The application

GB2516939A: what it describes, and what its status means

The published application is the one part of this record that anybody can check without asking us. Here is what it says, with its dates and its status stated plainly.

Field	Detail
Number	GB2516939A
Title	Access authorisation system and secure data communications system
Applicant	EUS Associates Ltd
Inventors	Phillip Martin Shaw; Michael James Greaves
Filed	7 August 2013 (priority date)
Published	11 February 2015
Status	Withdrawn, recorded 23 December 2015. Not granted.
Cited by	CN105976466A, CN105976472A, US10124750B2, US10663965B2 and others
Source	patents.google.com/patent/GB2516939A

What the application claims

The system has three parts: a central authenticator, a user device (a phone), and an access device (for example a vehicle lock). The authenticator holds user identifiers, personal identity data, access-device identifiers and the privileges each user has been granted. When the user asks for access, the phone sends identity data to the authenticator; once verified, the authenticator issues a transaction token to the phone and a matching token to the access device. The phone passes its token to the access device over short-range wireless; the access device compares the two and, if they match under the set criteria, grants the privilege. Long-range communication runs over a mobile network, short-range over Bluetooth.

Strip away the vocabulary and that is a phone-as-a-key system: cloud-issued, time-limited, per-transaction credentials delivered to a phone and checked locally by the car.

Why the withdrawal does not settle the matter

A withdrawn application confers no exclusive rights, and we do not claim any. Three things survive the withdrawal:

Prior art. Once published, an application is part of the public record with an effective date of its filing. Anything in GB2516939A is prior art from 7 August 2013 against any later patent claiming the same thing, whoever files it.

Contract. The confidentiality agreement of 23 May 2012, under which the system was disclosed, does not depend on a patent. Its side document recorded the IP as ours and patent in progress, and it barred any transfer without our signed consent. It preceded every agreement Huf made. How Huf got it.

Copyright and confidence. The design documents, specifications and software disclosed in 2012 are protected as literary works and as confidential information from the moment they were created, independent of any registration.

Why was it withdrawn? We will add the reason here. Whatever the reason, it does not alter the publication date or the disclosure that preceded it.

Huf’s own patent family

Huf holds its own patents on the same architecture. The family starts with a German application filed on 22 May 2014 and runs through PCT/EP2015/050471 (filed 13 January 2015) to EP2997550B1, granted 8 June 2016, and US10589718B2, granted 17 March 2020. The named inventors are Sven Gennermann, Daniel Bambeck and Uwe Käufer.

	GB2516939A (Shaw, Greaves)	Huf family (Gennermann et al.)
Filed	7 August 2013	22 May 2014 (DE priority)
Central server	Central authenticator holding user identity, device identifiers and granted privileges	Central control platform managing user identities and access rights
User device	Phone; sends identity data to the authenticator for verification	Mobile access device; user identity checked on the phone
Credential	Transaction tokens issued to phone and access device	Signed credentials (certificates) issued by the platform
Vehicle side	Access device matches tokens locally and grants the privilege	Access control unit validates the credential locally and enables functions
Cites the other?	—	No. GB2516939A is not among the references considered in the EP or US grant.

We invite anyone with a technical or legal interest to read the two documents side by side. Huf’s priority date, 22 May 2014, falls nine months after our filing, seven months after Huf’s directors signed off our proof of concept, and before our application was published. One of the named inventors, Sven Gennermann, was a director of the joint venture that proved our system. Huf’s examiners did not have GB2516939A in front of them.

What this does and does not show. Two applications can describe similar systems independently. What we say is that Huf had seen ours demonstrated, and signed it off, before it filed its own; and that the resemblance, in that light, calls for an explanation Huf has not given.

Read it yourself

The full text, drawings and claims are on Google Patents. The official register entry is on the UK IPO’s Ipsum service.