Published:
Every Penny Counts(R) Sues Bank of America and VISA
On January 25th, Every Penny Counts, Inc.
(EPC), an intellectual property company, filed a patent infringement
lawsuit against Bank of America (BOA) and VISA, for commercializing the
"Keep the Change" program, which is an infringement of EPC's U.S. Patent
6,112,191 (referred to as the "Rounder Patent" in the Complaint).
EPC's attorneys, Phelps Dunbar (www.phelps.com), filed the patent
infringement suit in the United States District Court for Middle District
of Florida, Fort Myers, FL.
In regard to the development of the "Keep the Change" program, the
following is a quote from Business Week dated June 19, 2006:
"In October, 2005, Bank of America brought out a radically different
product that broke the paradigm. It's called 'Keep the Change.' The concept
solves a critical banking problem -- how to get consumers to open new
accounts. The product works like this: Every time you buy something with a
BofA Visa debit card, the bank rounds up your purchase to the nearest
dollar and transfers the difference from your checking into your savings
account. It also matches 100% of transfers for the first three months, and
5% of the annual total, up to $250 a year. Since the launch, 2.5 million
customers have signed up for 'Keep the Change.' Over 700,000 have opened
new checking accounts and 1 million have signed on for new savings
accounts.
"How did Bank of America create 'Keep the Change?' In the spring of 2004,
it hired an innovation and design research firm in Palo Alto, Calif., to
help conceive of and conduct ethnographic research on boomer-age women with
children. The goal was to discover how to get this consumer segment to open
new checking and savings accounts."
EPC's complaint alleges the following: In December 1993 EPC described the
innovative and convenient "savings/investing/donating" program in a patent
application that was approved and issued in August 2000 as U.S. 6,112,191
(the "Rounder Patent"). The "Keep the Change" program is an infringement of
the Rounder Patent. Both Bank of America and VISA were aware of the Rounder
Patent several years before the spring of 2004, but chose to willfully
infringe the Rounder Patent.
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Copyright © 2009, NewsBlaze,
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