The agency is gathering information from 11 major banks about their activities involving repos, an accounting technique that Lehman used to move billions of assets off its balance sheet each quarter end, and which the examiner claims deliberately masked the true nature of its leverage.

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The patent examiner discovered a 1995 patent that appeared to cover some of the claims and so required Henderson and Tendler to submit affidavits that they had in fact invented the technology before 1993, when the previous patentholder said he had invented his.

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