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.

Comments

Patents? What Patents?

[Dynamoo]

What patents does NTP actually have? None, it seems. The USPTO has so far indicated that NTP's patents appear to be invalid. So what are they licensing? Pixie dust? What do they actually make? Anything? Have you ever seen their web site?

So Visto have managed to licence what appears to be a non-existant set of patents from a company no-one has heard of. They must be betting the barn that the US legal system continues to come down hard on RIM and they have to shut up shop. Visto aren't new though, they've been around providing push email services for a while.. so perhaps they just bottled out when the NTP lawyers turned up.

One final point.. do you think that RIM would be having these problems if it was a US company rather than a Canadian one? Microsoft gets away with infringing patents all the time, but it's yet to be proved that RIM actually *has* and yet they are punished far more harshly than Microsoft ever was.

Re:Patents? What Patents?

[morzel]

If you read the link you posted you'll notice that you are stretching it a bit. USPTO rejected 1 of 8 patents they are reviewing. The battle is far from over.

Actually, the USPTO rejected the last one, the other seven were already rejected in June. See here for one article about it. Although these are "preliminary" rejections from the USPTO, they're more than likely to be invalidated.

NTP has a case as long as at least one claim of one patent is infringed upon. The moment that the USPTO strikes them down definitively, their case ceases to be. Therefore, NTP wants to force a judgement/settlement as soon as possible, while RIM obviously wants to await the final verdict from the USPTO.

I agree with you that "IP firms" such as NTP are absolutely bollocks, as is the system that allows this to happen (over and over again).

Could be good long term...hear me out

[geoffrobinson]

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.

Re:Future blackberry market? Is there one?

[jandrese]

I don't know. I rather like my 7100t. Perhaps it is because I'm comparing it to the crap cellphones everyone else has, but it seems pretty nice to me.

A few points:
1. No connector conspiracy. Uses bog standard USB to charge and the headphone jack is the most generic one available.
2. Integrated browser seems to work reasonably well, although it's kinda slow
3. The address book could use some UI tweaks, but it's loads better than most address books on phones that I've seen.
4. The text input works reasonably well. Occasionally it gets tripped up on a word (and I usually know what words it's going to have trouble with, so this isn't as bad as it could be), but it is a bit awkward to go back and edit stuff. Still, it's the fastest text input I've seen this side of the full size Blackberries. Blows regular cell phone (multi-tap) text input out of the water.
5. No MP3 support, no camera. The lack of a camera is a big plus for me, I work in places where you can bring a cell phone in, but not a camera. The lack of MP3 support isn't an issue for me either because I own an iPod.
6. The phone is largely unrestricted as to what you can load onto it. There's no rediculous charge to load ringtones or backgrounds. You can either load these from your computer or just over the network (any picture you load in the browser can be set as your background).
7. You can use the phone as a modem--although not over the Bluetooth. :(, it is a bit clunky with the USB cable attached.
8. Battery life is pretty reasonable. I've had it for 7 months now and the battery still lasts for 4-5 days without being turned off. Playing games on the phone drains the battery faster (can only play for 5-8 hours or so before the battery is dead). I've never killed the battery with talking, but I'm not a big talker.
9. The screen is gorgous. Among the best screens available in cell phones. It's a great when paired with the web browser, but it's also good for reading emails if you set the font size small and have good eyes.
10. The included belt clip is a bit disappointing. The cell phone will fall out if you move too vigoriously, and sometimes it falls out when I'm sitting in low riding cars. It will also scratch the screen if you're working in an environment where there is sand or other abrasives in the air.

Overall I'm very happy with the phone. It seems to hit the sweet spot between performance and functionality IMHO and the integrated email works like a charm. I'm going to be sad if RIM is forced to close down due to some stupid submarine patent.