Blackberry Maker Facing Infringement Case In U.K.

xoip writes "As if the problems facing RIM in the U.S. are not enough, a second patent infringement case has been launched in the U.K. by Luxemburg based, Inpro Licensing SARL. A report published by The Globe & Mail says that the U.K. represents 10% of RIM's existing Blackberry subscriber base." More from the article: "At risk in the dispute is RIM's service to around 375,000 BlackBerry subscribers in Britain, about 10 per cent of its global total. If the Waterloo, Ont., company loses the case, it may be forced, along with licensees such as T-Mobile International AG, to stop selling or supporting the devices in Britain, according to lawyers representing the companies." Things don't look so good for their U.S. business either.

Comments

Re:Patents on Algorithms in the EU?

[Husgaard]

The proposed directive was simply an attempt to change the law to be closer to what the European Patent Office (EPO) is doing. EPO has changed their interpretation of Article 52 in the European Patent Convention to allow patenting just about all software and business methods.

Although the directive was defeated, this hasn't changed the behaviour of EPO. The EU Commission is unable to control them.

RIM has a better chance in the UK

[Sanity]

The UK Patent Appeals court has recently been demonstrating quite a bit of sanity around the issue of software patents, rejecting a number of different patents and appeals on the grounds that the patents in question were excluded by the European Patent Convention (EPC) on the grounds that they simply covered a computer program. here is one example. This may be a result of the European Parliament's clear message that they did not want to weaken the exclusions in the EPC by rejecting the software patents directive.

As such, if these are simply software patents, I think RIM has a much better chance of winning in the UK than they did in the US - so lets hope they put up a fight.

Re:Time to do away with patents

[jank1887]

actually, this is somewhat in place, but it's the inventor that has to make a decision on whether to keep something patented. This is done through Patent Maintenance Fees. So, it costs money to maintain a patent. Currently, the fees are $900 at 3.5yrs, $2300 at 7.5yrs, and $3800 at 11.5yrs. (Half if you're a "small entity") Since it can take time to make money from a patented idea, this forces people to make a "is it worth it to keep this thing" decision. Granted, one can argue if those dollar values are at all significant or effective, as they tend to be more of a burden on entrepreneurs than large businesses, but at least there is an early expiration provision.

Re:Has anybody considered.....

[merky1]

I had to dig a little, but I remember it was RIM who really started the whole patent issue...

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958550.html