The News

Leading patented NFC technologies from INSIDE have been recognized as essential and are now available from Via Licensing demonstrating strong technology leadership and industry foresight

04/06/2007

Aix-En-Provence, France, June 5th, 2007 -- INSIDE Contactless, a world leader for contactless semiconductor chips and hardware platforms, today announced that it has made its patents deemed essential to Near Field Communication (NFC) as practiced by devices which are compliant with ISO 18092 (equal to ECMA-340) and ISO 21481 (equal to ECMA-352 referencing ISO 14443 A and B as used in NFC applications) available for licensing through Via Licensing Corporation, which develops and administers patent licensing programs on behalf of innovative technology companies and for the convenience of licensees.

NFC is a short-range, standards-based wireless connectivity technology that allows consumers to perform safe and contactless transactions, access digital content, and connect electronic devices with a single touch.

The joint licensing program is designed to provide convenient access to essential patents for the practice of NFC. These licenses cover NFC-compliant consumer electronic devices, like mobile phones, as well as commercial devices like payment processing terminals, transportation terminals and vending machines.

“The availability of INSIDE’s NFC patents in the Via Licensing program demonstrates strong technology advance from the company, it also sets a new milestone in the rapid development of this industry as a whole, and illustrates INSIDE’s commitment to support the NFC market deployment in a non-proprietary approach for the benefit of the entire eco-system.”” says Remy de Tonnac, CEO of INSIDE Contactless. “Some of our NFC patents were filed in 1999 by Bruno Charrat our Chief Scientist at a time, when the NFC acronym wasn’t born yet,. This speaks a lot about the innovation spirit that drives INSIDE and it is today a great recognition of Bruno’s visionary stature,” adds Mr de Tonnac.

Since 1995, INSIDE Contactless has then been pioneering Best in Class solutions to support the emergence of the multi-applicative NFC market, resulting in setting its micropass® and microread® technologies as standards of the payments and telecommunications markets. Since 2006, INSIDE has gained a leading position in the US contactless payments market, and is currently gaining increasing attention in the NFC market.

Leading companies in the finance, telecom, entertainment and transportation industries are indeed already involved in various NFC projects throughout the world, demonstrating market demand and technology maturity.

In a recent timeframe, INSIDE has sent the market a number of strong signs to reinforce confidence in NFC developments: the company recently announced a partnership with Infineon Technologies, aimed at increasing performance and security of the NFC standard, and also joined forces with Mobile Distillery to help on the development of an interoperable Java / NFC platform.

“After having been recognized as Essential, we are very proud to see our technology available from Via Licensing’s very innovative program,” completes Remy de Tonnac. “Our objective is to support the creativity of developers and help them achieve the great application that will build our future.”

About INSIDE Contactless:
As the only fabless semiconductor company focused exclusively upon contactless chip platforms, INSIDE Contactless is a market leader in Near Field Communication (NFC), contactless payments, and access control. Innovation in contactless technology has led to essential NFC technology patents granted to INSIDE along with more than 55 other patents. INSIDE is the #1 market share company in contactless payment market in the US with more than 15 million chip platforms delivered to card manufacturer partners and more than 12 leading bank card issuers. More than 25 key partners around the global, including HID, Giesecke & Devrient, and SAGEM, have successfully delivered contactless products such as payment & access cards, point of sale terminals, NFC enabled mobile handsets, and other products which are ‘powered by INSIDE’. INSIDE Contactless is headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France, with offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Poland, San Francisco, and Boston.