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End of the Road for U.S. BlackBerry Users ?
_termx23 writes "US BlackBerry users may have to find an alternative source for their email addiction after the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington rejected a request by Research in Motion to rehear its appeal of a patent infringement case brought by NTP, which holds a portfolio of wireless email-related patents violated by RIM." From the article: "As part of that litigation, NTP, whose only assets are wireless e-mail related patents, had been granted an injunction banning the sale of BlackBerry devices in the United States and forcing Research in Motion to stop providing e-mail services to all American customers except government account holders. While the court declined Research in Motion's request for a complete rehearing by all 12 of its judges, it did order the panel of three judges to review some aspects of NTP's patent claims." We've discussed this previously.
What is it with these pseudo companies that are formed just to hold supposed IP? We have companies like SCO group, Forgent Networks and NTP who do not really have any products, but whose business model is to go out and purchase any and all "patents" they can get their hands on. They then do nothing with those patents until one day in the future, they identify some product or company that has a product that has come about through parallel evolution or innovation and then try and sue the pants off of them. Most of these companies employees are not doing anything productive as they are a bunch of lawyers on staff who are parasites on technology and innovation doing nothing but sucking the life out innovation and progress.
It has got to be apparent that this business model has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with piracy and racketeering.
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The article is short on details. What patent are we talking about and how exactly did RIM violate it? And are other PDA/phones possibly violating this patent too?
eTrade SUCKS
and because of that owner of government accounts are excluded from the ban of email services.
Maybe they are "more equal" than others... or somebody doesn't want to hurt them otherwise they could start thinking why the patent system is so stupid...
How can a company enforce (or even hold) a patent on something when they don't actually manufacture anything that uses the patent ? Surely this is a restrictive practice that should be outlawed ?
Finally we have a patent suit that'll hit non-techs where they notice. Blackberry devices seem to be the device of the moment with sales staff and management. A patent suit which disables their Blackberrys may just be noticeable enough that the public start to take an interest in the who0le patent issue.
Let us hope so anyway.....
If NTP is successful at this IP game with RIM, they will have money to go after Smart Technology, and others that are using basic common sense, but which the USPTO managed to let them patent. That is the real problem. Anything that is a natural, anybody-can-see-it extension of a technology should not be granted a patent. Yes, that is a broad statement, and probably won't work everywhere, but seriously, asking for a patent on sending email to wireless PDA (or other) devices is just common sense, as in what else would you do?
The FCC has seen fit to take a mostly hands-off approach to IP networks, but there seems to be no sense of the common good at the USPTO. Perhaps that is what we need. This is not unlike the patent issue about navigating a menu on mobile devices problem that Apple ran into.... OMG, its just stupid, and the devil in the details of trying to remain legal about things is killing us. The USPTO needs to simply say, oh, ooops, mea culpa, sorry. and then the courts can send all the life sucking lawyers home again.
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Look I know alot of people are going to post about how the entire patent system needs to be defenstrated (thrown out the window), but lets not forget the tremendous innovation our patent system has protected. The solution to these submarine patent lawsuits seems to be have a clause specifically preventing this situation: a company must be in the process of selling the product in question in order to bring a lawsuit like this to trial. We need legislation that prevents people from obtaining patents and sitting on them. You should lose your right to the patent for failure to act within a certain time period. A twenty year monopoly on an idea is far too long in todays modern world. I open the discussion up to patent reform and your ideas, please post
I fail to see what is so unique about "Wireless Email" ... Email has existed for umpteen years, and wireless networks for a decade or so.
As soon as the wireless network became digital and the devices accessing them powerful enough to do more, it is a logical progression that you would be able to access your digital media (emails, photos, etc) via that device, possibly via a gateway service.
However maybe there was something unique in their patent. Shame they NEVER MADE A DEVICE which used the patent. Patents should exist to protect the inventor whilst he/she/it sells their product utilising said patent. It should be for people to have ideas, patent, and wait for someone else to implement.
I think that patent lawsuits should be stopped on the first day after the judge asks "Did this patent ever result in the creation of a device that you wish to protect from the alleged infringers?".
Ideas are cheap. Doing them is where the work is.
"forcing Research in Motion to stop providing e-mail services to all American customers except government account holders"
Now if I were RIM and a branch of the US government handed me down this ruling, I'd shut the whole system down in the US. I'm allowed to keep providing service to government account holders, but I can't keep my business account holders? No thanks. I'll just kill everything in the US until we get this straightened out. Up yours, government.
I'm sorry - why is the government an exception? If you want to except people, how about *existing customers*. I work at a hospital, and just about every doctor here has a Blackberry. I wouldn't be able to ever get answers on any of my questions if they didn't have them - as these doctors are NEVER in their office long enough to sit down.
