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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."
For wireless dial-up access, and I haven't noticed any
Lets hang our heads in shame.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Looks like they'll be paying as they go! Hahahahaha
I guess the name "Freedom Wireless" is an ironic choice.
I read the article. Is this for EVERYONE in the country? What will happen for all the users of these phones. What about tracfone, they've been at it for YEARS, does this affect them? I need clarification or some unfounded speculation, both would be nice.
--sig fault--
BULLSHIT!!!
You'll NEVER stop me from getting FREE WIFI off of my Pringles Can!!!
Take THAT FCC!!!
He then turned and walked defiantly from the court room, only to sheepishly return and ask "Um....anyone have a cell phone?? I need to call my lawyer."
I hope we can rely on federal court to rid us of these patented monopolies.
here
Doesn't include the information I was looking for, but does give a bit more detail.
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
RTFA, it was a jury trial. Whoever thought that business method patents were a good idea? "Yeah, we'd prefer if we just didn't have to compete in the marketplace -- please give us a government granted monopoly."
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I remember reading about this case a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal. The article was entitled "Patent litigants pose growing threat to business."
The first paragraph brought to light one of Freedom Wireless' founder's criminal past (it involved stolen cars) as well as the fact that the founders had previously gone after GTE for similar issues (alleging stolen trade secret). GTE ended up getting paid $90,000 in legal fees, a statement that GTE had never stolen a trade secret, and a promise never to sue GTE again.
Fast forward a few years. Freedom Wireless currently does nothing but patent ligitation. These men are patent trolls.
The Wall Street Journal charges for their archives, but the full text of the same article is available here.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
See, one of the problems of the political culture in this country is this: the people who are suspicious of corporate power are too trusting of government power to allocate resources for social change; the people who are suspicious of government power have a hard-on for the public sector (without realizing that wealth will always - always - muster power to protect itself) and, often, for the military. (The biggest weak-point in libertarian thinking is class-blindness - they think they are serving hard-working middle- and-upper-middle-class americans without understanding that this is exactly the class the created the Leviathan of state to begin with, and in whose interests it ultimately works.) This means that the political will to muster things like a reform of patent law will never occur unless it happens in a way that is in the interests of power.
Which may be happening here: the Cingulars and Nextels may start getting annoyed enough by the absurdities of patent law and the effect on their bottom line that they start to lobby for a change. Unfortunately, the change is not likely to make things any easier for the bulk of us.
Does this mean I'm screwed as well?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
From the summary: "This heralds a farewell to Cingular's Go Phone and Sprint-Nextel's Boost services, both powered by BCGI."
In regards to Cingular, not exactly.
Cingular has two forms of prepaid service (GoPhone).
One is 'Pick-Your-Plan'. You have a reoccuring monthly charge on your credit or debit card which gives you a monthly allowence for service.
The other is 'Pay-As-You-Go'. You buy a prepaid card off the rack, and use that to make your calls on your cell. As you use it up, you replace the card. That's the part that will be affected by this ruling.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
The patents is question are 5,722,067 filed in 1998 and 6,157,823 filed in 2000.
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.
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.
Yes, your math is painful.
10 * $0.025 * 3,100,000 = $775,000
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.
I haven't seen the patent first hand, but often something obvious now, wasn't at that time. If it were then why wasn't someone else doing it already.
I can list many examples of this. The mouse, keyboard, screens, printers, windowing environment, The Internet, an Operating system and even a CPU and the IC chips, were at the time major conceptual steps forward.
I can't tell you how hard it was to explain what the Internet or even a Network was to people in 1983, they just couldn't grasp it.
With patents if someone has been doing something then a patent gets filed by another person at later date, then the group getting sued must try to show that, if they can the patent holder will have to pay like multiple damages and costs.
So as a patent holder you never want to go to court with a weak patent.
But in practice, most people loose their nerve at the first letter from a patent holder, even if its a weak patent that wouldn't hold up.
As a result many people end up paying royalties or giving up without a fight, when they really would win and have that patent tossed out.
I have come to realize much of patent law is a poker game.
For a large company like Microsoft they look at the strength of a patent and the value of the company holding it and decide is it cheaper to pay or infringe. And same in reverse, even if a patent isn't worth the paper it's written on, if the company they sue can't afford to challenge it, then they win.
AT&T did this to many companies they felt were competition, file dozens of bogus suite against one company, from many little companies they control, and drive the small players out of business while leaving there name out of it.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
is affected, which means the old ATT TDMA people "free2go" plan.
The GMS Pay as you go, and pick your plan are not affected.
We on planet Earth call it GSM.
No, I'm sorry, they can't implement it in any form without infringing my patents. You see, I have a patent on the subtraction operation. Everybody who subtracts two numbers without a license from me is in danger of prosecution (thieves, stealing my valuable IP). And don't try that "I'll just add a negative number" because it won't hold up in court (and hasn't).
You'll be hearing from my lawyer soon concerning your willful, unlawful proliferation of the subtraction operation on a public message board without licensing it first.
"Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation." - Richard Feynman
Local governments can kick people out of their houses for the sake of public works projects, and lately they've been doing it for commercial projects. The federal government can void patents in the name of national security. I'm not in love with either practice, but as long as those are the rules we have to live under why can't the principle of eminent domain be invoked to override a patent claim that denies a valuable service to a significant number of people. Especially if the technology has been in use for a while.
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...
That's not what the parent is talking about. He's talking about whoever implements the idea first. These patents people are getting arne't "solving any fundamental problems", it's people patenting broad ideas that have many implementations AND NOT EVEN DOING ANYTHING WITH THEM. We're not talking innovation here...
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
I'm calling the Police.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .