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Blackberry In Court Again Over Patents
uqbar writes "Looks like Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian makers of the portable Blackberry email device, are back in court again. If patent holding company NTP wins their case, then RIM would be barred from selling Blackberry pagers in the US and would owe $54 million. Is this yet another case of overreaching patents gone amok?" We previously covered the original ruling in this case in August 2003.
It seems like the court case should have waited pending an end to the resolution of the US Patent Offices' re-examination of the patents in question. The whole thing becomes a non-issue if the patents are thrown out.
paul reinheimer
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why is this kind of delayed lawsuits even permitted? If someone is infringing on your patent(s) it should be your right and DUTY to enforce your patent immediately. These guys instead wait, let the infringer spend money and make money, and THEN they sue for larger amounts than would otherwise have been sensible.
Are we to believe they hadn't heard of the Blackberry until recently? Ludicrous!
I feel the same way... I'm canadian and I like it when canadian companies are successful. However, when the company is abusing the patent system, then I will not drop a single tear if they become the abused party.
I also do not care very much for a company that sell product that are overpriced and who did not innovate very much since the launch of their first product.
Ah, but if they have a reputation for granting, people will file more junk patents.
If they start rejectiong patents it would not take long for people to wise up and only file legitimate (define that how you would like) patents. Their income would fall rapidly.
Its amazing. Government is just like every company, species, etc. It grows as fast as it can given the enviroment. We need Libertarian pricipals so that we can check this, cutting fat inefficient agencies. This is just as predators check the rabit population.
Doctors still carry them for two reasons: first of all, they're safe. Pagers have been in use for decades and are known to generally not interfere with hospital equipment (unlike GSM phones, which can cause really weird behaviour in some monitoring equipment). And secondly, they're reliable. In an emergency situation, when everybody grabs their cell to check on their loved ones cell coverage usually drops to 0% in a jiffie (yes, I know that GSM networks can be configured to prioritize certain SIMs through the HLR but I can tell you from experience that that doesn't really work reliably). Pagers, on the other hand, don't need a lot of bandwidth and work reliably.
Having said that, Blackberrys were a nice idea when they were first introduced. These days, though they're useless without effective filtering. I am subscribed to a bunch of mailing lists and I don't particularly like the idea of staring at a small b/w device for long periods of time to find that one important email I happen to be looking for. That's especially true if I have instant access to my IMAP account using my PDA (using WiFi, which tends to drain the battery, or my cell phone). Plus, around here, there's usually a computer nearby no matter where I go.
"people of heavy academic and practical training"
what the hell have you been smokin?
Hell. No.
That would keep me from ever applying for a patent. I've come up with a lot of neat ideas. When I tell someone who's been working in the field about them, I find out that, yeah, they've been doing that for years.
For example, at ten or eleven years old, I thought of storing video as only the differences between each frame. I'd never heard of it before, but it sounded like a good idea to me. Then I came to find out they've been doing that for a long time.
Or another example...I recently posted a journal entry about a roleplaying tool I want to write. Someone mentioned that that tool was pretty much a stripped-down MUD with some side features. I've never used a MUD before, and I'm not familiar with their features.
I'd also given thought about using interference between two inaudible waveforms to produce an audible signal. Well, we've seen that one posted on Slashdot.
I've about given up trying to come up with original ideas...someone else has already had them. And if you fine me for trying to patent something I think is original, it becomes completely uneconomical for me to try to come up with ideas for money.
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To be fair, I don't think Microsoft generally sue people over stupid things, with the possible exception of Lindows/Linspire.
But SMS is not in its infancy. In many countries, people send more SMS messages than spend minutes on the phone. I've seen talk plans in Britain that are SMS-only!
This is a rather specific objection. SMS messages are tied to the PSTN phone network, so you'd expect them to have phone numbers rather than email addresses. SMS is still the easiest and quickest way of sending a text message from a phone, and I suspect that'll remain the case for a while. It's zero-configuration, fairly reliable, uses the same addresses you use to talk to people on the same equipment they'd use to receive the messages, which is why it's taken off and all the email to SMS and vice versa gateways are, for the most part, under-used. email, in any case, would be wrong for an instant messaging system (which is what SMS is) given your phone would have to constantly poll an IMAP or POP3 server to receive messages in a timely manner.No, SMS isn't the future. Neither will faxes, IPv4 addresses, oil, or HDTV. SMS is the present. Like all technologies, it'll be superceded, but right now there's nothing in place that will do that.
