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Governments Take Sides In Blackberry Patent Suit
geekboy_x writes "The recent court decision giving NTP a big chunk of Research In Motion's Blackberry profits has attracted an unusal participant - the government of Canada. The original ruling, where RIM was judged to have violated 5 of NTP's patents, has now been stayed pending appeal, and the Canadian government has filed a motion in the U.S. court to request a full re-hearing. At stake is not only money, but the rights to sell and service any Blackberry-like product."
Obviously the Canadian government has an interest in this, as it is one of the leading canadian technologies; however, this seems to be quite a large step for them. They usually seem to pussyfoot around such issues, especially when dealing with the US...
>There must be a tech savvy politian who is looking into this.
No. It was a savvy business person who got a government offical to look into this.
This has nothing to do with intellectual properties any more that the softlumber issue has to do with the hockey strike.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Actually, Forbes.com is still up and running fine.
I shook Paul Martin's (Prime Minster of Canada) hand outside the RIM headquaters in Waterloo this past summer during the election. I wonder how close of a relationship Mr. Martin has with RIM and how this played into the Canadian government's decision to get involved.
Its not black and its not berry-shaped.
Um, how is the Blackberry different from any other PDA/mobile phone combination that accesses email? Pardon me, but I've never used one.
I can see this quickly becoming twisted in the media into some sort of foreign-influence topic in the States. But perhaps this may set a precident with all the U.S. patent foolishness as of late; countries can weigh in and seek litigation to try to overturn the patent fights going on in America. Instead of bitching about the system, they can actually work it to the advantages of everyone, American citizens and foreign interests. Screw the special-interest groups, and let citizens and their governments speak and be heard!
Don't politicians in the US and elsewhere have some kind of council or committee that can educate them on technology issues? I mean one that isn't run by the big business lobby. Our representative in Washington have the House Science Committee. Our friends over the Atlantic have a Science and Tech committee, etc. How are they ever going to learn about what they are ruling over?
I am from the small city of Waterloo, Canada (population 70000 people) where RIM has its headquarters. Let me tell you that they are incredibly important to this city. It's basically become an institution. The city has paid for the entire parking lot and street where RIM is located to be fitted with heating pipes so that there is never snow on the road. There is a city-wide holiday every October to commemorate the founding of the company. Everyone has the day off and there is a parade that ends in the RIM Performance Theatre where the CEO addresses the crowd, live bands play, and food is dished out. It's almost wacky... RIM employees actually have all their taxi expense paid for by the city. It may seem strange, but the value of RIM for the local economy and pride of Canadian citizens is difficult to overstate.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
I really don't care who is motivated by what in this case, but NTP is nothing but a holding company on some BS patents for stuff that already exists but "with RF" tacked on.
If it means throwing out bogus patents, I'd like to see a good explanation if anybody thinks that's a bad idea.
I find the 'patent holding company' to be very counterproductive. Patents should be owned by companies creating products, like they were originally intended. Companies like NTP (correct me if i'm wrong) are made solely to find other companies to sue due to infringement. The company doesn't actually DO anything other than sue other companies right?
I'm glad Canada is stepping and saying "this sucks." Though I'm a diehard palm user, it would be a shame to see a company lose a significant chunk of their profits to a bullshit company like NTP.
Would it have killed you to explain you were referring to the BlackBerry wireless platform or to at least add a link to RIM (Research in Motion)? With all the patent related news about Monsanto lately some people might actually think you were referring to actual blackberries, the fruit.
This would be the same Research In Motion that tried to gouge Palm and HandSpring for patent licensing fees on the idea of a PDA with a keyboard, right?
Imagine my total lack of sympathy.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Really? I work in Waterloo as well, and I don't recall ever having the city shut down or having a day off because of RIM. Sure, RIM is huge in Waterloo, just look at RIM park! Oh wait, 2 CAO's lost their jobs over RIM park... Sure RIM is important to the community and to Canada as well. It's one of the largest employers in the Waterloo area and has a huge boon on the Canadian economy. I personally hope I never have to use a blackberry because I don't like the idea of ALWAYS having access to my email, but I digress... All I wanted to point out is that I don't recall RIM having as much power as the parent is stating.
"RIM argued that because parts of the alleged infringement occurred on its relay and routing system that is based in Canada, U.S. patent law should not apply."
