39AM (2 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday November 02 2019, @01:39AM (#914898)

    >Really, why even mess with a printed check if you are using your toy cell phone anyway?

    Simple: because there's a bunch of dinosaurs out there who like to send paper checks, even though it's 2019. Governments (especially state and local) do this a lot; I recently got a tax refund check, as did everyone else in my state (VA), and of course it was sent out in the US Mail as a check. Also, lots of companies still like to send paper checks because, unlike many other options, there's no fees involved with checks. If you have a small business and a business account with PayPal, for example, you can certainly receive payments that way, but then you have to pay ~3% fees. But if one of your customers sends you a paper check for $0.50, there's no fee for you to deposit those funds.

    >If sending a photo is so reliable, then why couldn't I put a check in my scanner, scan it, and then e-mail it?

    You theoretically could, but the banking apps don't normally accept this I think. Probably due to ease-of-use and also quality control: the app doesn't just have you take a photo; instead, it actually looks at the camera in real-time as you try to take the photo, and then it snaps the photo for you when the check is correctly aligned within the rectangle. If they just accepted anyone's photo, they'd have all kinds of horrible photos for human workers to deal with. On top of that, it's probably a little bit of a fraud countermeasure.

    >Also, how does one get cash from a cell phone? Don't they mean depositing or bill paying?

    Yes. It is really annoying that they call this "check-cashing", when obviously, it isn't, it's about depositing checks into your bank account without having to waste your time and fuel traveling to a bank branch.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:04AM (#914926)

      Permit me to provide a dinosaur's point of view.

      Years ago when banks first started providing the capability to pay bills electronically from your checking account, my sister set up such an automatic payment for her monthly car payment. For the first few months everything went fine. Then the auto loan company contacted her wondering why she'd stopped paying. She contacted her bank, which said they'd still been making the payments. The bank pointed at the auto loan, which pointed at the bank. This went on for six months, during which time the rest of the family had to pitch in to cover the two months missing payments to keep her car from being repo'd. Finally after much bitching and legal stuff, the bank actually bothered to investigate and determined they were the ones at fault. My sister got her money back, but the hit on her credit report for missed payments never got fixed. Funny how that happens.

      Compare and contrast with this. A few years ago I was in the hospital for some various things, and received the bill afterwards. This was not a small sum of money, but I did have enough to cover it. I wrote one of those paper checks and popped it into an envelope, and sent it certified mail with return receipt, off to the hospital's billing handler across the country. After a couple of weeks I noticed it hadn't cleared the bank, and I contacted the bill handler; they hadn't gotten it. The post office could not explain where the, certified mind you, envelope had gone, but it was most certainly gone. So I just cancelled the lost check at my bank (cost $30, and was even able to do it online) and sent the bill handler another check for the amount (overnight via FedEx this time). They got it, they cashed it, done and done. Yes, it cost me $30, but I was in control of what was going on. I didn't have to beg some uncaring clerk to pretty please look in the computer and try with their limited understanding to figure out what happened. Strange that the check with the largest amount I've ever written was the only one that I've ever had lost in the mail, but at least I could fix things myself.

      So yeah, I mostly write physical checks. I'm going to keep doing it, too.

    • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday November 02 2019, @04:11PM

      by SomeGuy (5632) on Saturday November 02 2019, @04:11PM (#915052)

      Simple: because there's a bunch of dinosaurs out there who like to send paper checks, even though it's 2019.

      Paper=flexibility

      There are a lot of poor/kids/illegals/whatever that may not even have a bank account. Employers paying for brief temp work or others making one time payments (like tax returns) won't want to waste the time setting up any kind of direct deposit anyway.

      Probably due to ease-of-use and also quality control:

      More likely to with the amount of lock-down on "smart" phones, to keep users from messing with things the big companies don't like. That, coupled with agreements to sell more cell phones, of course.

      So anyway, boo hoo, some rich folks and their fancy "smart" phones will have to drive by the bank to deposit their check. It's just so awful and horrible! :P