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Blackberry Future Uncertain
Dave White writes "Research In Motion and NTP have failed to reach a settlement in the Blackberry case. It looks like the door has been opened for NTP to be granted an injunction blocking the sales of Blackberry wireless messaging devices in the US. The New York Times (free registration yadda yadda) has the scoop on this interesting development."
http://bugmenot.com/view.php?url=nytimes.com
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RIM and NTP Reach An Impasse
Research In Motion said it has reached an impasse with NTP Inc. in finalizing a patent dispute settlement and would take court action.
The two sides had reached a settlement in March with RIM agreeing to pay $450 million to NTP to settle the patent litigation. In return, RIM was granted an unfettered right to continue its BlackBerry-related business without further interference from NTP or its patents. "We are extremely disappointed and I am personally extremely disappointed that this matter which we believed was resolved has been reopened by NTP," Jim Balsillie, RIM chairman and chief executive, said in a conference call.
He also emphasized the terms agreed to in March "were clear and unambiguous. "For nearly three months now, RIM has been working in good faith to complete the process and obtain the final license and settlement documents," Balsillie said. According to RIM, NTP refuses to honor its obligations under the term sheet and finalize the definitive documents. Calls to NTP went unanswered. RIM said while it is unsure of the outcome of the court's decision, it is reviewing any potential accounting implications and has already set aside and will continue holding on to the funds to make the settlement payment.
We need a hundred of these types of losses -- where patents directly affect the public. Let the public get comfortable using a very necessary and nice technology, and then let some crappy company come out of nowhere and extort their way into an injunction and removal of the widget from the marketplace. The company (RIM in this case) should then perform a recall on all devices that infringe on that patent - notifying the users of their equipment exactly WHY they are being forced to give up their Blackberries.
Then we'll see how long it takes to reform the patent system!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Doesn't matter -- the Treo 650 is killing the Blackberry anyway. Once I found I could manage my servers with PalmVNC on the Treo, that was it for me.
Mine lasts for days on a charge. My service provider charges $30 a month for unlimited data. How is that raped?
Because clearly, Blackberries only exist so that your bosses boss can send you an email with a sig at the bottom that says "sent from Mr. Big's Blackberry (while rolling down the hgwy in his Z4).
part of the problem is, RIM got the patent office to reexamine 8 of NTP's patents regarding the technology, and so far the PTO has come out with rejections on each proceeding they've done.
this adds a layer of complication to the infringement case, as no doubt some part of the deal rested on the outcome of those proceedings.
The company I work at recently yanked all blackberry devices and replaced them with Treo 600 and treo 650's.
the fact that you dont need any "special" software to access email and has the capability of viewing doc and excel attachments was the death spike for the blackberry here at this company.
and honestly, the treo's have much better sounding audio for phone calls than even the latest blackberry's did.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well Tom, in the real world, you need to have the ability to work under pressure. You need to be a well rounded person that can admit that you don't know everything.
That's what the RIM interview is meant to test, along with technical knowledge, they want to know if you are actually capable of working in the real world. You could be a genius in your specific area, but if you don't listen to your supervisor simply because he's not as specialised as you are, then you would be a useless employee.
I used to work at RIM (back when they only owned 2 buildings). They are not a bunch of smartass punks, they're a bunch of intelligent people looking to hire other people who are intelligent and not smartasses such as yourself (I'm basing this on your own admission to your behaviour in the interview, if you say that to the interviewer, what will you say to your boss?). A few words of advice, if you think you're all that, and RIM's interview process upset you, I wouldn't recommend applying to Microsoft or Google, or any big tech company... they make everyone do puzzles... and not every interviewer is as specialised as you are, that's why they're looking for someone with those skills. But I guess that would have required some sort of thought process outside of crypto-math to figure out... my bad...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The thing is, they have to give you a bunch of extra tests during the interview. They are just trying to find the best person for a job. Granted, I find many employers take a little far, but they are just looking out for their own interestes. I'm sure most companies have ran into a problem of hiring completely the wrong person after a not thorough enough interview process. They put you through a series of tests, in order to see not only if you can do the job, but also handle the pressure. This is important when you are working on a project that may have strict deadlines. The other, and probably most important thing they are looking for, is how well they will get along with you when working with you. They want to make sure you don't have a bad temper, and will be in a good mood on most days. The only thing worse than working with someone who has no idea what they are doing, is working with someone who's always pissed off, Or for that matter, someone whos personality just conflicts with the rest of the team, no matter the reason.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
instead of "yadda yadda" each time you link to NYT. Like this:& q=ntp+rim
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8
Final talks in a patent infringement lawsuit involving the popular BlackBerry e-mail messaging device have reached an impasse, the two companies involved said Thursday, raising the possibility that the BlackBerry service could be banned from the United States market.
What I don't get is how the Blackberry, being so popular with members of our legislature, wound up on the wrong side of a patent lawsuit. To wit: Legislative Branch Subcommittee Hearing on the FY05 Budget [2004]:
In the past two years, the Senate provided BlackBerry devices and updated electronic pagers to Senators and key staff. The number of BlackBerry devices in use at the Senate continues to expand. Every office has a Senate "Group Alert" telephone system and approximately 1,000 telephones throughout the Senate are connected to the System.
Can't imagine someone informing members of the Senate they have to turn in their favourite devices because they're no longer legal.
OTTAWA, June 9 - Final talks in a patent infringement lawsuit involving the popular BlackBerry e-mail messaging device have reached an impasse, the two companies involved said Thursday, raising the possibility that the BlackBerry service could be banned from the United States market.
