

Patent on the NFC Mechanics of Apple Pay Details Its Inner Workings - 80ProofPudding
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/09/apple-patent-on-the-nfc-mechanics-of-apple-pay-details-its-inner-workings

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jackgavigan
It's worth noting that tokenization isn't an Apple thing - it's something the
card networks came up with a year ago:
[http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2013/mc-visa-
amex-p...](http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2013/mc-visa-amex-propose-
new-global-standard.aspx)

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drdaeman
What I don't get is how something like this could be patented. Isn't it all
obvious? I think we had every single non-trivial component (single-use tokens
passed over secure channels, initialize-send-retry_if_failed loops and other
stuff) for years. If the "innovation" is that those are now used for payments
over NFC — I don't get it. Or I've missed something novel on a quick glance.

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gvb
You need to read the claims of the patent - it isn't patenting payments over
NFC, it is on ways of recovering on NFC communications failures.

That still doesn't seem novel, but that is a different topic to argue than
payment over NFC...

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el_duderino
"That could be ideal for the forthcoming iPad, which is rumored to offer Touch
ID and Apple Pay"

Can't wait to be in line behind the person fumbling to get our their iPad to
pay for a pack of gum. Phone and watch should be smooth though.

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calvin_c
From the way the rumor mill is churning it looks like the iPad won't have NFC,
and so the Apple Pay functionality would be limited to In App purchases
through Instacart, Groupon and such, rather than In Store purchases at
Walgreens.

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discardorama
Here's a link to the patent:
[http://1.usa.gov/1nelibZ](http://1.usa.gov/1nelibZ)

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gvb
Claim 1, 8, and 15, on which the other claims are based, indicates the patent
applies to how the system recovers from NFC failures, not the NFC payment
mechanism itself. The other claims cover ways of diddling (mostly hardware)
parameters to recover.

1\. A method of operating a portable electronic device, comprising: using the
electronic device to conduct a mobile payment transaction at a merchant
terminal; and _in response to detecting that the mobile payment transaction
has failed,_ updating at least one operating setting on the electronic device
prior to performing a subsequent payment attempt at the merchant terminal.

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toomuchtodo
Did Apple just try to patent updating a variable and re-trying a request?

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th0br0
original post: [http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/09/apple-outlines-
app...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/09/apple-outlines-apple-pay-
nfc-operation-in-comprehensive-patent-filing)

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dan1234
Does this mean Apple Pay won't work with existing NFC payment terminals?

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nobodyshere
Nope. It will.

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timdierks
Patents need have little to nothing to do with products, and any article which
claims that a patent disclosure reveals something unannounced about a product
can be ignored without reading.

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timdierks
Yay, downvote!

What for? I continue to assert that articles that claim that patents reveal
things about products are unfounded.

I have a number of patents myself: companies file them all the time with
little to no concern for whether they'll use them in a product. Thus, the
existence of a patent is little to no evidence regarding products.

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80ProofPudding
What you said about the relationship between products and patents is true and
worth adding to the discussion, fwiw.

I think making it an absolute - ie, there is never anything to learn along
these lines - is going too far, but there are certainly a lot of patents that
never see further development.

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timdierks
It's a little bit of hyperbole, sure, but I don't recall ever seeing a press
article that used a patent disclosure to offer any real insight about
unreleased products. I'd be happy to see a counterexample.

