Can you imagine apps in your phone talking to each other?

Obviously, you can. Now, can you imagine a company getting a patent for this technology in today’s time? I bet NO.

JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in the US, has proved us all wrong. The bank has been awarded a patent (US Patent No. 9,747, 468) that allows mobile applications that talk to each other. JPMorgan’s patent filing was titled “System and method for communication among mobile applications” and was filed back in 2013. The process is such an obvious process in today’s smartphones that no company can claim this patent.

The patent covers the broad and obvious idea of a user giving a mobile application permission to communicate with another application. This idea was not just obvious, but also already implemented when this patent was filed in 2013. The Patent Office seems to have given a broad software monopoly, ignoring common sense and what is already so commonplace. They only seemed to refer the existing patents and patent applications while deciding on this patent.

The full text of Claim 1 of the ’468 patent is as follows:

A method for a first mobile application and a second mobile application on a mobile device to share information, comprising:

• The first mobile application executed by a computer processor on a mobile device determining that the second mobile application is present on the mobile device;
• Receiving, from a user, permission for the first mobile application to access data from the second mobile application;
• The first mobile application executed by the computer processor requesting data from the second mobile application; and
• The first mobile application receiving the requested data from the second mobile application.

JPMorgan has been a victim of patent trolling. According to the figures from Cornell Law Review, the bank had been subject to more than 100 patent-related lawsuits since 2008. JP Morgan Chase can actually accuse developers using this technology of infringing its new patent. The developers can defend themselves and should eventually win, but only at an enormous cost.