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Blackberry Competitor Announced
conq wrote to mention a BusinessWeek article reporting that NTP has licensed its wireless email patent to a new Blackberry competitor. Essentially, they're creating a competitor to Blackberry out of whole cloth, and bolstering their case against the popular handheld device maker. From the article: "The deal comes amid dwindling options for RIM, seller of the popular BlackBerry e-mail paging service. NTP four years ago successfully sued RIM for infringing on NTP's wireless e-mail patents. After a tentative $450 million settlement fell apart in June, RIM has battled back through court appeals, holding out hope that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) will strike down NTP's patents." This has not been a good month for RIM.
Here in DC, everyone and their mother has a blackberry. To think that there is no market for blackberry is ridiculous.
Wow, a ridiculous patent system backed by corporations now results in the very same corporations going after each other based on ideas that are almost intuitive. Pretty soon some company will patent the process of breathing. Think it's far fetched? We'll living things are patentable.
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/
1. Patent obvious idea but never implement it
:D
2. Wait till a fool does
3. Sue / License
4. Profit!!
Don't we love America?
How many mayors, governors, Congressmen, CEOs, executives have Blackberries? A lot.
Maybe if they feel the pain of the patent system they will put pressure on to change it.
Granted, nothing may come of it. But change rarely happens without convincing people of a need for change.
How many times have you gotten your server/whatever by on a limited budget. What's the best way to get the appropriate amount of resources without requiring unnecessary heroics? Let something break so people see the need.
That can backfire, but it is still the best way.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"We felt [NTP's] patent portfolio was something that would provide our customers with the added insurance on top of what our portfolio provided."
Added insurance.
Not a better technology, just insurance that the products and services we sell you wont be ripped away. Is that what the patent system has become?
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
NTP's patent is pretty much irrelevant; there are plenty of ways of getting real-time E-mail to your device, with polling and IMAP IDLE being the most obvious choices. RIM is only stuck because NTP zeroed in on them early and because (apparently) their implementation infringes.
RIM could probably have worked around this patent easily. But my impression from using their product a little is that they aren't very good technically anyway.
So, let NTP and RIM destroy each other; hopefully, companies like Palm will benefit from that.
I tend to think the US patent system is awful, but this particular aspect I find perfectly palatable. If you accept for a moment that some patent might be valid, it is then easy to make a leap that one way for an inventor to get a fair payout for his invention would be to sell that invention to a patent holding company with the resources to handle licensing, and to pursue claims against violators. Many many inventors do not have the resources to do all this themselves (yet surely we'd still like to encourage them to invent), and so patent holding companies make a great deal of sense as a market lubricant.
And another point to note here, is that the attorneys in question will surely not drag this out forever, in fact I think it would be safe to expect it to be well resolved in under 20 years.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
American courts helping a Canadian company?
no way. Goodbye RIM, no matter how invalid NTP's patent scam is.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"