Article One Partners LLC, an online community that works to validate or invalidate patents by offering cash compensation, says it has uncovered prior art in the JSA Technologies patent that covers the account to account transfer of funds between networks via the Internet. That could invalidate the patent that impacts campus card programs that use the Web to reload money to student accounts from other bank accounts.

Article One’s study for the patent held by JSA “uncovered a broad range of prior art references, including two references that each separately can show the patent to be invalid under the strongest level of invalidity evidence, called anticipation,” says the Article One report.

Prior art is evidence that the patented process, in this case JSA’s patent covering account transfers via the Internet, was in use prior to the patent being issued. As Article One says, such evidence could “come from published content anywhere in the world and in any language, including: previous patents; news or academic publications; non-digitized documents such as textbooks; or any public document provided to others, including conference or academic papers and business materials.”

According to Article One’s JSA study, “(it) uncovered new dramatic invalidating prior art that extensive traditional prior art searches didn’t produce … (including) two separate paths to invalidity under ‘102 anticipation,’ including a U.S. patent, and obscure publications about a product offered in 1997. ” JSA started the patent process in 1998.

Article One has named two advisors who identified the prior art evidence “and will share the monetary reward.”

However, Article One points out that “only a U.S. federal court or the U.S. Patent Office can invalidate a U.S. patent. Article One announces only its own decision for the outcome of Studies—based on its analysis of the prior art for purposes of determining winners to its Patent Studies. A court or the Patent Office may disagree with Article One’s decision. While Article One obtains outside counsel verification, Article One’s invalidity position is not a legal opinion.”

Jim Doyle, JSA’s vice president of operations, said he had not seen the report and therefore could not comment.