A SPECTACULAR David-versus-Goliath-style victory in the European patent court could bring forward the day we can safely use a cellphone as a credit card, passport, driving licence or identity card.
Inventor Wayne Michaels formed Celltrace Communications of Winkfield, Berkshire 10 years ago. Last week, he won a four-year legal battle against six electronics industry heavyweights including Schlumberger, Bull, Gemplus and Swisscom. These firms had asked the European Patent Office in Munich to reject Celltrace’s 1998 patent on a way to make private data secure in a cellphone, on the grounds that it wasn’t new. But the EPO has upheld the patent (EP0748135).
When the companies appealed the patent, Michaels became swamped by legal paperwork. “Patent attorneys don’t tell you is it’s impossible to fight such opposition by big companies. What I needed was a big brother,” he says. So the heavyweight British Technology Group took over his patent, and the legal fight, in return for a share of the rewards.
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The idea of a mobile phone that securely holds all sorts of personal information had been stymied by the way digital phones work. Conventional SIM cards have limited memory and a fixed file structure that cannot normally store important numbers such as credit card details. And even if they can, the numbers are not safely encrypted. So buying something with a cellphone still involves reading your credit card details out loud or authorising an extra charge on your airtime bill.
But back in 1993, Celltrace came up with a solution: give SIM cards a variable directory structure similar to that of a PC’s hard disc. This structure can be modified, with files being remotely added, encrypted, altered, deleted or protected against deletion. This allows new functions to be added to a mobile phone, new menus displayed and, crucially, credit and ID details securely stored.
Although phone calls are currently encrypted, data stored in a cellphone is not. Celltrace’s idea lets you pay for things by entering a security code on your mobile, which zaps your encrypted bank details across the ether.
An appeal is now likely, but BTG says that the EPO’s decision is unlikely to be overturned.
