(Publ. 3 SEP 2020) Following a long-running patent dispute regarding the BankID app, the ruling has now been issued in the Swedish Patent and Market Court, PMD, on 1 June 2020. The court supported BankID’s opinion and dismissed Accumulate’s all allegations. Accumulate was thus to pay both parties’ legal costs of a total of SEK 13.7 million (€1.3 million), after which the company has filed for bankruptcy.

The Swedish company Accumulate has been in dispute with the company Finansiell ID-Teknik (BID), owned by seven Swedish banks, since 2010. Accumulate has developed patented technology for mobile security solutions which, they claim, have been used by Finansiell ID-Teknik in its popular mobile application Mobilt BankID, today used by appr. 92% of Sweden’s population. Accumulate believes that BID saw Accumulate’s technology around 2010 after which they took it and applied it to their own development work. BID claims that Mobilt BankID has been developed with its own technology.

In 2017, Accumulate issued a lawsuit against BID for patent infringement, breach of confidentiality and theft of trade secrets. The financial claims in the lawsuit amounted to just over SEK 6 billion (€580 million) due to damages and non-payment of license fees.

The Swedish Patent and Market Court states in its judgment that there are certain similarities between the technologies, however, according to their assessment, there has been no “flagrant copying”. Accumulate has also failed to prove that trade secrets have been stolen. Thus, all accusations from Accumulate were dismissed, which was instead sentenced to pay SEK 13.7 million in legal costs.

As a result of the judgement Accumulate has filed for bankruptcy.