I don't see how some government official with more time and money on his/her hands than they know what to do with keeps their Blackberry, when people who are genuinely busy and using the damned thing are going to get shut out in the cold.
Is the government excepted just so they don't have to look at it from a "who's getting hurt by this"? Arguably, the point of the patent is to protect the creator so they can bring the product to market and profit from their research - well, NTP wasn't didn't and wouldn't - and their use of the patent now and under these terms explicitly HURTS consumers and the world in general.
Incidentally - I'm rather against the "patent for patents sake". Patents have a place, but they are all too often abused. There need to be some rules about sitting on your ass when you know infringement is in the works, so you can let it get big and profitable before digging in. I know this RIM:NTP has been going on for a while, but they didn't pipe up until RIM was well underway.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
It seems that a large part of the "intellectual property" debate is about building an American IP imperium. Of course, US courts will judge with impartiality this case whatever the nationality of the companies involved. It's unimaginable that a US court would favour a US company over a Canadian one, since US courts are completely immune from the kinds of political pressure that might cause this. LMAO.
The point is this: as manufacturing, and R&D, and services, move out of the US and into China, India, and the rest of Asia, the only way the US can maintain some control over the world economy of the next decades is by IP-squatting. Patents and Mickey-mouse copyrights are the tools, control of global trade is the goal. It's a clear political goal, proven by the way IP-squatting is pushed into every "trade deal" the US signs ("we will buy your soybeans if you accept our IP laws").
RIM made a success in a market that should have belonged to a US firm. That's reason enough to kneecap them.
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I just want to comment that I think this stop providing e-mail services to all American customers except government account holders is a bullshit biased judgement. Admittedly it was the original judgement, but I only just noticed it.
Why should corporate America have to suffer but the government not?
When MCI went down the tubes, I bought stock, simply because I knew that too much of the Govt infrastructure, corporate America and the internet was dependent on their network, and that MCI weren't going to get turned off.
I can understand doing something to keep the company alive, but this just seems wrong. Why the double standard?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
This means that in meetings people will pay attention to me instead of their Blackberries. There's nothing I hate more than making some point and having to repeat it because half of the people in the room are checking their Blackberries.
Why not? Those at the "front line" field the calls from the end-users, so why would their views be any less worthy?
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
Maybe we can rediscover the pleasure of being out of touch.
Maybe my time can be mine again.
RIM will license the patent.
It will then pass along the costs to the Blackberry users.
The Blackberry users will then gripe and whine about how they are getting ripped off by RIM.
Technology gets another black eye.
Correct me if I'm wrong but... isn't the Blackberry just a small portable device used for reading and sending email? If it gets shut down, I have some advice for all the disgruntled users out there. Buy a mobile phone! They're pretty amazing these days; color screens, web access, email, and (quite uselessly) some can play music and take pictures.
Let's see, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
I guess I'm missing the "promotion" part here.
Do you have ESP?
The guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper sued Detroit. The case took more than a decade. When he finally won it didn't mean the end of intermittent windshield wipers. It meant the guy got tens of millions of dollars in back royalties.
It's highly unlikely that NTP wants to shut down RIM. There will almost certainly be a licensing deal.
Insert witty sig here.
Why are people so against companies that buy patents from inventors? I agree that it 'feels' wrong somehow when such a shell company starts to litigate, but let's face it - it's not.
In these cases the inventor gets money for the patent, he could've also said 'no' and kept it. Instead, he has made a (hopefully) informed decision to sell his rights. The patent-buyers made the choice to invest. The choice for the inventor is: get money NOW, or maybe get more money later, if you can afford the lawyers and time.
Why do people consider this practice 'evil' while things like making money off trading stocks is considered perfectly legit? In the stock market you also buy a -share- of something you have no intellectual input in.
Incidentally: as far as I can tell, NTP is not the 'vulture' company but actually was founded by the actual inventor of the patents discussed here.
Except that Europe is trying to jump down the same rathole as fast as it can.
Forget about Shelley. Try Orwell instead. You want to see the future of the world? Imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever.
If you like helping people who dont have brains, you yourself may not have a brain.
I'm in networking to solve complex issues. Not to change some morons battery.
I work for a couple of business magazines and I have to concur. Not an issue comes out without some completely forced, pointless and obnoxious reference to the BlackBerry.
It's not just a phone, but rather a badge of too busy, pretentious yuppiedom.
Somehow I don't see "Windows Mobile 5.0 Powered smartphone" rolling of the lips, or keyboard, quite as easily.
BWJones: It has got to be apparent that this business model has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with piracy and racketeering.
SatanicPuppy: The idea is to protect innovation, not to protect a group of idiots sitting around in a room, patenting anything that flies out of their mouths. The idea of a thing isn't worth crap compared to the massive NRE that goes into making it work in the real world.
mikkom: Corporate world is a lot like ecosystem. If you allow these kind of companies exists, they will exist. If your legistlation allows these kind of companies sue companies and win, they will prevail.
