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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."
The issue isn't with RIM per se, but the fact that the US courts are trying to apply US patent laws to systems physically located in Canada - which should fall under Canadian patent law. If the US courts uphold this, it will present a huge barrier to Canadian (or for that matter, any other countries) companies entering the US in any way (including sales and support to US companies from Canada), as a US company that holds a patent will be able to sue the Canadian company for using their patent in Canada to supply technology, services, etc. to US entities.
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?
Just beat me to the obvious point. Ever since mobile/ cell phones have had the abiolity to connect to POP3, I have had a "Blackberry-Like" product.
Perhaps Nokia should get litigous on RIM?
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.
>and pride of Canadian citizens is difficult to overstate.
1. This happens to any local economy, not just RIM/Waterloo. For example; Hamilton/Stelco, GM+Ford/Detroit, Big Government/Washington DC, Inco(?)/Sudbury.
2. The "pride of Canadian citizens" are not wrapped up in this. Do you have pride in what happens to B.C. softwood lumber?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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.
"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?
Actually, the US is only about 20% of RIMs maketshare, a lot of it is in fact European. Someone once told me the brilliant idea that RIM should just not sell in the States. Then, since the company with the patent in America is only a litigous corporation and never actually developed anything, there would be no RIM-like devices in the States and everyone else in the world would be able to get their email instantly. Besides, there are whole corporations and groups in the States (notably the US Senate) who rely on the Blackberry so much, they'd probably do all they can to get things altered in America pretty damn quick.
The Canadian Government pussyfoots when dealing with the BC softwood lumber issue, for example. However, RIM is based in Ontario, hence the non-pussyfooting.
It is indeed good to be based in Central Canada.
I guess I don't see how this could fall any other way. Think about what would happen if international companies were allowed to make an infringing product then ship it across the border and start selling it. Why should I invent something if I could just move to Canada, wait for someone else to invent it and perfect it, then copy their idea and start selling it myself. Heck, while I'm at it I will even use their name and logo.
Get pissed off all you want. The U.S. does what it does because it can.
Not to draw an exact comparison, merely to lampoon the sense of that particular statement, but I'm reasonably sure that was also why Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia did what they did too.
I'm not sure the ability to do a thing makes it a good idea. And this has nothing to do with attempting to eradicate socialism, despite the fact that is a personally significant (to you) issue, it is a red herring as far as the current US copyright actions go.
This has more to do with protecting the likes of the MPAA and RIAA and the big corps than it does with insuring innovation. And attempting to break the historical assumptions about IP sovereignty and who gets which laws applied to them isn't necessarily a wise precedent to set. If the reverse was done, the US would be screaming bloody murder...
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Why should a company from China be able to build products that have IP in them from US companies, that they have not licensed from the US companies, and be able to sell them in the US at Wal-Mart?
Why should a monopolistic company that doesn't like another company based in the US then go about suing that company in every freaking court in the world, to get a positive judgement, somewhere, just to bring that judgement back to US court over a silly trademark (Microsoft vs. Lindows)?
I have no objection to people who voluntarily chose to participate in a communal wealth-redistribution system.
However, I greatly object to people forcing such participation on the non-willing, at the effective point of a gun, to the degree that hard-working Canadians can not save enough money to purchase surgery to save their lives and are abandoned by the Canadian health care system. When one pays more in taxes earmarked for "health care" over a working life than it would cost to fund private insurance that would cover life-saving surgery, and the government denies that surgery, I can only conclude the government is guilty of murder, literally taxing people to death. Those who support the system are, at the very least, accessories to the crime.
As a libertarian forced to chose between the rise of the Christian right in the U.S. and the stench of the Socialist left in Canada (both admittedly odious), I find I can tolerate the right better: at least I can accumulate the funds necessary to escape if necessary, or seek "morally unacceptable" social and care situations outside the country.
You could've hired me.
That war already happened. In 1812. Canada won.
No, they're trying to apply US patent laws to items that are being sold in the US.
As a Canadian, I think the Canadian government is wrong to step in here. NTP, as much as they're bad for the industry in general, have the legal point.
What really needs to be looked at is the patent system itself. Submarine patents need to be abolished. Patents need to be granted on a pass/fail system. They either get through the first time, or they get rejected. If they get rejected, then a new application is required, with, naturally, a new date. This would prevent submarine patents that just float around for years, getting modified over the years in order to adjust for ways technology is going and making it look like it dates back to when the original patent was submitted.
