This second invention relating to a 'System and Method for Check Fraud Detection Using Signature Validation,' confirms the company's innovative leadership in image-based forgery detection.

The company received official notice from the US Patent and Trademark Office on February 1, 2007 that application number 11/008,893, an application filed initially on December 10, 2004, had been allowed.

"This particular patent builds upon the prior patent in that it extends the breadth and scope of protection of our invention," said James DeBello President and CEO of Mitek Systems. "This second patent reaffirms Mitek's strong and growing intellectual property portfolio in the area of Image Analytics."

Mitek scientists have created a system and method of image-based fraud detection, which validates the authenticity of a signature on a financial document such as a personal check without the need for a connection to a signature archive database. This invention builds upon the previous by specifically broadening the scope to refer to machine readable instructions pertaining to signature encoding to creating a unique fingerprint, and the same for decoding and validating the authenticity of a signature on a check by comparing the actual signature against the fingerprint, thus rendering the check self-authenticating. This patent also broadens the protection of the invention because it does not claim any restriction on the size of the encoded information.

As with the others related to it, the company believes this invention will be particularly useful as the banking industry's Check 21 image-based check clearing trends accelerate. A unique characteristic of the invention is that it enables signature verification at various points of check presentment, for example at bank teller stations or at retail store registers. The signature authentication technology protected by these patents is currently embedded in the check fraud solution available from the John H. Harland Company marketed under the brand Validif. This same technology is the key component of the SignProtect product, which is embedded in a system to prevent illegal drug sample diversion, marketed by Stay In Front, Inc to pharmaceutical companies.