NFC Patent under Litigation

Recently, On Track Innovations filed a lawsuit against T-Mobile for its patent US6045043. On Track Innovations claimed that T-Mobile’s smartphone services base on HTC Amaze 4G and the Nokia Astound violate its NFC technology.

US6045043 claimed fundamental functions of NFC in combination with other functions. The issue in litigation will be the claim construction for the limitation “contact and contactless modes of operation,” especially the term “and.”

Title: Contact/contactless data transaction card

Summary:
Both "contact" and "contactless" devices are in the form of smart cards provided either with electrical contacts for effecting direct electrical contact with a card reader. When contactless data transmission is required, a coil antenna in the chip card is adapted to receive data from and transmit data to a reading device having a similar antenna. The invention relates to a data transaction device having an on-board processor for effecting both "contact" and "contactless" modes of data transfer, each conforming to different communications protocols. The invention provides a data transaction card wherein operating parameters associated with the communications protocols can be set by the manufacturer or user in accordance with customer requirements.

Claim:
1. A data transaction card having contact and contactless modes of operation, comprising:

a semiconductor device for operating in said contact and contactless modes in accordance with a respective contact or contactless data communications protocol,

a contact field including contacts fixedly connected to the semiconductor device during both said contact and contactless modes, and allowing data transmission between the contacts and the semiconductor device in accordance with said contact data communications protocol only during said contact mode,

an antenna coil for allowing contactless data transmission between the antenna coil and the semiconductor device, in accordance with said contactless data communications protocol, and

an antenna interface coupled to the antenna coil, to the semiconductor device and to at least some of the contacts in the contact field and being responsive to an electromagnetic field across the coil for effecting said contactless data transmission.


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