I know SMS has its faults. The 160 character limit probably being the chief offendor. But it's not as bad as you're suggesting, it's pretty mature (well, on GSM anyway), and it's extremely popular, far more popular than paging ever was. It's right there in your pocket, is usually instant (well, 2-5 seconds in my experience)
Welcome to 2004!
It wasn't too long ago that RIM managed to crawl out of a hole by filing frivolous lawsuits for patent infringement. Remember when they filed suit against Handspring over the elliptical shape of the buttons on the keyboard? They justified it by saying they 'invested substantial research and development and marketing effort' into the design and it wasn't fair that Handspring should be able to reap the rewards of their hard work. A fucking keyboard. I hate to see another stupid patent lawsuit, but I have a hard time being sympathetic to their cause. As far as I'm concerned this is poetic justice.
I don't know the story behind this particular patent case, but in the broader argument about patents, I've given up.
I've decided that the best thing now would be for the whole computer industry just to stop and wait for twenty years. When all these stupid patents finally expire, then the rest of us can start actually doing stuff with our computers. Until then, we may as well all just go home, because as I see it, just about anything I do is going to tread on someone's intellecual property. (and I use the word 'intellectual' in it's loosest possible sense)
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
If this goes on for much longer the US will become a low-tech country. It will not be possible to invent or put new technology out on the market there, just because of the risk of getting to court. The market will move elsewhere and only old and tested devices (that have certain "prior art") will remain in the US.
Luckily I live in Europe...
But will the European Union adopt the same madness as the US? If this becomes the case we will see new technology evolve in Asia... (did anyone mention China?)
Just a thought.
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
Is this yet another case of overreaching patents gone amok? = "Is this yet another chance to stir your typical /. reader into a frenzy?"
Really folks, the very mention of the word patent here results in typical anti-IP diatribes; often neglecting what is actually actually debatable and interesting: the merits of the patent in question, its defensibiblty and its consequences.
The poster's asking himself the aforequoted question betrays he didn't even bother to read the patent.
Is it time to add "-1 RTFP" as a moderation type?
Besides, I doubt after one or two they would keep granting bogus patents and maybe even start reviewing old ones once they realize they are a liability....
AC comments get piped to
RIM (specifically Mike Lazaridis) put a lot of effort into perfecting that keyboard for thumb typing and it is what the blackberry was built around. So yes, there was a lot of innovation there. It seems simple now, but at the time, it was a novel idea.
Ohh! A novel implementation of a keyboard. Wowie zowie! Heard of the "twiddler"?
Just because you've invested a lot of time reasearching something you don't have an automatic monopoly on it.
Can you imagine if Fender had patented the Stratocaster guitar shape? Or Microsoft with the mouse scroll wheel?
The problem here is greedy people with delusions of their own self-importance.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Blackberry attacked on both noninfringement and invalidity on summary judgment, and lost. They went to trial on both issue, and lost. They argued against injunctive relief, and lost.
So the patent is certainly sufficient to pass the smell-test.
They are now before the Federal Circuit to determine whether the court errred below, Blackberry's last gasp to survive.
time will tell whether the plaintiff will prevail at this point, but overreaching, after a full trial on the merits? you have got to be an ideologue even to ask the question.
And it is, as another poster said, also the effect of lawyers becoming so heavily involved. Like it or not, our world is increasingly run by lawyers and economists, who have formed a vast array of confusing jargon and rules only they can interpret. Much like the economists who play the stock market on emotional impulse and force it to become more erratic than it should be, IP lawyers have created a system so perplexing and so confusing that their role is necessary. They manufactured a niche for themselves. And guess who can afford them? Not the individiual inventors patents were supposed to prevent - rather, the big companies. And who can afford to pay the lawyer fees to interpret patents and defend patents? The big companies.
My friend, the patent system itself is not the problem. Its abuse is the problem. That why we need some seriously hardline people at the USPO to put a stop to frivilous patents and pay special attention to companies who try to get rich on patent portfolios and patenting everything under the sun. Alas, this simply won't happen because as I said before, the USPO is a profit-minded entity. To deny big corporations would be to deny their primary source of income. It's a very blatant conflict of interest, and if it weren't for the minor fact that virtually all members of the government sleep with the big corporations, something would have changed by now.
then the US Patent System and the courts will attempt to shut it down. Since we privatize spectrum at high price every player needs to recoup their costs. This generally means that you and I will get nickel and dimed to death for one little bitty service slice at a time. It is against the interest of all these players if anyone offers too much for too little or, in other words, actually begins to bring more of the full benefit of wireless connectivity to the users.