Plenty of businesses rely on third-party payers: parents often pay for college; insurance companies pay most health care bills. Reaching out to potential third-party payers is hardly a new or revolutionary business practice. But someone should tell the Patent Office. Earlier this year, it issued US Patent No. 9,026,468 to Securus Technologies, a company that provides telephone services to prisoners. The patent covers a method of “proactively establishing a third-party payment account.” In other words, Securus patented the idea of finding someone to pay a bill. It’s been an interesting few weeks for Securus. First, the FCC announced that in response to price gouging by the industry, it would impose per-minute price caps on prison calls. Then The Intercept reported on a massive hack of recorded Securus calls: 70 million recordings, including many calls made under attorney-privilege, were leaked through Secure Drop. We’d like to add November’s Stupid…
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