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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
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?
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?
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!
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.
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!)
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.
Dig past the useless article. The blackberry device itself doesn't infringe, only processes that only run on the server and never occur within the US infringe:
5,625,670: "A system (100) for transmitting information from one of a plurality of originating processors..." (which goes on to describe the switches, hardware, etc. in place at the server end.) (Filed in 1995. When did alphanumeric pagers appear?)
5,631,946: begins the exact same way "A system for transmitting originated information from one of a plurality of originating processors"
5,819,172: Again, "A system for transmitting an inputted message, contained in an electronic mail message originating from one of a plurality of originating processors"
6,067,451: "In a system comprising a communication system which transmits electronic mail, inputted to the communication system from a plurality of processors"
6,317,592: And finally, "In a communication system comprising a wireless system which communication system transmits electronic mail inputted to the communication system from an originating device"
So now the question is, if I build a car that phones my server to ask it where the nearest hotel is, and my server is in Canada, if someone has a patent in the US on "a system for automatically locating the nearest hotel based on GPS coordinates", is it illegal to sell my car in the US?
The car doesn't use GPS coordinates to find a hotel, so it doesn't infringe. The act of calling to find the hotel doesn't infringe. So the car does nothing thats infringing this patent.
This is quickly going to become huge, probably WTO-level, in more than just blackberries... if I write a web-based application that would be patented in the US and host it in Taiwan, does it infringe on the US patent? If US users use it does it magically start to infringe on the patent despite being physically outside the US? These things have to be solved, and soon.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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"
After seven years and millions of sales, can't we just let the name of the product be the name of the product?
No. Especially in cases such as this when you're dealing with generic nouns such as blackberry, apple, window, word, page, tiger. Those words have been used to denote real-life objects, animals and fruit long before the first computer was invented and I do not see why we should allow some companies to usurp those names like that just to make their products more recognizable and memorable. Screw that, let them come up with something original!
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
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'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.
No, of course not. I understand insurance fully well. In fact I pay quite a bit in term life insurance premiums upon which I hope my family will not collect.
However, here participation is mandatory, and even when a valid claim is presented, it is not honoured. The insistance of receiving at least as many benefits as premiums paid is not predecated on having paid those premiums -- you correctly note that that insurance is not savings, but rather, the fact that those premiums were collected by force -- it is making one as "whole" as possible against an injustice.
I would consider that unacceptable too, but I seriously doubt that's what actually happened.
It plainly did. Pragmatically, Canada does not have the medical expertise to perform AAA repair surgeries with any degree of expectation of survival. But, it exists elsewhere in the world. When the insurer can not meet their obligation, they are bound to refund premiums less benefits already paid. In this case, that refund may have saved a life.
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.
Then why are there procedure quotas? Try getting essential surgery late in the year.
Seriously, you have my sympathy that your father had a bad experience
Forget the sympathy. Because of the obvious potential for personal bias, I've examined the situation from a strictly contractual and financial perspective. He was robbed, which lead to his death. I call that murder.
Ah, but many similar anecdotes do data make, and I've heard plenty. Besides, even if a system saves millions of lives, it is still murderous if it takes even one that would otherwise be left to the perils of its own existence.
The only matter at issue is whether this killing was premeditated murder or involuntary homicide, and whether that is true on a systemic or procedural level. In other words, is the system designed to chose who lives and who dies amont those who have no choice but to participate, or was there a procedural error in an otherwise sound system?
Obviously, I subscribe to the notion that a system which forcibly takes money from people, and, through the non-return of that money, may contribute directly to their inability to save their own lives, is murderous. I do not subscribe to the idea of the state playing at God.
The only possible way to avoid such a charge would be for the system to be designed to leave a person no worse off than if the system had never existed. That is why I harp on refund of premiums in extremis -- it is the only thing that can possibly be argued to give the system a modicum of morality (it's still theft, but a far cry from murder). Most would contribute, and not get value, but not be worse off for it (though not having the choice to forgo health insurance in order to have a more lavish vacation each year). Some would receive benefits far in excess of their premiums paid. And some, to whom the system can not meet its promise, would be refunded their premiums and left to their own devices. That, at least, I could stomach.
You could've hired me.
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."
That, of course, depends on the standard of comparison that you use. It sure compares better to Canada, as far as I'm concerned. But, the flaw in your argument is the implication that if something is "worse", by some measure, than the status quo; then the status quo is acceptable. That's patently absured: Is rape acceptable because it isn't murder? Conversely, if one would rather die than be raped, does that make murder aceptable because it isn't rape? Both are vile.
At best you can argue that the U.S. is a flawed society. That does nothing to mitigate the heinous criminal nature of Canadian society.
And still you bang on about taxation being theft, and socialised medicine being either murder or homicide.
What other conclusion can one come to?
Taxation is the taking of funds from those who earn them (in the case of an income tax), by force, or threat of harm, if necessary. How can that be anything other than theft? What mitigating argument can be made?
Popular support? That just makes the thief a mob. The rendering of a service for the funds taken? In a free market one can choose to engage in trade, not have it forced upon one. "Here, we're giving you a can of soda. Give us $1.00 or go to jail!!"
Status quo -- it always has been this way, so it is right? That would make all injustices justified - an absurd world where the Nazi massacre of Jews was accpetable solely because it occured. Add the Rwandan genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus by "good Hutus", Mao's and Stalin's murder of millions of their own. To include the U.S. in the criticism, slavery, McCarthyism, Japanese American internment, and present day homophobia were all good and right by your reasoning. It might be convenient for the coward to "go along", but certainly not just.
I don't buy that bullshit - might does not make right, and greater evils do not mitigate lesser ones.
How can healthcare that picks and chooses who to serve after rendering patients impotent in seeking service themselves by stealing their resources, resulting in otherwise preventable deaths be anythng but murder? It is not mitigated by any argument that lives helped and saved exceed those hurt and lost. The state has no place playing God.
Good people enter into voluntary cooperative insurance arrangements, formal or otherwise, to share the risks they all face. There is no need to force participation in a well-run system. People flock to churches and similar institutions of faith solely on the basis of pursuasion, and shunning. These organizations have traditionally been the bedrock of community self-insurance, unrelated to whatever dogma they preach. The amazing thing is that no priest, rabbi, or muslim cleric need ensure attendance at the point of a gun. Is truely sad that your kind have even usurped faith to promote a diseased discriminatory agenda.
Government is force, nothing more. Force in defense is one's inalienable right, and arguably one of the few justifications for government. Force in oppression is the heinous purvue of parasites, murders, and opressors.
Last question : do you know why all my posts are AC?
It is self-evident that you are a coward, afraid to associate yourself publicly with your vile nature, even when part of a comatose social majority.
Not surprising, really.
You, and all like you, deserve no less than the painful death you inflict on others. You sit there and breed in your parasitic, corrupt moral filth, spawning innocent lives to be indoctrinated in the ways of opression, sustaining your progeny through theft, all the while crying "Think of the Children!" Perverters of charity, compassion, and caring, you soil and dishonour the meaning of these noble words, in order to prosper without effort.
No wonder you cower in fear in the face of the truths of liberty.
Where my father once gave thousands of dollars to pre-Communist E
You could've hired me.
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