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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.
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.
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.