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RIM Loses NTP Case, To Pay $53 Million
theodp writes "A judge has ruled in favor of holding company NTP in its patent-infringement case against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, awarding monetary damages and fees of $53.7 million and granting an injunction preventing RIM from making, using, or offering to sell handhelds, services or software in the U.S. until the date of expiration of NTP's patents, the latest of which is May 20, 2012. The court then stayed that injunction, pending an appeal by the Canadian company."
Slashdot readers should understand that RIM is in no way less guilty of abusing the patent and copyright systems than is NTP. As seen in a link from the article, RIM has pursued similar measures against Good Technology, who, so far as I can tell, appear to be writing software for RIM's platforms which allows users to use the devices with Good Technology's competing services.
However, that doesn't mean that RIM, if they ultimately lose the appeal, will get what they deserve. Patenting a system of using wireless radio to transmit and receive email from a handheld device is a blatant abuse of the patent system.
Yes, perhaps 15-20 years ago it may not have been obvious.
However, given the introduction of small scale radio transmitters/receivers (er, which isn't exactly new), and powerful small scale electronics, it is absolutely obvious.
This is analogous to being awarded a patent for "a car which uses a 'gravity shield' to hover and propel itself along several feet above the surface", and then at some point in the future when a large scale and low power 'gravity shield' is invented (hah!), trying to enforce that patent.
A wireless network of handheld devices for email is an absolutely obvious application of existing technology. It was not even an "adaptation" of existing technology. It was just a matter of doing the obvious: 1) we transmit data which is email, 2) we wirelessly transmit data, 3) we have powerful electronic devices that can fit in the palm of one's hand, and it is obvious that 4) we can wirelessly transmit email to handheld devices.
5) be awarded patent on obvious combination of existing technology but fail to develop or implement it yourself
6) ???
7) Profit!
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Perhaps it's different in the U.S. but I recall a case maaaaany years ago in the U.K. where a patent was refused because the idea had previously been seen in a children's comic.
The idea was for an automatic cat flap that opened when the trained cat pressed on a pad. Apparently the patent office clerk either saw a similar design on his son's comic (The Beano or The Dandy, U.K. comics for the under ten) or spoke of it and the son brought the comic to his attention.
Either way, the patent was knocked back for not being an original work - the idea had been presented before, albeit as an act of fiction in a comic. I'm fairly sure this is genuine, it made the headlines (mumble) years ago "when ah were just a nippa".
Surely the same approach is used today in that, if an idea is already in general use, then it can't be an original work and therefore cannot be patented!?
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
Has anybody else actually read (well, browsed) this thing? It describes any PalmPilot or Handspring (they come with email software) that has a cellular modem! Or any pager that can receive text.
Batou: Hey, Major... You ever hear of "human rights"? Major: I understand the concept, but I've never seen it in action
RIM dont have anything. They rant about how brilliant push email is yet to do this your blackberry has to sustain a 24/7 GPRS connection - continually pinging a server so it knows where and who it is. How this is better that using a standard RFC protocol such as pop or imap and checking at regular intervals I don't know.
And then they launch their consumer version, which is strongly denied by RIM to be Pull and Push because their whole "uniqueness" is push (put it pulls froms your pop account and pushes to you).
Its all a load of crock - the whole business model is based on hype, CEO masturbation and obfuscation. Why the RIM server cannot do pop or imap collection is pure cynicism - its not like there are hard protocols. But, as one of RIM's sales people informed me, its all about upselling.
In the UK an exchange licence for 5 users is 1200UKP. The RIM server is 2500UKP. So for 3700UKP plus hardware costs you cant have this wonderful push pish across a 100% proprietary set of protocols. A Rim guy tried to convince me that it wasnt propietary because they used triple DES encryption - thats like saying its not proprietary because we use ASCII. But your email is secure? Whats the point of securing your email from your mail server to your client when it was plain and dandy when it travelled around the internet to get to your mail server.
No thanks, Ill take my linux mail server with unlimited email accounts and free, proven software and a load of Sony Ericsson P800s set to check for mail every minute. Then I will tell everyone that its push (they will never know the difference).
(btw the 7230 blackberries are currently more expensive than the P800)
Sorry about the rant - just been through 3 days of trying to find out about blackberries for some customers that have fallen for the hype. Oddly all are US owned companies trading in the UK. With a bit of luck blackberries wont get much further.
Some of you are saying these RIM devices are useless and who needs wireless email anyway, but you're missing the point that they can do a LOT more than that. RIM has (had?) an SDK available for free download on their website in the past so they obviously intended people to develop their own apps for these things. My company (IBM) is one of them. I don't use it as much now, but for at least a year I was depending on one of these things to support me as a technician in the field. Our whole service-call system runs on our RIMs and it saves soooo much time and headache. We receive, update and close calls with a few clicks/turns of the thumbwheel as well as filling out the form to send back to IBM detailing what happened (used for billing/parts tracking among other things). Without these, I would have to either call a human being or dial in with my laptop. Two things that aren't much fun when you're driving all over the place trying to get work done.
I was curious about what this settlement means to our use of these devices, but then I was reading through and saw how people think that RIM will most likely license the technology. Losing these things would suck for us techs.