Pay By Touch Scores a Sweeping Victory in a Patent Suit

Pay By Touch, a San Francisco-based company that has been marketing a point-of-sale payment system that relies on fingerprint scans rather than cards or other devices to authenticate transactions, scored a sweeping victory today in litigation over the central patents to its technology. Judge Maxine Chesney of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted summary judgment in Pay By Touch's favor, finding that the company “own[s] each of the 15 patents at issue in this lawsuit.” The suit had been filed by Excel Innovations Inc., which claimed it owned the patents to the technology. “This ruling further enhances the standing of our company and ensures our value proposition to the market as we proceed to roll out our service and raise additional capital to finance market integration,” said Craig Ramsey, chief executive of Pay By Touch, in a statement. Pay By Touch, formerly Indivos Corp., took on several new managers, including Ramsey, last summer and completed a $10 million round of financing last fall. Most recently, it signed on Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co., a supermarket chain based in Charleston, S.C., which plans to roll out the biometric technology to its checkout lanes in 120 stores within the next 18 to 24 months (Digital Transactions News, March 10). The system works by comparing fingerprint scans made at the point of sale to templates stored in a secure database at Pay By Touch to authorize transactions against credit, debit, and checking accounts customers designate when they enroll in the service. In this way, customers do not need a card, keyfob, or any other device to complete payment. The company holds 23 patents on its technology, with another 13 pending.