U.S. Patent Office Rejects All Ninety-Five NeoMedia Patent Claims.
Neomedia, you may remember, owns a large patent portfolio in the field of connecting to internet content using the mobile phone (amongst others). I have taken a dim view of their patents and the impact to the use of QR codes, particularly outside of Japan. See this post which generated some interesting discussion in the comments.
The Electronic Frontier put together a patent busting initiative which overturned the decision in July. See report on their site. (Thanks to Dean Collins for alerting me to this news.)
Other machinations at NeoMedia
An avid follower of this sector, the Pondering Primate noted:
On October 15, 2007, the day before the Patent Office ordered the re-examination, the Chairman and member of NeoMedia's Board resignation became effective.
I noticed that NeoMedia appointed Iain McCready as CEO in May (see announcement). Ian was one of the early folks at Mobiqua in the Scotland who were doing nicely in the mobile ticketing field with their own 2D bar code solution for an excellent niche vertical (nice one!).
Then I noticed that Ian has got off to a flying start by raising $8.7million for NeoMedia (see annoucement) last week. Clearly, someone has a lot of confidence in the new approach - I am told that NeoMedia have been fractious organization in the past.