The two companies, Research in Motion of Waterloo, Ontario, which makes the BlackBerry, and NTP, a small patent-holding company in Arlington, Va., reached a settlement in March to end an infringement suit that is three and a half years old. R.I.M. agreed at the time to pay NTP the unusually large sum of $450 million to end the suit.
On Thursday, however, it was apparent that negotiations to reach a final settlement had failed.
Late Wednesday night, R.I.M. asked a United States federal court to enforce the settlement reached in March. Meanwhile, in court papers filed Thursday, NTP denied that the settlement was ever clear-cut, and urged the court to reject R.I.M.'s request.
In a conference call Thursday with analysts, James L. Balsillie, the chairman and co-chief executive of R.I.M., said he could not comment on the specifics of why the talks had foundered, citing a confidentiality agreement between the companies. He emphasized, though, that R.I.M. had not tried to alter the settlement's terms, and blamed NTP for the impasse.
"This is an enormous amount of money, one of the largest settlements in the history of any patent system," Mr. Balsillie said. "I'm at a loss to understand what in the world one would want beyond that."
In its filing, however, NTP said that it had pressed R.I.M. for a complete set of documents detailing the terms of the agreement during three days of negotiations in March.
"Nevertheless, because of R.I.M.'s pressing need to leave town, the signed agreement was limited to a vague, ambiguously worded term sheet," the court papers said.
NTP had won the right to ban Blackberry e-mail in the United States in an earlier court decision, but that ruling was suspended when R.I.M. appealed. In its filing Thursday, though, NTP said that if no settlement was reached, it would again ask for an injunction on the sale of BlackBerry pagers and e-mail service in the United States. Research in Motion is dependent on Blackberry sales in the United States for about 75 percent of its revenues.
Gregory E. Upchurch, an intellectual property lawyer in St. Louis, said that about 80 percent of the time, courts enforced previously announced settlements. "Courts are in the business of resolving disputes," he said.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
According to this court document, the infrigments concern:
- Claims 15, 32, 34 of #5,436,960
- Claim 8 of #5,625,670
- Claim 199 of #5,819,172
- Claims 28, 248, 309, 313, 317 of #6,067,451
- Claims 40, 150, 278, 653, 654 of #6,317,592
These patents can be found here:5,436,960
5,625,670
5,819,172
6,067,451
6,317,592
These patents look to me like they would cover just about every PDA and cell phone on the planet today. Is RIM a target because of their popularity?
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
I'd like to see a law passed that says that while you may be granted a patent on an invention or idea, if you fail to produce a viable product based on it, the patent only lasts half as long.
Too many companies seem to be using their patents as blocking mechanisms to keep competitors out, or as a way to extort money from other, larger, firms.
Chip H.
Yesterday evening, I have attended to a play in Paris. My neighbor could not wait for the end of the play or for the interval: he had to check his blackberry often... Some blackberry users become slaves. I hope for them that 'blackberry' will disappear...
le souvenir d'une certaine image n'est que le regret d'un certain instant (M.Proust)
1. Dream up and outlandish idea you have no clue how to implement and patent in obscure wording
2. Go into coporate hybernation and wait until someone much smarter implements idea.
3. Sue smarter company for all their hardwork and ingenuity.
4. Profit!!!
I hate parasites.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
This is a very very sad case.
Why in the world is a company like NTP even allowed to exist. Why are ppl given patents before even coming up with a product.
I think what NTP has done/is currently doing is very wrong. Why should a company like NTP that just dreams up ideas and does nothing to actually develop them being given patents? They do very little to foster innovation. They do very little to employ people. They pretty much do jack diddly squat.
This is wrong in so many ways.
There are 3 other parties that are also responsible for the BS. The patent office that actually gave them the patent (flawed patent system), the corrupt law firm representing the case, and the Judge who ruled on this case and cannot see right from wrong.
I'm originally from Waterloo, Ontario, where RIM is located. They've grown at an incredible rate in recent years, but not in an "we'll eat your soul" kind of way. They've reinvested strongly in the community, and have donated a TON of cash to charity and other ventures. For example, the founder of RIM donated $100M to found The Perimeter Institute, a theoretical physics center where researchers and eggheads can basically sit around and think about cool stuff without worrying about budgetary or governmental pressures. A lot of what I see from RIM reminds me very much of Google. Become an industry leader, and STAY an industry leader for the right reasons. This story makes me somewhat sad, as the company suing them appears to have been "created" specifically for this reason, and they don't actually create anything that benefits anyone, except lawsuits that benefit themselves.e n/
Perimeter Institute can be found here:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.com/index.php?lang=
If you're ever in Waterloo, I suggest you check it out. One of the coolest buildings I've ever seen.
How is this insightful? I'm a Ph.D. computer scientist with more than 20 years computing experience in a variety of areas. I have a long list of employers who will talk glowingly about my problem-solving skills. If RIM or Google or Microsoft or whoever tried to give me a puzzle-solving test in a job interview at this point in my career, I'd walk out.
One of my closest friends walked out of Sequent on this basis some years ago. He's now one of the most successful (and employable) computer people in the industry. As for Sequent...dead dead dead. Speaking of which, how is RIM doing these days?
Puzzle-solving tests in interviews may be appropriate for folks who haven't already solidly demonstrated their problem-solving skills in their application domain in some other way. For the rest of us, IMHO it's really a bit insulting; on the order of a hazing exercise. A certain class of manager will predictably reject folks who are unwilling to be hazed. I don't have much interest in working for those folks.