Does this mean anyone who runs on a foreign server is exempt from the patents of other contries? How could any netowrk related patents be enforced? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Don't forget, our top "government official" (The Prime Minister) could also be described as a savvy business person. (See http://www.csl.ca/ )
How much do you want to bet that parent was modded as troll because of his sig, rather than the post? And how much do you want to bet that a similar moderator is going to mod this post down as offtopic?
Does my alphanumeric pager violate?
--
make install -not war
Troll much? Or is your sense of humour broken?
How much do you want to bet that you're just pissed that John Kerry got raped like a prison bitch in the last election?
call me crazy, call me overreacting, call me clairvoyant, but i forsee a U.S.-Canada war coming. this could be the big one, folks!
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
And worst yet- do you think the moderator knows that quote is 100% accurate?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
From Antihero For Hire:
The Unexpected War
Year: 2075
It was a time nobody really expected, excepting the organizations up North planning the whole thing. See, what happened was that Canada, tired of the way the US was running their country, sent wave after wave of genetically modified dinosaurs trained to attack only military targets. Not one non-resistant was killed, and all of the states that bordered Canada became provinces. Word is people living there don't really mind, which is one of main reasons it was so successful. The other was, of course, that the US was so busy protecting themselves against Weapons of Mass Destruction that they never made anything to protect against dinosaur attacks.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
There is an irony here.
RIM was the first out the gate with patent lawsuits against just about everyone. (Palm, Handspring, even MS etc). For a company that tried to shut down its competitors using patent litigation, there is a certain irony here. A taste of their own medicene perhaps?
From TFA:
"...U.S. court ruling against the creator of the iconic BlackBerry communications device threatens to chill innovation by Canadian firms and give extra-territorial reach to U.S. patent law."
As a Canadian, I have been watching some of the crazy IP laws the Americans have been making and hoping that they won't end up here like so many "Survivor" re-runs. Looks like Ottawa grew a spine for once. Yay Canada!
Does anyone know the actual patents that are supposedly being infringed?
Not the IP portion, but the wireless portion.
Frequencies?
Modulation scheme?
Link level protocol?
Handshake to establish connection?
Handoff between 'access points'?
I found a lot of stuff via google but nothing on the
wireless side of things. Unlike DOCSIS or CDMA which are pretty well explained.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
RIM is about our only unstained big high tech company left.
Corel, Nortel, ATI.
They all turned out to be crooked or run by crooks (the ATI case is still before the OSC, but they sure sound guilty).
I guess we aren't really as much different from the Americans as we though.
Well, at least it wasn't us that made Conrad Black into a Lord. That must have been pretty embarrasing for the Brits. We just let him set the editorial direction of our media.
Is RIM crooked? Or are the RIM founders decent people?
WTF, Oh no, you're comming back. Agh
Blackberry does _NOT_ use the cell system to check mail constantly.
This is what Make's Blackberry's mail system so unique. Blackberry's PUSH mail to the handheld. When you receive mail, the handheld is notified and picks it up. This is not a regular check by the handheld device.
Note that if you don't have the handheld integrated into an Exchange or Notes server, or if you don't forward mail to the blackberry e-mail address, BB offers a 'POP' probe which will pop into your mail server and check mail every 10 minutes. This works, but the mail is still not pulled by the handheld, but then pushed to the handheld upon the server checking.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Like "military intelligence" and "compassionate conservatives" or "liberal democrats".
I work for Research In Motion, and this whole lawsuit is a joke, this NTP company is a pathetic corporation that just hold patents trying to land big settlements.. they should just go f^&k off and die.
RIM seems to have conveniently forgotten the IP articles of both NAFTA and GATT, as well as the Hague Service Convention, and other international conventions of private law, to which both the US and Canada are party to. Thanks to these treaties and conventions, judicial acts in the US have 'full faith and credit' in Canada, and vice versa. All this story is about is a battle over jurisdiction in an attempt to get a more sympathetic jury, assuming that Waterloo residents will bias for RIM, and Americans will bias for NTP. Both companies have histories of litigating for profit.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
Congratulations, you found the problem with country-specific patents, and regulation in general.
... sharpen my fingertips into little tiny points so I could actually use the thing.
