Summary · updated 2026-09-16

Phone as a Key was shown to Huf under NDA, years before Huf announced it as its own.

In 2015 Huf Hülsbeck & Fürst announced a new invention: using a mobile phone as a car key, later productised as Liberkee and Phone as a Key. This site sets out the record of a system with the same architecture, designed by Phillip Shaw and Michael Greaves, disclosed to Huf under a non-disclosure agreement in 2012, and published as UK patent application GB2516939A on 11 February 2015.

Application

GB2516939AAccess authorisation system and secure data communications system

Inventors

Phillip Martin Shaw
Michael James GreavesApplicant: EUS Associates Ltd

Filed · published

7 Aug 2013 · 11 Feb 2015UK Intellectual Property Office

Disclosed to Huf

2012, under NDAVia an intermediary; NDA barred any transfer of IP

Huf announcement

Feb 2015; Liberkee Nov 2015Huf website, per our record

Huf ownership

Sodecia 30% since May 2025Joint control cleared by the EU, 6 May 2025

What we say happened

Between 2006 and 2011 we designed and validated a system in which a central authenticator verifies a person’s identity, then issues matching one-time tokens to their phone and to an access device such as a vehicle. The phone passes its token to the vehicle over short-range radio; the vehicle checks the match and unlocks. That is the architecture described in GB2516939A, and it is the architecture of a phone-as-a-key product.

In 2012 the system was disclosed to Huf under a non-disclosure agreement. The NDA expressly prohibited transfer or sale of the intellectual property. The disclosure went through an intermediary who, on our account, misrepresented ownership of the work to Huf. We reported the intermediary’s conduct to UK police. Huf was told, in writing, that the material it had received was ours and that the intermediary had no right to pass it on.

In February 2015, the same month our application was published, Huf announced the technology as its own invention. In November 2015 it launched Liberkee. Huf has since built Phone as a Key into a product line and, in 2025, brought in Sodecia as a strategic shareholder.

Why it matters now

Huf is changing hands. Sodecia took a 30% stake in May 2025 with a stated intention to increase it, and Sodecia’s Rui Monteiro is now Huf’s CEO. Anyone valuing Huf’s connected-access business, its lenders, or its customers has an interest in knowing whether the origin of Phone as a Key is clean. This site exists so that the question is easy to find and easy to check. What to ask, and where the documents are.