Ric Richardson

Frederick "Ric" Richardson (born 1962 in Sydney, Australia) is an Australian inventor, recognised for his patent of a form of product activation used in anti-piracy. He is the inventor of record for a number of U.S. patents, including the Uniloc patent US5490216 and the Logarex patent 6400293. Richardson grew up in Sydney 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 patents that he invented. Some of these patents date back to 1992. The machine fingerprinting technology is used to stop copyright infringement. 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 for their infringement of a product activation 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. 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 hackers to infiltrate an enterprise system.