The comment wrt 2 cao's losing their jobs over RIM park is misleading. That scandal has to do with a sleazy financing company, MFP (a division of which is also in trouble in Toronto over near-fraudulent computer leasing contract behavior), and its dealings with the city of waterloo, in financing a recreational park area. RIM, as a good community/corporate citizen, happened to pony up funds which allowed it to attach its name to the park.
You're just jealous that you can't get a RIM-job.
The City named a huge tourist attraction after RIM. It's called RIM park! Go there if you ever want to get rimmed^h^h^h^h^h^h nevermind...
RIM park is a huge attraction because of how it was put together. (With pure money... Really!)
The RIM park modelling idea:
The City should patent it's RIM park modelling idea and make millions to pay for the park.
Kneecarrot is right about the streets, only it's done by satellite with microwaves. It was a side effect of all the PDA's sending signals to the RIM head quarters.
They also have built PI. It's a big building with lots of eggs in it. (Really!)
Whoa! This is really informative. Surprising, considering that the grandparent is retarded.
They protect us
Protect us from what, exactly? The biggest threats to Canadian sovereignty come from the US itself.
I work for a company that has bought almost 100 of those babies and I have three things to say:
1. Get QA's act together on build quality right now. I don't like telling users to flip out the battery or take a paperclip to their $500 hardware more than once a quarter, never mind once a week.
2. WTF is going on with all the JVM errors? I keep expecting to see a Windows logo.
3. Weren't you guys called "Lawsuits in Motion" by The Register?
Agreed. NTP was started by two patent lawyers in Chicago (and believe that is about all they still are). What I am still waiting for is that Congress runs on Blackberries and a ruling was made last year to have ALL of NTP's patents reviewed. Only about 15% of patents reviewed survive. I wonder what happened to that review?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Actually, from my understanding, pretty much all of the US Congress is following this case with great interest. It turns out that on 9/11 about the only communications device working in Washingon D.C. was the balckberry network. Therefore they are advocating that it is in the national interest that the dispute be resolved without any disruption in service.
I have read that various members of Congress have written to the judge in charge of the Court case, the parties, and have even offered to mediate the dispute. I guess the congressmen cannot bear the thought of departing from their beloved "crackberries"
People whining about extraterritoriality can keep their products out of the United States. This isn't a WTO decision, but you can bet that this may yet be escalated to that level anyway.
Yes. Politician's in the US [and Canada, and most everywhere else] have special people known as "lobbist's" whose job it is to educate politicians about issues.
Of course, they tend to educate politicians according to how the lobbist's have been paid to educate them...
And politician's learn best when their hands are jammed in someone's wallet...
Hmm, I guess I'm feeling a bit cynical today...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I can see this quickly becoming twisted in the media into some sort of foreign-influence topic in the States.
Yes, I can see the headlines now:
"Canadian Government acts just USA!"
Any invalidation of software patents is inevitably a good thing.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Canada has a military?
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
RIM was started by two guys from the Kit/Woo area (Kitchener-Watreloo). Paul Martin is from the Maritimes and comes from a very priviledged shipping background.
Maybe he was outside their offices because RIM is a great Canadian success story, both in terms of profit and of philanthropy?
For the latter, I lead you to the Perimiter Institute, Canada's premier think-tank for foundational theoretical physics. Which was entirely started and paid-for by the two RIM guys. In essence, it's a place for brilliant scientists to go and be brilliant, and every once-in-a-while give lectures about what they've been thinking about (for free) to teh general population.
It's like Public Art, but for science.
Cue The Sun...
Actually, the US does what the people we hired to make such descisions think is the right thing to do. Wether we actually can do it or not has little to do with it... I cite the ridiculous descision to extend social security indefinitely without raising taxes to the communist level as an example.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
The Americans got the British to stop press-ganging our citizens. By our definition, we won.
The British burned some relatively unimportant buildings and marchd around a bunch looking pretty. By their definiton, they won.
Canada did not exist as a sovereign nation. By that definition, they.... I dunno. Lost, I guess.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I dunno, looks truncated to me. If it's complete, then it seems our president is much wittier than he is credited for.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I always thought that the current President was witty. He has exactly the same sense of humor as my wife. Unfortuneately, he also seems to have the exact same set of learning disabilities as well.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/perimeter .html/
You should be sympathetic.
m l
No, no I should not.
