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Technology Stocks : CheckFree (CKFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Benny Baga who wrote (2724)	3/21/1998 3:12:00 PM
From: Benny Baga	Respond to of 8545

I'm probably wrong, but I think History may repeat itself: January 30, 1995, TechWeb News ----------------------------------------------------------- E-Commerce Turf War -- Checkfree sues Intuit unit over patent By Clinton Wilder The battle for control of the conduits of electronic commerce moved into the courtroom Jan. 18, when Checkfree Corp. filed a patent infringement suit in Columbus, Ohio, federal court against National Payments Clearinghouse Inc. (NPCI), its major rival in third-party electronic payments processing. NPCI is a subsidiary of Intuit Inc., the personal finance software developer whose pending $1.5 billion acquisition by Microsoft Corp. is under Justice Department scrutiny. Observers say Checkfree's suit is an attempt to safeguard a piece of the electronic payments processing business before the Microsoft-Intuit juggernaut begins to dominate the technology that enables online commerce. ''A lot is at stake here,'' says Richard Crone, senior manager of KPMG Peat Marwick's financial services practice in Los Angeles. ''Microsoft may not control electronic payments, but you can bet that the first payment icon that comes up on its interface will be Intuit and NPCI's. It sounds like Sabre all over again.'' AMR Corp.'s Sabre airline reservation system handles bookings on most airlines, and the screens at one time showed AMR's American Airlines flights first. Ironically, Checkfree handled payments initiated through Intuit's Quicken software until 1993, when Intuit bought NPCI. NPCI, in turn, had processed payments via home-banking software package Microsoft Money, which Microsoft gave to Novell Inc. in October after announcing the Intuit acquisition. Checkfree says its patent applies only to third-party processing, not to banks and financial services firms like MasterCard International that process electronic payments for their own customers. Benny(just wishfull thinking)