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Federal Court Shuts Down Pay As You Go Wireless
self assembled struc writes "BCGI has been found guilty of infringing on pay-as-you-go wireless patents owned by Freedom Wireless. This means that cellular providers who use BCGI pay-as-you-go billing systems must immediately stop selling new service. For the next 90 days, as they wind down their service, they will have to pay Freedom Wireless 2.5 cents per airtime minute used PER CUSTOMER. This heralds a farewell to Cingular's Go Phone and Sprint-Nextel's Boost services, both powered by BCGI."
Lets hang our heads in shame.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Freedom wireless is crap!
Why is pay as you go patentable?
no big sig
Furthermore there's the issue of all those people who will be out of a phone, possible their only one. I'm sure they won't be getting a sweet deal switching over to the patent-holding company - Shooting the competition in the back of the head is a perfect way to clear the path to raised prices for consumers forced to switch.
It's a shame that laws originally intended to protect individuals or the little guys get turned into legal feeding grounds that do nothing but hurt the consumer and the diversity of the marketplace.
business model patents really are the great evil of the patent world. See it strangling industry after industry.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Although this is immediately disgusting, in the not-so-long-run this might end up being a good thing, this is putting a kink in Sprint/Verison and Cingular's (the big mean companies with nearly inexhaustible legal resources) business model, who will likely lash out against it. If all goes well for them, it will end up creating a substantial precedent against this kind of business-method patent, which would inadvertently improve the patent law situation in the U.S., if we're lucky it might even catalyze a wider reform.
If you want to start your own pre-paid phone network, you shouldn't steal Freedom Wireless's way of doing it.
The problem with that logic is that there are likely only a small number of straightforward ways to "properly deduct the right amount of money from the account based on the number of minutes". Seriously, how many different ways are there to implement
customer.balance -= (minutes * rate);
Two independent companies could easily implement this in a very similar (straightforward) way, without "stealing" Freedom Wireless's way of doing it.
I think this could wake up the public to the need for patent reform in a way that other things would not.
Everyone uses wireless, pay as you go is a fairly obvious idea to pretty much anyone. A sudden skyrocketing price for cell phone calls will piss people off quite a bit.
LetterRip
And Democrats don't have greedy self serving hypocrits in their party? or do you honestly believe that Clinton wasn't a greedy, self-serving hypocrit?
For every republican you can find that's corrupt I can find a democrat...
which goes to show that blaming the party affiliation in a situation is as retarded as pulling the race card (Which the majority of the time is bullshit). There are retards on both sides of the fence and blaming based on party don't fix OR address the real problems - or keep the threads on topic.
If all you can say is 'it must be a republicans fault' your just showing your own ignorance. But... that's just my two cents
You mean the phone counts how many minutes you use it and deducts those minutes from your account as you use them. Gee I never would have thought of doing that. Doh. If it's obvious it shouldn't be patentable. Simply taking a common practice and moving it to a new technology or industry should not qualify as something worthy of a patent.
Intellectual protection laws are shortsighted and don't work. If you can't keep innovating fast enough to profit then you deserve to go broke. Throw everyone to the sharks and let those who are smart enough and fast enough to stay ahead do so and the rest can get ate up and pooped out.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I have been spending a lot of time in Vietnam recently (6 months of the last year) and while I am there I always use my prepaid mobile phone. It is very sad to see that many companies over there can do it but there is a patent on such a simple idea here in the US.
PRODUCE the thing you patented, or lose the patent. Period. And if you are producing it, be treated (and regulated) as a monopoly in that area, since patents by definition grant monopolies. Patents only on real, tangible, physical items-no business methods, no software, no genetics.
There is NO excuse for the way the patent system is currently. Just because you're the first to do something doesn't mean it's non-obvious. Incremental changes or "improvements" should not be patentable-the inventor of cell phone technology should get a patent, the guy that figures out a better way to use it should not. Nor, generally, should the guy that figures out how to extend range by 10%.
Hopefully, larger companies continually getting hit by these things will lead them to recognize that pretty soon you're not going to be able to move, breathe, or fart without infringing on something patented. I certainly hope that leads them to reconsider the path they're going down, and use their influence to do something worthwhile for once.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Without Federal Court you'd still be paying AT&T.... remember that monopoly?
From the article, it apears that the existing service will generate a fee of about 2.5 cents a minute. At that rate, they could just license the product and sell the airtime as $0.15 a minute instead of $0.12. That may not eb the current charges but it isn't much different.
It isn't like the users of the pay as you go type phones can go anywere else. $0.025 isn't going to break someone anymore then they are already. The only difference might be a few wiser decisions on who and when to call. Outside the "quit selling it" order, there really isn't anythign wierd here. Maybe after negotiations on using the patten are finalized, it might be 3 or 5 cents but who cares. these type of plans already prey on the poor and iresponcible. A friend recently got a nextell go ohne and after bragging about how cheap it was, i realized he basicaly is paying about 2/3 what i am (for regular service)for around1/3 the minute i get and my incoming and long distance is free compared to his costing. In reality it won't be much difference to take another nickle or so form them.
The US has for a long time been trying to export their patent laws overseas. In many african and asian countries it is a mandatory requirement for aid, trade, etc. By systematically patenting every obvious idea under the sun the US can continue it's "Perpetual Economic Expansion" by bringing patent serfdom to the rest of the world.
Once the US has a hold on the patent system and has established laws worldwide to protect the interests of US patent holders, it will be possible to sit back, let the developing countries do the work, and reap the profits. It's a brilliant strategy.
People living in developing countries (including me) must do everything in their power to lobby their governments to reject US patent laws. They could well be a noose around our neck and keep us in serfdom forever.
Hey, at least nothing is changing...
Would you feel the same if one night you had this dream in which you solved some fundamental problems that would allow ICs to be ten times faster (or something like that), and 3 or 4 years down the road some asshole at Intel say "eureka" and comes up with the same thing? Wouldn't it have been nice for you if you had written it all down and filed a patent on it? It's always a bitch when someone else comes up with something and decides to press the issue and clean up, but sometimes "fairness" is a matter of perspective.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
as 90% of the time I use one it's for work, and it means a headache (no one ever calls to tell me I'm doing a great job, they only call with problems), but for emergencies, last minute groceries and running late the wife and I both have a Tracfone. It's running about $20 USD/month for both of us.
This should be a wakeup call. The OSS MUST start patenting each and everything they can think of. The ONLY way we can keep OSS free and open is if we use the system to our advantage, like RedHat. Come up with ideas, patent them, or shop them to RedHat or even IBM and get them to patent them, giving you credit and having the patent open for all OSS. Basically, we have NO CHOICE.