The inventor of RSA's famous SecurID dongle has sued (PDF) Apple and Visa, alleging that both Apple Pay and Visa infringe four patents he owns.
Kenneth Weiss was the founder and CEO of Security Dynamics, the company that created the SecurID token used around the world to access secure computer networks. That company ultimately acquired RSA Security and took its name, then was bought by EMC.
Weiss left the company in 1996. By 2011, he had founded a new company, Universal Secure Registry, where he was working on mobile phone security.
It says Weiss' new company, USR, enables "highly secure" transactions from mobile phones, computers, and other devices. It says the "USR ID" application has been called "the most secure personal proxy in the world."
The complaint doesn't stress the point that USR's product is not available. The website for USR says the app is "coming soon." A button to "download client software for your Mac or PC" leads to a non-existent "downloads" webpage.
Back in 2011, Weiss told The Boston Globe he would seek to license his patents rather than build a product himself. "He's not planning to start a company to actually build the system, and even the demo he shows on his iPhone is a series of still images, not a functioning prototype," the Globe wrote.
Earlier this week, Weiss told the New York Times he's still hoping "to get into a conference room with them [Visa and Apple] and resolve this." He said he had extensive meetings with Visa in 2010 but never struck a deal, and Visa "dropped further communication without receiving a license."
The lawsuit claims that Apple and Visa are infringing US Patent Nos. 8,577,813, 8,856,539, entitled "Universal secure registry," as well as 9,100,826, and 9,530,137, "Method and apparatus for secure access payment and identification."
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