The cases concern the E-Pass smart card, which was conceived over ten years ago when, according to the company web site:
"The inventor of E-Pass, Hartmut Hennige, found himself standing in the Zurich airport with a handful of credit and prepaid cards, none of which was suitable to use in a public telephone. He realised that a future generation of smart cards could be created which would allow multiple issuers to be represented on a single operating multi-functional smart card."
Hence, E-Pass was born, and a patent granted in 1994.
On 28th February 2000, E-Pass lodged a court action against 3Com, the then owners of PDA maker Palm, alleging that the company's Palm Pilots infringed its patent. 3Com denied the allegations and E-Pass went on to lodge similar actions against Microsoft and Compaq.
The Microsoft and Compaq litigations were put on hold pending an appeal in the Palm case over the interpretation of the description contained in the patent. In August the Appeal Court ruled in favour of Palm, and sent the case back to the lower court for a decision as to whether Palm Pilots actually infringe the patent.
E-Pass warned at the time that it would be seeking to resume the Microsoft and Compaq cases, and filed a motion to this effect in October. The motion has now been granted.
E-Pass has also filed an infringement action against Visa International and Visa USA in respect of the same patent.
According to E-Pass, Visa personnel, including the then Vice President of Product Development, Susan Gordon-Lathrop, met with Hardy Hennige in February 2000 to discuss Mr. Hennige's patented ideas. During that meeting, it is claimed that Mr. Hennige distributed his patent to the Visa attendees, and discussed his efforts to market his ideas. Afterwards the company did not hear back from the credit card giant.
However, alleges the complaint, almost one year after the meeting, Visa's Susan Gordon-Lathrop stood onstage at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show with Palm's then CEO Carl Yankowski, and demonstrated one of the several E-Pass patented inventions that Mr. Hennige had previously presented to Visa.
Visa's answer to the complaint is due at the end of this week.