The case is part of a series of actions taken over the E-Pass smart card, which was conceived over ten years ago when, according to the company web site:
"The inventor of E-Pass, Hartmut Hennige, found himself standing in the Zurich airport with a handful of credit and prepaid cards, none of which was suitable to use in a public telephone. He realised that a future generation of smart cards could be created which would allow multiple issuers to be represented on a single operating multi-functional smart card."
Hence, E-Pass was born, and a patent granted in 1994.
On 28th February 2000, E-Pass sued 3Com, the then owners of PDA-maker Palm, alleging that the company's Palm Pilots infringed its patent. 3Com denied the allegations and E-Pass went on to lodge similar actions against Microsoft and Compaq and most recently, Visa International and Visa USA. The Microsoft and Compaq cases were put on hold pending an appeal in the Palm case over the interpretation of the description contained in the patent. In August last year the Appeal Court ruled against Palm, and sent the case back to the lower court for a decision as to whether Palm Pilots actually infringe the patent.
E-Pass resumed the actions against Microsoft and Compaq late last year, and won a small victory in a preliminary hearing last week when Judge Kenneth Hoyt ruled that all but one of the patent definitions put forward by E-Pass would be used by the court when the case comes to trial, rejecting Microsoft's arguments that the word "card" implied particular sizes, and that Pocket PCs don't come in those sizes.