Mitek Systems (News - Alert), Inc., a company specializing in mobile imaging technology, has been granted four new patents by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its Mobile Deposit technology, including two issued within the past two weeks.

"We're very pleased to receive the additional patents on our image-analysis and recognition processes that distinguish Mobile Deposit from any other mobile-banking capability," James DeBello, president and chief executive officer at Mitek said in a press release.

"We also have applied for patents on our Mobile Photo Bill Pay(TM) technology, and we intend to seek additional intellectual property protection for capabilities that we roll out in industries other than financial services," DeBello added.

Mobile Deposit is now being deployed by several banks, credit unions, brokerages and cash-management organizations. Mitek's Mobile Deposit is noted as a highly secure, accurate and easy-to-use technology that enables users to initiate mobile-deposit sessions, key in deposit amounts and simply snap photos of both sides of the checks with their smartphone cameras. Mitek software captures the check images, converts the images to digital data and transmits the data to the financial institution's receiving RDC solution in the required format.

Mobile Deposit is usually distributed on a "white label" basis by leading technology solutions integrators and applications services providers that deliver technology bundles to banks, credit unions and others in the financial services industry.

Mitek launched Mobile Deposit as a breakthrough mobile remote deposit capture (RDC) platform. Its initial patent for Mobile Deposit was granted in August 2010.

Mitek patent include Nos. 7,949,176 issued on May 24, and 7,953,268 issued on May 31. The Patent Office has notified the company of its acceptance of two additional patents, for which numbers are expected to be issued soon.

The new patents add texture to the original patented process and broaden Mitek's protection for Mobile Deposit, enabling check deposits via camera-equipped smartphones and other mobile devices. To "Point, Shoot and Deposit" with Mitek, users simply position their paper checks within the viewfinders of smartphones such as iPhone (News - Alert), BlackBerry and Google Android devices.

DeBello noted a new market research report by Javelin Strategy & Research that found one in every four consumers and one in every two mobile-banking customers prefer to deposit checks using their smartphones to avoid visiting bank branches or ATMs. For financial institutions, benefits to adopting mobile RDC include lower transaction-processing costs and increased fee income, the report said.

The Javelin report, entitled "2011 Mobile Remote Deposit Capture: Creating a Compelling Business Case for Mobile Servicing," was issued late last month. It was based on three waves of interviews and online surveys conducted last summer, last fall and early this year among a total of 13,000 respondents.

TMC (News - Alert) recently reported that VSoft Corporation, a global information and technology provider of process improvement solutions has partnered with Mitek Systems to provide Mitek's patented Mobile Deposit to financial institutions leveraging its Agile (News - Alert) Mobile Capture solution.