The thumb keyboard isn't a software patent, it's not a submarine patent
Duh.
and it's not obvious.
Wrong.
Nobody thought to just build a tiny keyboard optimized for thumb typing.
Nobody, that is, except for Motorola, in 1996, two years before RIM filed their patent:
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/perl/story/12414.ht
That's spelled "Prior Art", and it took me about 20 seconds of searching to find the picture.
Full disclosure: I work for RIM
No shit. Your regard for the facts is right in line with that of every other employee of your company I've ever had the misfortune of encountering.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Isn't this whole issue about (or similar to) software patents?
It's quite clear that if a physical product is made abroad and imported, it is subject to local patent laws. In other words, manufacturing abroad does not allow one to avoid patents.
In this cases, the email and other services are being provided locally, but using servers running abroad. In other words, it is analagous to manufacturing abroad.
The real issue is whether such patents should be allowed in the first place.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
> Last time I checked, the US is supposed to stand for liberalized trade,
> free enterprise, fairness, etc.
Mod parent "funny"
Why must we have this discussion after every single story?
The BlackBerry is a device that's been on sale since 1998. It's as prominently displayed in wireless stores as Palm's Treo.
After seven years and millions of sales, can't we just let the name of the product be the name of the product?
Whereas, in Canada 25% of people diagnosed with heart disease and referred to a cardiac specialist die before ever seeing one, because of the waiting lists.
You could've hired me.
My cell phone was able to send and receive email LONG before the blackberry ever cam out. The blackberry is esentially a two-way beeper.
WHAT!? .. What are we waiting for folks?! Attack! Attack! Annihilate! Kill! Kill!
_V
[rant rant]...drive me to take my tax dollars away...[rant continues]
Ah, the old "brain drain" chestnut. You are aware it's a myth? That the number of highly skilled immigrants arriving in Canada every year exceeds the trickle going (mostly) south of the border? You have such an over-inflated opinion of yourself; do you really think Canada needs the few people like you who think it's all about the dollar and nothing but the dollar? Who refuse to accept that a society (indeed civilisation in general) is much more than a collection of individuals? Truly, honestly, we neither need nor want people like you in Canada. We can at least agree that it's a good thing that you are able to make the decision for yourself to leave.
And the funny thing? Your sig - "you could have hired me". It's certainly true , I "could have" , but I "definitely wouldn't have" once I'd read your resume. I looked at the google cache of it and just had to laugh. Not at the gobs of meaningless marketspeak, entertaining though that was, but that you have the brass neck to list two articles on slashdot as "publications". Hilarious! One of my co-workers blew coffee through his nose when I showed him that (and yes, we do all remember that whole thing with you and comrade Stallman). You've spent more than a few minutes composing your bilious drivel on slashdot today, but the seconds I wasted skimming it were more than rewarded after I read that gem. Thanks.
Whereas, in Canada 25% of people diagnosed with heart disease and referred to a cardiac specialist die before ever seeing one, because of the waiting lists.
Bullshit. Utter bullshit.
What's original? People have been sending email to mobiles via relays (commonly called gateways) since 1987 or earlier. Want to send an email to a ship? On the CompuServe system (in this 1992 newsgroup post you'd send it to TLX:(telex number) and the relay would send the email to the telex machine on a ship (pretty mobile!). The mobile could also originate an emailt o go back to you. I used to tell people my "telex" address which would really email me through that system. That was predated by the Fidonet system, as described in this 1997 newsgroup post.
Just to put this in reality perspective:
Are you aware that US customs has posts in all the major international Canadian air hubs? They treat them as domestic airports, and check the foreigners as if they were enterring US territory at those airports.
In New Zealand, I was told by my friends that as soon as you pass the outbound passport check, you are under US law. In the middle of New Zealand's airports. They told me the high seas and airspace-related neutral territories the world over are considered to be American jurisdictions.
I daresay places like China and Russia don't buy into that insanity. Have these ukusa countries no self-respect, you gotta wonder? But actually it makes sense, and is a policy that Japan and Europe have both been using: They make money and improve meaningful things like their own standards of living, while idly encouraging America to bear the brunt of being a globocop. It does make some economic sense, though the risk is obvious too.
I hadn't heard about these so called black berries, what is the big fuss with them? I bet they're real tasty.
