Feds Enter Blackberry Fray

Rick Zeman writes "Blackberry addicted US Feds have entered into the patent dispute between Canadian company Research in Motion and US patent-holders NTP. From the article: 'The Justice Department has filed a legal brief in a patent dispute, asking a federal court to delay any immediate shutdown of the popular wireless e-mail system to ensure that state and federal workers can continue to use their devices.' Apparently 10% of US Blackberry users are government users."

Comments

US Government dependence of foreign corporation

[Tontoman]

One odd element of this dispute is this: Canada has also filed amicus brief in the case. http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/01/canada _challeng.html Canada argues that essential part of their system, the email relay operation, is located entirely in Canada. Therefore US government is saying they have put a foreign corporation (Blackberry LTD) in the critical path of essential government communication.

Re:US Government dependence of foreign corporation

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Therefore US government is saying they have put a foreign corporation (Blackberry LTD) in the critical path of essential government communication.

Actually, given the history, I don't see that as a problem. The Crackberries were supposedly the most effective means of communication between many Federal employees following the 9/11 disaster after many other means of communication had failed or was gridlocked. It was successful enough that they've expanded their purchasing of the devices.

Re:US Government dependence of foreign corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Blackberry employ encryption on emails being transmitted to a given user so only the user can read them, or make it easy to PGP encrypt emails you send? If not I imagine national security would be better off if Blackberry's got pulled out of the hands of government employees in sensitive positions.

Yes, the BlackBerry devices that the U.S. Gov't uses support S/MIME.

They can do more if they want.

[Distan]

Since they are a department of the government, they can simply ignore the patent and indemnify RIMM from any patent liability as far as government workers go.

Patents don't apply to the government, unless the government wants them to. By extension, they don't apply to suppliers making things for the government.

Re:US Government dependence - MOD Parent DOWN

[mmkkbb]

How can you claim that 10% of government users having Blackberries constitute essential infrastructure? Are you trying to claim that the Blackberries are their only source of email service?

Re-read the summary. 10% of Blackberry users are in the US government.

Re:US Government dependence - MOD Parent DOWN

[Doc Ruby]

10% of the US government, by one gross measure, is $350BILLION of annual operations. If they lost their email, the government would be crippled.

And yes, as I've said elsewhere in this thread, other governments' security is at risk through their dependence on foreign technology. The principle is universal, but I'm American, and most essential tech is American, so that's not really my problem. If they want to increase their security, they can apply the same principle. But since so many countries' national security depends on America in so many essential ways, they obviously have a different strategy for reducing their risks.

Since I've delivered large software products to Canadian federal and provincial governments, as well as American state, federal and military government customers, and have clearly stated the simple principles, I'll continue to operate under my limited, but sufficient understanding of the issue.
When you present "a thorough understanding of the issue", I'll listen. But when all you're doing is asserting disagreement, and demanding that others suppress my post, all I can do is shrug off your ineffectual attacks.

Re:What happened to the patent review?

[davecb]

[Apologies for answering my own question, but I found it on groklaw minutes later]

Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, November 10 2005 @ 03:45 PM EST
Judge James Spencer presiding over NTP's legal battle with Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) this week said it was "highly unlikely" he would wait for a US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) verdict on the validity of NTP's intellectual property before making his own judgement on the matter.
This makes no sense. There is only one patent remaining of the eight that the USPTO has yet to rule invalid.
Articles at http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/11/10/rim_vs _ntp/ and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/24/uspto_null s_ntp_patents/