Youse guys' problem is that you are thinking as engineers - as though laws were written by engineers for the benefit of engineers.
But laws aren't written by engineers: Laws are written by lawyers ["legislators"] and interpreted by lawyers ["jurists"] for the benefit of lawyers [e.g. paperwork fictions like "corporations"].
"NTP" is a front for a bunch of lawyers. The Court of Appeals is a front for a bunch of lawyers. You do the math: Lawyers win, engineers lose.
Step 1: Rant about how evil the USA is on Slashdot
Step 2: Get modded +5[interesting|insightful]
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!!!!?
Theoretically in your case, the government could step in, seize your land, pay you some chump change, and turn around and give it to the neighbor company for a toxic waste dump. The company next door pays larger taxes than you do, a few local commissioners see that, some other "consulting fees" change hands sub rosa, poof, you are SOL. Eminent domain property seizures have happened a lot, and are judged "legal" as long as there is some tenuous public benefit.
I would imagine some enterprising lawyers are already drooling over this legal concept when it comes to IP "products". It's only a short step away.
Say, you had large established company A with deep pockets that needed patent B from joe nobody in order to produce product C, and offered to set-up a factory in some locale. Perhaps they could persuade the governmental entity that if they seized the patent they needed and gave it to them that it would result in "more business and growth" for this community.
It could happen theoretically, property is prperty, seizure is seizure.
Why is it that there is no provision for multiple people coming up with the same idea independently? In this case, NTP bought the rights to a patent from somewhere - that's fine. However, it certainly doesn't look as if RIM knew about this patent or maliciously used it - as others pointed out, they came up with the same obvious idea at the same time. The difference is then they actually did something with it.
History is rife with examples of people coming up with revolutionary things at the same time, just because the pieces were all falling into place and multiple people went "aha!" at once.
Maybe I'm trying to inject too much common sense into a legal argument, but wouldn't this squash a lot of this IP-squatting, if the law were to accept the idea that multiple parties could independently come up with a novel idea, and the first to actually DO something with it (license it, produce it, or otherwise make use of the idea) would be given priority on the patent?
The nationalism of the whole thing bothers me as well. Just for the sake of argument, say we had a Canadian company patent the same idea in their system a week before a US patent was filed. Does anyone really believe the US courts would uphold a foreign patent over one of their own? I place bets the foreign one would be ignored as having been granted under different standards, much the way the FDA doesn't recognize other countries' drug approvals.
(Quite obviously, IANAL)
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Sadly, the "Little" guy is nothing more than a lawfirm- Patents are solely only worth what kind of legal defense you can mount to defend them. The "Little" guy can't even afford a decent legal defense in most of these cases, and when you seer a lawsuit like this it's somebody that thinks that they have deep enough pockets to bleed even deeper pockets.
This would be a little easier to stomach if it were the "Little" guy fighting back and that the litigant actually DID something with their precious Patents. What we have here is a letter of the law thing- and a bunch of lawyers abusing it seriously to their and their client's best interests. It's not illegal- but it is immoral.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
NTP simply wants RIM to give them a big cut out of the worldwide sales of Blackberries, for a patent that they hold in the US. It's extortion, pure and simple.
If I were the President of RIM, I would bankrupt the company, right after cutting off every single Blackberry account worldwide, just to spite the US, which (I would guess) has most of the users of the Blackberry. I'd make them regret allowing a company, whose only asset is IP, to be able to do this.
The Patent system is completely broken, and unless something like this happens, nothing will ever be done to fix it.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Interesting how when people are hit directly by something, they suddenly start to care. Congress doesn't care about updating patent law but as soon as individual Senators can't use their Blackberries they want to intercede. Never mind whether the case brought against RIM is valid or not. Has there ever been a case where the government has bailed out an individual company because they rely on that company's technology?
Everybody agrees that the US patent laws are woefully inadequate, particularly when it comes to its application in information technology. And in its potential for abuse by vultures like NTP. Here is a simple clause that should fix some of the more egregious offenses to system:
What IF the patent law said that in order to enforce a patent a patent holder must show that they are actively pursuing development of the inventions described in the patent they are holding. Otherwise the patent is not enforceable. Obviously it needs to be a lot more detailed that this simple statement, but it seems to me that requiring patent holders to do more than just sit on their assets waiting for an opportunity to litigate, would go a long way to fix the perception that pantents serve to protect corporate pirates, instead of true inventors.
I'm really surprised at all the outrage surrounding poor RIM losing this battle. Short memory I guess. Isn't RIM the company that The Register affectionately labeled Lawsuits In Motion because of all the patent lawsuits they file?
n ology_settles_with_lawsuits/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/28/good_tech
Be sure and follow some of the links at the bottom of the article.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman