The case is part of a series of actions taken over 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 sued 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 and most recently,
Visa International and Visa USA. The Microsoft and Compaq cases
were put on hold pending an appeal in the Palm case over the
interpretation of the description contained in the patent. In
August last year the Appeal Court ruled against Palm, and sent the
case back to the lower court for a decision as to whether Palm
Pilots actually infringe the patent.
E-Pass resumed the actions against Microsoft and Compaq late
last year, and won a small victory in a preliminary hearing last
week when Judge Kenneth Hoyt ruled that all but one of the patent
definitions put forward by E-Pass would be used by the court when
the case comes to trial, rejecting Microsoft's arguments that the
word "card" implied particular sizes, and that Pocket PCs don't
come in those sizes.
