ICAP Ocean Tomo to auction off smart card patents
22 February, 2010
category: Contactless
ICAP Ocean Tomo, the intellectual property brokerage division of ICAP plc (IAP.L), announced it will offer for sale a patent portfolio of smart card technology at its upcoming Live Auction March 25, in San Francisco.
The patents in the portfolio describes a “hybrid” smart card design that incorporates integrated circuit and magnetic memories for storing data.
According to inventor Josef Osterweil, the portfolio introduces “Secure Swipe” technology to existing smart card infrastructure.
The portfolio contains two U.S. issued patents, one non-U.S. patent, and three U.S. patent applications.
U.S. patent 7,591,427 describes this ‘hybrid’ design which uses a matrix of electronic conductors for writing data on magnetic stripes. Each electronic conductor can be used to write multiple bits, thus reducing the total number of electronic conductors needed on each smart card.
U.S. patent 7,591,426 enables the reading and writing of data to take place on magnetic stripes using a similar matrix to the patent described above.
Click here to learn more about the portfolio.