Apple fanbois to be empowered to bonk each other Apple has filed a patent which uses NFC and Bluetooth to transfer funds when you bonk two iPhones together. The technology doesn’t use the NFC radio to transfer the funds: it’s done either over the air or by Bluetooth. The NFC is used to establish the veracity of the two ends and to encrypt the data using the secure element. …
Why is originality better than re-doing something someone else did poorly (it can be assumed since no one uses Paypal's 'original' idea) in a hopefully better way that gets actual uptake?
Apple didn't do the first smartphone or the first tablet, but they brought both from niche products (or in the case of tablets a wanna-be niche product that had never had market success) to the mainstream by developing a better and easier to use implementation of those existing products.
Tesla is over 100 years late with electric cars, should they not have bothered because they weren't first? Whoever brings the first fully autonomous self-driving car to market is unlikely to market the best self driving car 5-10 years down the road, but I guess in your mind once someone declares "first" everyone else should move on to something else because originality is all that matters?
Coming up with ideas and first cut implementations is one skill, making them work in the real world for real people is another skill. Rarely are they found together.
I'm certainly not going to argue that NFC payments solve a problem no one actually has. The catch is that EMV (which Apple's NFC uses) does solve a real problem in the US with card fraud, though it won't matter once EMV compliant cards are issued to replace the mag stripe only or "chip" cards we have now that don't add the one-time-use card numbers.
The only thing paying someone with my phone would solve is if I wanted to give someone money but didn't have cash handy. I'm in that situation maybe once every few years so it hardly qualifies as a pressing need. But patents don't have to demonstrate "this is something you need" only a novel way of doing something whether you need it or not.
> I'm certainly not going to argue that NFC payments solve a problem no one actually has
NFC is the Sperm of the Devil (TM). Hates it we does!
(This comment bought to you by the "we don't like protocols designed without much thought to security" department. YMMV. HAND.)
Why does no one who reads the Reg seem to understand how patents work? You can't patent an idea, but you can patent a particular way of implementing an idea. That's what Apple is doing. Is anyone else using NFC for authentication and setting up encryption via a special secure area in the SoC but other means for transmission of the actual data? No, that's why they are able to patent this.
Apple's patent won't stop anyone else from using NFC phones to transfer money unless they want to do it in exactly the same way. Which they won't/don't, since Android always uses NFC for the data transmission, while Apple is not, nor do they have a secure enclave on their SoCs. There are plenty of other ways to accomplish this, at least one of which (Paypal's) is very likely patented as well.
"You can't patent an idea, but you can patent a particular way of implementing an idea. "
Except Apple will use the Patent to sue anyone with a similar idea, even if done differently.
"Apple's patent won't stop anyone else from using NFC phones to transfer money unless they want to do it in exactly the same way."
Yes it will, as Apple will use the patent and sufficient Lawyers. They spend only 1.5% on R&D and I bet that includes the secretaries, floor space and patent applications.
The reason Apple ever patent anything (and they have very many patents, yet I've not seen one yet developed in house that ought to be a patent, so called "design patents" are what are called elsewhere "Registered Designs" and most are totally derivative of much older products e.g. Braun and should be invalid. The fluted coke bottle is a valid "Design Patent").
When has Apple patented something and sued someone trying to implement the patent in a different manner? Forget rounded corners, that's a design patent, which is a totally different thing than a utility patent which is what this article is concerned with.
The oft-cited statistic about Apple not spending "enough" on R&D is stupid because Apple spends more on R&D than almost anyone. But their revenue is so huge that it adds up to a small percentage. Should they spend an extra 10 or 15 billion to get the industry 'benchmark' percentage of R&D spending? It is pretty hard to spend huge sums of money on R&D when you are a company with only a handful of products, unlike a GE or a Samsung which has many thousands of product lines. I suppose they could start doing basic research like the old AT&T, but it would be hard to argue to shareholders that this is a worthwhile use of money. A monopoly like AT&T could do that because it would actually be able to use the sort of advances it was coming up with, at least until it was broken up and had to worry about profit margins etc. like all the rest.
PIN can have fraudulent transactions.
I know two different routes. But PIN reduces bank's liability to fraud. They just insist that you MUST have used the PIN.
(One route is to watch what pin is used or intercept it with doctored reader, easy to turn up at shop and claim you are upgrading. Other route is that madly, the terminal doesn't send a hash of pin to HQ. It asks card if PIN correct, so you add a chip that simply always replies "OK" to terminal for ANY pin. Massive design flaw! No encrypted clever handshake, it's like sending a POP3 password!)
"why are the banks trying so hard to get pay-by-bonk into the arena?"
a) I'm not convinced they are trying hard. The folks making card are pushing contactless cards which are less secure. Notice Lidl only allows small payments for contactless.
b) NFC tech was invented for warehouses. It's inherently stupid for retail products (nothing needs to be stored a barcode is fine) or payments (inherently insecure, security is a fudged after thought.
NFC should NOT be in payment cards (debit or credit) or retail products, door keys, travel cards or passports.
What crazy too is my post office is using insecure and easily duplicated or damaged mag stripe instead of chip & pin.
Cheques are practically dead in Ireland. Most places don't take them and I've not seen one for years.
My main concern is that pin/chip credit cards are less of a target for theft since they are less useful to thieves.
Reintroducing cards that require no verification, albeit for small payments (although I would question whether $200 could be classified as small in anybody's book) are making my plastic a viable theft target again.
Typing in a 4 digit number isn't hard, but it does take time. A contactless card transaction on Transport for London services takes 0.5 seconds to complete, 0.3 seconds if it is Oyster. A PIN transaction would probably take about 5 seconds. 4.5 seconds may not sound like a major inconvenience, but multiply it by the hundreds or thousands of people in queue waiting to get into the station, and it makes a huge difference.
Then why not make chip and pin cards only ask for the pin when the amount is greater than £20 (and sometimes randomly in case the card is stolen). Sticking a card into a reader and pulling it back out can't take long. At least then you avoid trouble with hacking a contactless card from a distance without your knowledge.
but but but it's apple! this is now the bestest thing since the last bestest thing they invented x number of years after it had been brought to market by someone else.
I like to think of their share price powered by the infinite gullibility of the general public. invest now, put your kids through university in a few years, or holiday or whatever...
And what recourse does one have if the "bonked" transaction is in some way not carried out properly? To whom does one turn for redress of overpaid funds or funds not received?
Because fairly basic questions like this being unanswerable was what caused the first rounds of PayPal hate.
The answer to reforming the banking system is unlikely to lie in throwing out the bathwater, baby and all.
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