Any communication related patent is written strangely because one person must violate the patent. So when describing a communication system you need to decide if you want to patent the client, or the server, or go the bother of patenting both. NTP only patented the server, so it is a little bit shocking to see a US court decide that RIM can't sell clients in the US.
Either the US court decided that a Canadian server was in violation of US law, or it decided to extend NTP's patent coverage to include the clients. The first option is what the Canadian government is objecting to. The second option is similar to deciding that zip decompression is protected, even though only compression was patented.
And this is the crux of it, the point that you've continued to miss or ignore and that undermines your whole line of "reasoning" - there is no hypothecation of taxes. There isn't some fixed sum which is Rene's entitlement for health care on the basis of what he's paid in. That isn't the way insurance works, whether it's private or public, whether it's for healthcare or anything else. It is quite obvious (isn't it?) that in any given insurance pool, on average, individuals will pay more in than they will receive back. Insurance is not a savings plan; it's a mitigation against events that may or may not happen. I don't expect my house insurer to pay for me to replace my roof regardless of the fact that it wasn't blown off this year. I've paid money to cover that possibility, but it doesn't mean I have a right to that payout in any and all circumstances.
I would consider that unacceptable too, but I seriously doubt that's what actually happened. The Canadian healthcare system provides treatment on the basis of need. Doctors make the assessment of what treatment a patient requires based on a clinical assessment, not some accountancy chart. Seriously, you have my sympathy that your father had a bad experience, but the plural of anecdote is not data, and to extrapolate this instance and apply it to make some sweeping (and wrong) generalisation about the healthcare system as a whole is specious.
One person (or company) sold the patented service, regardless of whether it occured on their server or not. Selling the patented service is infringement, even if the seller contracts individual parts of the service out.
Then there are also contributory infringement and inducement to infringe. These doctrines can rope in people who are ancillary to the actual infringement.
The Canadian Government, to my understanding, as dissected by CBC and their legal professor talking head, was not taking issue with every aspect of the case. RIM may well be in hot water for actual patent violations in some regards. But, where it pertained to the parts of RIM's service provided on machine in Canada, running technology developed here, providing services located here, on machines physically located here, they felt this clearly (by common prior practice, which is what I meant by tradition) meant that Canadian laws apply here and not US ones. Thereby the US Court, by extending its domain to these particular systems and services was in fact introducing a sovereignty issue. That is why the government here thinks there is a problem. There may in fact be other parts of the case where RIM is clearly wrong and infringing within US jurisdiction. But those particular services and servers were outside of US jurisdiction. And I'm fairly sure they don't consider Canadian-side service provision to be 'importing into the US'. Hopefully that is clearer. I don't seek to convey the impression that RIM has commited no foul (I really can't speak to that) but to put some context on the particular aspect of the case which got the Canadian Government's attention. Please also remember, this is not my theory, only what has been reported as the reason for Canadian Government interest.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Sorry to say but patents are country specific. A patent granted in the US is not valid in Canada and vica versa. All the IP articles of NAFTA and GATT do is try to unify the standards on patents not make them valid outside of the country of origin.
As well the infringement itself must take place within the borders of the country where the patent is valid. This leaves NTP on some pretty shaky ground.
"SECTION 5: PATENTS
Article 27
Patentable Subject Matter
1. Subject to the provisions of paragraphs 2 and 3, patents shall be available for any inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology, provided that they are new, involve an inventive step and are capable of industrial application. (5) Subject to paragraph 4 of Article 65, paragraph 8 of Article 70 and paragraph 3 of this Article, patents shall be available and patent rights enjoyable without discrimination as to the place of invention, the field of technology and whether products are imported or locally produced."
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/uruguay/S UMMARY.html
"Provisional Applications - Sections 111 and 119 of the patent law have been amended to establish a domestic priority system. The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property requires that the terms of protection of patents for the same invention granted by different countries should generally be independent of one another. This precludes the United States from measuring, in a foreign origin application, the term of protection from the filing date of a foreign filed application, even though the benefit of that foreign filing is subsequently claimed in the United States. To give U.S. inventors a similar opportunity, in the United States, of having an initial application filing which does not serve as the basis from which the term of protection is measured, a domestic priority system has been established that provides for provisional application filing in the United States."
Sorry to say, but you are quite wrong. Studied this stuff in my International Trade Law class...
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves