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.

Comments

Racketeering

[BWJones]

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.

Re:Racketeering

[Mikkeles]

Well, this could just be the best thing to happen in order to reform patent legislation. An aweful lot of VIP are going to be very annoyed at not having Blackberrys (in the US).
To reinforce the point, RIM should also remove the government accounts.

Re:Racketeering

[SatanicPuppy]

Nothing to do with ethics, it's to do with our crappy IP laws. Ethically, the only thing that can be said about them is that they're following the law.

I do think, however, that all such IP claims, based on nothing, should be thrown out when someone else produces a viable product first. 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.

I wish more of these pie-in-the-sky morons understood that. Patented the idea of wireless email? You've got to be kidding. It's like they looked at all technology that was blowing up 10 years ago, and said, "Let's put 'wireless' in front of that and patent it."

Re:Racketeering

[mikkom]

What is it with these pseudo companies that are formed just to hold supposed IP?

When you have legistlation that allows companies like them, they will appear.

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.

Re:Racketeering

[brxndxn]

I also agree they should remove the government accounts. Keeping government accounts alive is like telling a cell-phone provider that they must lose 99% of their customers but keep the entire network infrastructure alive in order for the few important 1%. There are many doctors, paramedics, vets, teachers (private schools too if 'teacher' falls under gov't employee), hell.. the media that all use Blackberries. Why are gov't employees more important?

If I were a stockholder (if it's publicly traded or not), I would be fuming if they kept the entire network running - wasting precious company money..

BTW, I can get email on my cellphone that is not a RIM device. Is that infringing on this vapor-company's patent too?

Re:Racketeering

[71thumper]

If you go with the model of "you can only patent what you can build" -- you will squeeze out all the "little guys" with limited resources.

For example, you couldn't patent a better way to do 3D graphic chipsets unless you could actually BUILD that chipset?

Effectively, you've narrowed the market down to a small cadre of companies.

I think this is a great example of "the little guy" being able to fight back against being crushed by the large corporations.

Steve

Re:Racketeering

[klingens]

The problem lies not with the missing implementation. Each of those PureIP companies could hire a contractor for 2 days and produce a sample application for any patent they wanted. They can even sell it to a single customer to make it a "commercial enterprise".

The first problem is the fact that your lawmakers allowed patents on business methods and software. The second one is that your PTO (and our european one too) doesn't review the patents for non-obviousness anymore. The PTO is also treated at a profit center while it really really shouldn't cause this will lead to shoddy examination by default which tremendously compounds the obviousness problem.

Re:Racketeering

[putaro]

There used to be a requirement that you had to have "reduced to practice" whatever it was that you were patenting. The patent office used to require you to submit a working scale model.

With today's technology a simulation could be used to the same effect. In the case of a 3D chipset, a Verilog model could be required.

Re:Racketeering

[gabebear]

"For example, you couldn't patent a better way to do 3D graphic chipsets unless you could actually BUILD that chipset?
Effectively, you've narrowed the market down to a small cadre of companies."

If a "little guy" wanted to patent some non-obvious chipset improvement he wouldn't have to build a shipping product, just a prototype of his improved part. A prototype could consist of a computer simulation or FPGA and cost very little, it wouldn't need to run at full speed.

I think we need to move back to a patent system where you actually have to implement what you are patenting. It's really sad that it has gotten to the point where it is less profitable to actually make a product then squat on ideas and ruin those that actaully do.

Re:Racketeering

[Itchy Rich]

If I were a shareholder, i'd be scared if I had any part in removing the governement's accounts, when some of those governement officials will be the judges when my case hit the superior court...

If I were a judge with a Blackberry that stopped working that would illustrate to me how far removed from the public interest this kind of behaviour is. That's probably why the IP holder didn't demand shut-down government employees too.

Re:Racketeering

[hey!]

Well, that's not hard to address. You do several things:

1) Distinguish productive patents from non-productive patents. A patent would be productive if you can show you are using it in a product, or if it is being infringed.

2) Make non-productive patents expire five years from filing. If you can't commercialize it in five years, it's either not viable or you have no intenion of it.