In addition, patents should go back to requiring a physical copy. Ideas are like assholes. Everybody has one, most of them stink. You require somebody submit a working product before approval of the final patent is granted and that'll help considerably.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I would not make the charge if I did not have evidence, though it comes from an admitedly biased source: my father was denied abdominal aortic aneurism repair surgery dispite paying into the Canadian health care system for decades (and carrying private insurance before its inception). If he had instead invested that portion of his taxes earmarked for health care in a fund, even at savings account rates, he could have paid for the US$30,000 to US$100,000 cost of that surgery many times over.
Such surgery is not done in Canada for lack of qualified surgeons, AFAIK -- even then the survival rate is about 70%. The government refused to pay for it to be performed in the U.S., citing expense and arguing that the money could save more lives if spent elsewhere.
Hogwash! That's the state playing at God. It is one thing to allocate charity where it might do the most good, but to forcibly impoverish one to death based on the argument that many lives warrant the taking of one is heinous. Might as well have a lottery to kill people for their organs to satisfy the demand -- after all, one can likely harvest sufficient organs from a person to save more lives than the one taken.
It could be argued that it would be "unfair" for the "rich" to "get ahead" of the "poor" when it comes to medical treatment. As offensive as I find the idea that one does not deserve to spend one's legitimate earnings to save one's live, I will note that my father was not rich: He came to Canada as a WWII refugee, and took advantage of ecomonic opportunities to eventually work as an electronic engineer, contributing to many successful Canadian communications satellites (starting with the first), as well as the Shuttle Remote Manipulation System. Starting from nothing, capitalism enabled him to live a middle-class lifestyle.
Today, he'd likely be accepted as a refugee, and have no change to escape the socialist welfare trap.
Take heed: if one has a state-run health insurance program, it should never deliver less justifiable benefits at world market rates than paid for in premiums. To do otherwise is literally taxing one to death.
You could've hired me.
The government refused to pay for [surgery] to be performed
The government doesn't make such calls, doctors do. And quite properly so - it would be just as inappropriate for a government to make such a call in an individual case as it would for a private health insurance company.
a state-run health insurance program...should never deliver less justifiable benefits at world market rates than paid for in premiums. To do otherwise is literally taxing one to death.
And by the same "reasoning", private, for-profit health insurance companies are profiteering people to death?
Your father was probably denied surgery because it was a waste of time.
And quite possibly in vain, certainly. But, what one does with one's earnings should be one's own business. Certainly spending them in an attempt to save one's live, even if futile, should not be forbidden. When the state intervenes to purportedly provide health care in the place of one's own resources, it should at least provide as much care as those resources could otherwise have provided.
your dad came to canada because he was too weak to make a go of it in his former country
Agreed. It would take a hell of a person to put Hitler in his place. As I recall, it took a heck of a lot of people who died to get the job done.
However, whatever weakness this may imply is surely erased by the courage demonstrated by virtue of the countless Jews he hid for four years during WWII. I'd consider the balance even as far as moral traits are concerned, but then, I am biased. How many lives have you saved?
He made a good life, enough to put you through school apparently. Or do you think that you paid for that schooling all on your own, you self rightous freeloader
Ah! I was waiting for this retort. It is typical of the Communist. The argument goes something like this: You owe the state your life and your servitude because without the state's help, you would not have schooling, health care, etc. The fallacy lies in that the general reason one can not obtain these without the state's intervention, even if available on an open market, is that the state has taxed one so greatly, as to prevent them for caring for themselves. As for my post-secondary schooling, I paid for it myself. Whatever services I may have had no choice but to receive from the government were most certainly repaid many times over via the hundreds of thousands of dollars I paid in income taxes over the years I lived in Canada.
But, no matter. The Comminist believes that accepting a "benefit" from the state that was originally stolen from one in the first place, indentures one in tax servitude until death.
Sorry, I don't buy that argument.
IT is because of punks and whiners like you that they do WAY to much ofthat.
Another Communist tactic: arguing that objecting to the taking of one's earnings is "whining", with all those negative connotations.
Gotta love all the cowards spouting off anon. Afraid to risk a bit of karma?
You could've hired me.
One thing that really bothers me about free health care is this attitude that any private hospitals will mean the immediate demise of our entire health care system.
The funnier aspect is that we've *had* private medical clinics, MRI clinics, etc. for *years* and they've functioned just fine as an adjunct to the public system. I think the fear is that it is a 'thin edge of the wedge' scenario - let in a private hospital, let enough people start to use it, then they'll say 'why should we also fund the public one?' etc. I mean, it isn't entirely implausible that people might take up that attitude. At the same time, throwing money at our current health care system without accompanying internal reform will not necessarily resolve the issues either.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."