Good and Evil in Apple’s Patent Garden

Is Apple’s newly minted patent for mobile payments good or bad for the payments industry?

The correct answer is, well, both. The patent, secured last Tuesday, has the potential to give Apple a sledgehammer with which to keep competitors at bay. But at the same time, there’s a whole raft of companies playing — or seeking to play — in the payments space that have relevant patents.

Let’s start with the actual patent, the application for which was first filed in May 2010. The Apple patent “generally relates to establishing financial transaction rules for controlling a subsidiary financial account and, more particularly, to various systems, methods, and electronic devices configured to provide for the establishment of such rules,” according to Patently Apple, a blog. On the surface, this would appear to grant Apple rights over payments applications with far-reaching functionality. Consider this image from the Apple patent:

What this seems to show is the function for any mobile notification related to spending. Obviously, I’m not a patent attorney, but does any mobile application these days not include a notification service of some sort?

But lest financial services companies the nation over begin planning to jump to another industry, as my patent attorney friend has told me repeatedly, patents are easily circumvented. Indeed, a more detailed investigation will find patents related to mobile payments owned by a wide variety of companies, from Microsoft to Motorola Mobility, JP Morgan Chase to Visa, Obopay to a woman named Michelle Fischer of Oakland, Calif. (Of course, the Motorola Mobility patent deserves particular attention since Google purchased Motorola Mobility last year largely for its portfolio of patents.)

So before anyone gets ahead of themselves and declares the iWallet the winner in mobile payments on the basis of Tuesday’s patent, remember this: Apple has not even launched the darn thing yet, and even if it did, there are plenty of mobile-wallet options already out there vying for payments victory. And if that doesn’t convince you, note that the average duration of patent litigation is around three years — and by then, mobile wallets might very well be passe.