Intellectual Ventures may be running out of cash, but that doesn't mean it's slowed down the pace of evildoing. If you look over its recent lawsuits, you'll notice that over the summer, Intellectual Ventures was busy suing a bunch of banks, including Capital One (that lawsuit is embedded below). At least some of those lawsuits involve US patent 6,182,894 entitled: "Systems and methods for authorizing a transaction card." In short, it basically describes the concept of the CID or CVV number that is found on the back of most credit cards today, which you often have to enter when purchasing stuff online with a credit card. Now, we may question how the hell the idea of adding 3 numbers to the back of a card as a security measure should be patented in the first place, but let's leave that aside for a moment....MORE
Instead, let's go back a bit to look at the history of this patent, and a man named Bernard Bilski. As you may recall, Bilski was involved in what appeared to be a key lawsuit concerning the ability to patent software. Eventually, the Supreme Court gave a very narrow ruling on the issue that didn't provide very much clarity at all on the question of software patents. However, go back a little bit further, to one of the Bilski appeals, heard by CAFC. Lots of different players on all sides of the patent debate lined up to supply amicus (friend of the court) briefs. One of them was American Express, who (somewhat ridiculously) argued in favor of software and business method patents. And, in a bit of news that is rather important here, it happens to use patent 6,182,894 as an example of why these kinds of patents are so important, wherein it gives us a history of that patent up until 2007 or so....
...Again: AmEx patented those little numbers on your credit card, and then for the good of the industry and consumer protection donated the patent to a non-profit, who promised not to enforce the patent against banks... and then proceeded to sell the patent to Intellectual Ventures who is now suing banks over it....
The linked Reuters Piece is chock full of information:
Exclusive: Intellectual Ventures curbs patent buying amid fund-raising effort
