Mitek Systems, Inc. (MITK)

[ueleaouk]

It appears the USAA lawsuit against MITK is without merit. IMO, USAA will either drop the lawsuit or lose in court. I hope MITK sues USAA for a couple billion.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mitek-systems-responds-usaa-lawsuit-120000128.html

SAN DIEGO, April 11, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a lawsuit filed on March 29, 2012, USAA sought a declaratory judgment that it did not infringe five Mobile Deposit(R) patents issued to Mitek Systems (Nasdaq:MITK - News) (www.miteksystems.com), a leading mobile imaging software solutions provider. Mitek believes it will soon demonstrate in court, USAA's Deposit@Mobile product infringes Mitek's patented technology for mobile deposit applications.

USAA also alleges that Mitek took information, put it into a patent application, launched a product, and concealed these events from USAA. Mitek believes it will demonstrate that USAA's trade secret allegations are demonstrably false.

Mitek believes that the evidence will ultimately show that Mitek's engineers independently developed its Mobile Deposit software and related patents based on Mitek's own ideas. Far from concealing the facts from USAA, Mitek launched its Mobile Deposit product in January 2008 and repeatedly and openly made USAA aware of the product at multiple points during 2008 and afterwards. USAA launched its own mobile check deposit application utilizing Mitek's patented technology in or around August 2009, more than a year after Mitek, and long after it first learned about Mitek's product.

For these reasons, Mitek believes that USAA's allegation in Paragraph 27 of its Complaint is dishonest. As email records show, the truth is that USAA knew about Mitek's product by early 2008, watched its progress during 2008, and admitted in October 2008 that Mitek was a market leader.

On January 16 and 22, 2008, Mitek emailed USAA employees to announce the new Mobile Deposit product, and to suggest that it might work well for an existing USAA product which used stationary scanners. USAA responding by acknowledging Mitek's "exciting" development and expressing interest in adding a mobile capacity to its product.

Mitek -- including its CEO -- then traveled to USAA's office on February 8, 2008 to brief USAA on Mobile Deposit. The parties signed a nondisclosure agreement before the meeting -- an agreement about which USAA's Complaint is conspicuously silent, despite detailing the parties' other nondisclosure contracts.

During the spring of 2008, Mitek repeatedly invited USAA to participate in a pilot project for Mobile Deposit.

On October 20, 2008, after Mitek emailed a USAA manager to describe new Mobile Deposit algorithms and features, the USAA manager responded by stating that he had been following Mitek's progress, congratulated Mitek on that progress, and added that "Certainly Mitek is on the leading edge of this space and hopefully you will see some great adoption."

Throughout these communications, USAA never once suggested that the product was based on purported USAA trade secrets.
Mitek will combat USAA's false allegations aggressively to protect its patent portfolio and its market-leading software. "We look forward to vindicating our intellectual property rights, our pioneering patents, and our market-leading products," stated Mitek CEO James DeBello.

The Company has retained Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as legal counsel.