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Judge tentatively rules against SmartMetric in patent case

October 1, 2013

Saying "I don't see there's anything to determine here for a jury," a U.S. district court judge issued a tentative ruling last week that Visa and MasterCard had not infringed on a patent owned by SmartMetric. The tech company is seeking $13.4 billion in damages from the payment card giants.

A report by Bloomberg said that Smartmetric attorney Patrick Bright called the judge's ruling a "reversible error," and said that the case should be heard by a jury. "You substituted the court as the trier of fact," Bright told Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald.

Last week's hearing in Los Angeles was the upshot of an appeals court decision in April 2012 that confirmed half of a lower court ruling against SmartMetric, but sent the other half back to the court for reconsideration.

The lawsuit in question involves U.S. patent 6,792,464, "System for automatic connection to a network." SmartMetric has claimed that the card companies violate its patent, which describes the automatic connection to a network that occurs when an EMV card is used.

The appeals court ruled that the wording of the patent made the contactless claim by SmartMetric irrelevant. However, the appellate judges said the lower court must reconsider the case only as it applied to contact reader transactions.

Bloomberg said that Judge Fizgerald will consider the case further before issuing a final ruling. The report did not include a date for that ruling.

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