Ingenico says a patent infringement lawsuit filed by NCR in December concerning its electronic payment terminal, e(N)-Touch 1000, is 'unjustified' and 'unfounded'.
NCR filed a section 337 complaint on 9 December 2003 at the US International Trade Commission alleging that Ingenico's e(N)-Touch 1000 infringes its recently issued patents for a system that produces an electronic credit card receipt along with a captured electronic signature.
Lloyd Baylard, vice president and general manager of Ingenico's Retail Solutions division, says: "Our understanding of the NCR patent is that it requires integrating an image of the signature with an image of the payment receipt document, as well as the communication and storage of this integrated document image as a single record for later retrieval.
"Our software has never linked the signature and receipt in this manner."
Ingenico - which recently shipped its 300,000th e(N)-Touch 1000 terminal in the US - says the US Patent Office explicitly cited the NCR system's ability to transmit an electronic receipt with the captured signature as a single record as the reason it allowed the NCR patent to issue in the first place.