3) Charge an annual patent mainenance fee structured to make it possible to work on commercializing a small number of non-productive patents but expensive to hold a large number of them. For example charge 500 * 2^n per year, where n is the number of non-productive patents an entitiy holds. The small time inventor with a single idea pays $500 per year, which in most cases doesn't take food off his table. An IP company with ten non-productive patents would be paying a half million dollars on the off chance they will be able to catch somebody.

Naturally, this is just fantasy. Democracy in this country is to rotten for any laws to be passed for the public good, unless it makes good TV.

Re:Racketeering

[cpt kangarooski]

Why are gov't employees more important?

Because people working in Congress like Blackberries a lot, and have made it known that they don't want this conflict to disrupt their service, or else. Doctors and so forth can't pass legislation to get what they want.

Re:Racketeering

[CreatureComfort]

and over $1M in lab equipment to test/debug the setup.

And how likely is it that someone without these resources is actually going to come up with an truly non-obvious and workable improvement on current designs? In addition, as noted in some other posts, a simulation or Verilog model would be acceptable. If you don't have that, or a very similar tool, you're likely not producing anything workable to begin with.

I don't think it's too much to ask for an inventor to at least produce detailed schematics from which the object of the patent can be created.

Re:Racketeering

[SatanicPuppy]

Perhaps you would like to point out how the current system is better?

Right now we have a system that is set up so that the little man can go in and effectively block production of a product forever. This is idiotic. Period.

Patents that are never implemented should either be invalid or they should lapse as soon as someone else implements it. I frankly have no sympathy; if you can't get it done, then get out of the way and let someone else do it. End of story. This "IP Hostage" crap has got to go.

What patent?

[Jesus IS the Devil]

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?

Everybody is equal in front of "Justice"

[Advocadus Diaboli]

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...

Finally something people will notice

[Nursie]

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.....

This is bad

[zappepcs]

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.

What's so unique or amazing about the patent?

[hattig]

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.

If I were RIM...

[hal2814]

"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.

Except government?

[Cyn]

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.

Re:What if..?

[pieterh]

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.

Forgetting the patent stuff

[bernywork]

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?

I see this as a good thing

[crass751]

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.

Silver Linings

[dlefavor]

Maybe we'll get to rediscover the joy of being alone. Really alone

Maybe we can rediscover the pleasure of being out of touch.

Maybe my time can be mine again.

I missed something....

[Trailer Trash]

Let's see, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

I guess I'm missing the "promotion" part here.

Why do you think NTP is so evil?

[puntloos]

First of all, this patent indeed seems unfair, just randomly combining two obvious current or future technologies ("lets patent in-flight muzak for teleporters!"). But let's leave that alone for a while and assume that the patent is not evil by itself.

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.

NTP == Lawyers; Court of Appeals == Lawyers

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

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.

Great Minds Think Alike?

[diamondsw]

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)

Re:Farce

[Mr. Underbridge]

I know, I'll license my idea out to companies and they can manufacture it for me. Under your model, I would not be allowed to do this "restrictive" process. You'd rather it be outlawed. I've heard that Leer invented the 8-Track tape; and becuase he could not afford to do anything with it, he sold the patent for the player and licensed the patent for manufacture of the tapes.

No, that's not the idea. The idea (at least as I see it) is that patents should be a shade more like trademarks - you should at least have to make an effort to commercialize the patent to be able to keep it. That would certainly include selling said patent - if you can't commercialize, sell it to someone who can.

The question is, what's the point of the patent system? In a healthy environment, patents stimulate innovation by providing a system of reward for the person who puts in the research and development, so they get to recoup investment and get a reward for their risk. The point is not to *stifle* innovation by allowing people to squat on patents so they can stop companies from implementing an idea.

So we need a way to stop the bad without the good. I think a requirement to demonstrate attempted commercialization would work. That would eliminate IP holding companies - they'd have to establish R&D departments or sell.

Little guy...

[Svartalf]

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.

Karma's a bitch?

[llefler]

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?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/28/good_techn ology_settles_with_lawsuits/

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