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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.
Rothbard got it right with his ideas on patents. The whole issue could be avoided with contractual agreements. You agree to take the medicine and not reverse engineer it. Any violation is breaking of contract would be delt with in Civil court. it could be applied to anything that couild be patented.
I've been searching everywhere to actually find a copy of this patent. I was able to find some minor documentation of its existence but that was all in German and hard to sort through.
Has anyone found the text of this patent? Or atleast a more robust summary of it.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
This is completely true, actually. Rothbard was really a remarkable theorist -- unfortunately he died before his third wave of fans came online.
/. readers would argue that they have enough contracts to click-sign, they're not going to want to live in a world where every action is governed by 100,000 page civilly-binding click-through agreements.
The difficulty with the civil aspect (Devil's Advocate here) is what happens if you sell me your cell phone and I sign an agreement not to reverse engineer it and I give it to my brother who does reverse engineer it? Most
In the end, the law is the device of coercion and force. Who enforces the law? Not the courts, not the Congress and definitely not the executive branch. The lawyers do. Basic contracts can be very simple, but once you incoporate these monsters into any system, you'll destroy the simplicity.
(I am a huge fan of Rothbard)
You know, I'd like to see RIM just shut their entire service down, and hold their government customers hostage.
I think the government would start singing a different tune, you know?
Guess what? I read yesterday, that if RIM has a injunction set against them, only residential and commercial users lose service...governmental service will continue on.
The pundits won't agree, but I think that maybe RIM should just close up shop in protest. Clearly the way that patents are being used has gotten out of control, but nothing is going to be done to fix the problem until someone sufficiently powerful gets pissed off. Take away the Blackberry service for a week or two, and maybe the government big wigs and lobbyist will get the message that the predatory use of patents is a bad thing. It seems in this world that someone always has to die before anything gets done about obvious problems.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
And that is exactly what has happened. The way the patent system now functions encourages patent squatters whose business model is essentially litigation, and is beginning to sour the well for those actually producing products. The system is broken, but governments are either unaware or are in the pockets of those who wish to propogate an anti-free market system.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That being said, I completely agree with previous posters who have said that if Blackberry service is shut down for all subscribers for a few weeks that some long overdue revision of the patent system will have a greater chance of happening. After all, Blackberry users are more likely to be Movers & Shakers than the average population. Getting them all angry at once might not be a bad thing.
From what I've heard, 7 of the 8 NTP patents have already been overturned, and the final one is in jeopardy. Would RIM get all their money back (plus damages is too much to expect) if all the patents are ruled invalid? They should!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The injunction states that RIM must halt Blackberry sales and service to everyone in the US, excepting people who work for the US government. Now, I've seen estimates that 10% of the US Blackberry users are government employees. I'm sure people here on Slashdot would agree that it's not fair for RIM to take a huge revenue (and profit) hit to protest this ruling, thus:
RIM turns off all commercial service, except for gov't employees. The service fee for those employees increases 10x. Total revenue = same. Economic impact on gov't = large. Service impact on wealthy CEOs, who complain to gov't = total. Amount of time before injunction is repealed = ??
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Do I really need to bring up the trade secret vs. patent protection again? The key to patent protection is the idea of full disclosure (at least here in the US). The idea is, you are guaranteed protection of your invention for a period to not exceed 20 yrs from the filing date of the invention, and in return you must disclose your invention to the public. It is this disclosure that is meant to foster innovation.
There are ways around trade secrets; however, in some fields the time required to successfully reverse engineer a trade secret in order to create an exact copy of a product may be too long. How many people throughout the years have claimed to have correctly figured out the formula for Coca-Cola. It is one of the most closely guarded secrets, and Coca-Cola has stated that the supposed formulas people have come up with are not the correct ones.
By requiring disclosure you force the inventor or company to tell the world what his invention is and provide everyone else a chance to improve upon said product by modifying it and then working to get a patent on an the improved idea. Without this disclosure the small inventor might possibly vanish, because they do not always have the time or resources to reverse engineer the trade secret protected item.
You claim that cases like this stifle innovation, but let us say for a second that NTP's patent was upheld by the USPTO, are you tell me that they should have no recourse to protect their invention? If there were no patent system their idea would only exist on paper somewhere and they would have no protection for their idea against a larger company like RIM. Without the patent system, the legal battle would turn into an argument over who invented it first, decided by the courts who we know are so knowledgeable about technology. At least the patent office employs engineers who have an understanding of the technologies and the ideas that are going into inventions.
I will admit the system could probably use a few corrections, but many of the problems people talk about have come about because of rulings made at the judicial level and not necessarily with laws. This includes the adoptions of business method and software patents which the PTO did attempt to resist for some time. It also includes rulings by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) who instituted rulings making it hard to impossible to reject obvious patents in some cases.
I would say that some things can be fixed, but the system should remain in order to afford some protection to inventors in order to allow them the opportunity to protect their inventions and the chance to profit from them. At least the duration is not as viciously long as the extended copyright protections.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."