Frederick "Ric" Richardson (born 1962 in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

) is an Australian inventor, recognised for his patent of a form of

product activation Product activation is a license validation procedure required by some proprietary software programs. Product activation prevents unlimited free use of copied or replicated software. Unactivated software refuses to fully function until it ''determi ...

used in anti-piracy. He is the inventor of record for a number of

U.S The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. patents, including the Uniloc patent US5490216 and the Logarex patent 6400293. Richardson grew up in

and currently resides in Byron Bay. He founded Uniloc, originally an activation technology company but became an npe, or non-practicing entity after his departure to commercialise his invention, and in 2003 it became a licensing company that has sought to license some of the

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s that he invented. Some of these patents date back to 1992. The machine fingerprinting technology is used to stop

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of Copyright#Scope, works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the c ...

. He is now an independent inventor, and is seeking to develop technologies including ship designs, shark warning systems and password replacement technology.

Case of Microsoft vs. Uniloc

In Uniloc USA, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., a jury awarded Uniloc US$388million against

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

for their infringement of a

patent licensed to Uniloc. The application before the court to go to trial was originally blocked by a summary judgement for Microsoft. A jury found that Microsoft products Windows XP, Office XP, and Windows Server 2003 infringed the Uniloc patent. The presiding U.S. District Court Judge William Smith disagreed as a matter of law, overturning the jury's verdict and ruling in favour of Microsoft. This ruling was appealed and reversed. Microsoft later settled, paying an undisclosed amount.

Independent Australian inventor

Richardson has been profiled in two Australian Story episodes, sharing details about his initial $388 million jury win in Rhode Island and the cases eventual settlement with Microsoft. In 2015, he collaborated with other NSW North Coast residents to examine the feasibility of a sonar-based alarm system in Byron Bay, designed to alert beach users about the presence of sharks.

Haventec

In 2016, Richardson co-founded a security technology company called Haventec with Nuix chairman and interim CEO Anthony "Tony" Castagna. The company is commercialising an invention by Richardson that uses public keys in combination with a one-time password technique to prevent passwords from being stored or used on enterprise networks. Another of Richardson's patented inventions is being used by the company to allow consumers to automatically enter credit card details. Richardson's password-less authentication and one-click payment systems both rely on the concept of reducing the opportunity for

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

s to infiltrate an enterprise system.

References

External links

Ric Richardson
blog
Ric Richardson
website
Haventec

Uniloc
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Ric 21st-century Australian inventors Living people 1962 births

Case of Microsoft vs. Uniloc

Independent Australian inventor

Haventec

See also

References

External links